What do the folk-indie band Vandaveer and legendary Beatles member Ringo Starr have in common?
Meet their shared link, J. Tom Hnatow: local musician, producer, and sound engineer at Shangri-La Productions, a recording studio located in downtown Lexington. Hnatow has been playing and touring with the folk band Vandaveer for about 10 years. Along with playing on Vandaveer’s past couple of records, Hnatow was given the opportunity to play dobro on the two songs by Vandaveer that are featured on Ringo Starr’s new record, “Give More Love.”
“Hearing those songs – with the voice of a Beatle – come out of the speakers for the first time was definitely a special feeling,” he said in a recent interview.
Hnatow was born in a city near Allentown in rural, eastern Pennsylvania, and grew up with an exposure to music thanks to his father, who was chemistry teacher and part-time musician. “He would vanish at night, and come back with his saxophone case smelling of smoke and a bar. That smell was always so intoxicating – it smelled like nothing I knew or understood. So music always seemed mysterious and interesting to me,” he said.
His parents forced him to take piano lessons at a young age but it wasn’t until he got a guitar at 16 that “I learned to really enjoy the process of making music. (And of course, am so thankful for those piano lessons now!)”
He said it wasn’t until he moved to Washington D.C. after college that he “stumbled” into a musical career playing with the band These United States..
“I was lucky enough to meet a whole lot of amazing people making a whole lot of amazing music (who let me come along for the ride) in a very short time,” he said. “I loved it, but it never seemed like a career path. How do you get to be a professional musician, especially if you’re not a classical player?” he said.
But then he realized: “I was playing to much to be able to keep a full-time job.” Work with that band is what eventually led him to Lexington.
“I first worked with Duane Lundy way back in…2005 or 2006, and my old band, These United States, recorded two records with him. Gradually, I ended up doing a lot of remote recording work for the studio, and when I had a chance to come to Lexington and actually work with him in person, I jumped at it!”
Now, he is into a wide variety of music and instruments. “My main touring guitars this year have been a Dusenberg Starcaster and a Ron Jeffreys custom B-Bender. I play a Hofner bass and a Derby pedal steel … those are the main pieces of gear. But in the studio I’ll use just about anything!” he said.
“I don’t know if I have a specific ‘genre,’ per se – I like songs, first and foremost. There’s something about storytelling and structure that appeals to me,” he said. “I like thinking of each song as a movie, where my job is to fill in the spaces around the words and help paint a story.”
He said there are too many great guitarists to pick just one as influencing his playing style.
“I love players who are able to color inside the lines…less huge guitar solos, but more texture and tasteful parts.” he said. “Mike Campbell (Tom Petty’s guitarist), Daniel Lanois, Marc Ribot’s work with Tom Waits…those are some that immediately come to mind.”
Hnatow has been involved in various projects throughout his music career. The band he was an active member of, These United States, disbanded in 2012.
“Like most relationships, bands have a certain lifespan – they ebb and flow – and that band hit a point where everyone was interested in doing something else by the time we stopped playing,.” he said.
Since then, Hnatow has kept himself busy with a wide variety of music projects.
“I’ve toured with the Mynabirds and Joe Pug and am currently on tour with William Matheny & The Strange Constellations. I’ve made records and toured with Vandaveer. And I moved to Lexington and started working at Shangri-la as a producer, engineer, and session musician. I’ve been constantly busy with a lot of really great projects!” Hnatow said.
Along with his music career, Hnatow was given something else that has stuck with him—his unusual nickname: “The Llama.”
“I wish there was a great story to this! It’s basically a random name from an old band mate of mine that stuck, over years and years and years! There’s no logic behind it whatsoever,” Hnatow said.
“I’ve always loved being in the studio – there’s something about being there for the process of creation that is really special. Taking that technical knowledge – all those mics and all that gear – and using it to capture emotion is truly magical,” he said.
Hnatow’s advice for anyone wanting to pursue a career in music is to “figure out a way to make it sustainable. Play the long game.” Any new and upcoming artists will need help along the way. One thing you may need help with is getting your music mastered. You could try looking at different services local to you, or you might be interested in the online process. Online Mastering could be a viable option for any new musicians who want their music professionally engineered.
“I think a lot of people go “all in” too soon – and then end up broke and disillusioned,” he said. “If you stick around long enough, it’s got a good chance of happening…but figure out how to stick around for that!”
Thanksgiving as a vegetarian: can I eat that?
The American Thanksgiving holiday is incredibly similar for most families. Wake up and head to whichever room of the house has a television. Sit with your family, a cup of coffee or hot chocolate or maybe even apple cider, and watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade until it’s time to start working on the best meal of the year.
For my family, it’s always a day-long celebration of food, cooking, puzzle-making, laughing. Peeling potatoes, snapping beans, ripping up bread to make stuffing, and of course the turkey. When you think of Thanksgiving dinner, every family has their own little idiosyncrasies: mine is lima beans. But the main components stay the same: turkey, stuffing (or dressing), mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, corn, rolls, often some sort of casserole, cranberry sauce; the list goes on.
But, if you’re like me, and you don’t eat meat, then your options are severely limited. I’m lucky if the gravy is in its own container to the side rather than already on the potatoes, especially if I don’t get the potatoes first. At my grandparent’s house, we all eat surrounding one big table, passing the food around in a circle. So, if the food goes very far from where it started, there’s a good chance it’s got some gravy or bits of mashed potatoes off my granddad’s plate or some of the cranberry sauce from my mom’s.
This year we were at my Aunt and Uncle’s new house, so the food was set up a little differently. We each had our place setting, arranged conveniently around the house, wherever there was room. All the food was placed on an island in the kitchen, so I wouldn’t have to worry about other people’s plates getting in the food, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t have meat in it. I walked around and for each dish, the same question bothered the rest of the family: “can I eat that?”
Typically, when I think of Thanksgiving meals, my main focus is on the side dishes and not the giant bird. It always has been. But since I decided to not eat meat, mainly for health reasons and environmental impact, it’s gotten much harder to enjoy a large Thanksgiving meal with family. I can’t have the gravy (made with usually turkey drippings in my house), the green beans (usually, they’re cooked with ham), sometimes the stuffing (it can be made with chicken stock, or have bacon added), many of the casseroles (bacon or sausage or some other meat), obviously the turkey. I can usually eat the corn and mashed potatoes and dinner rolls, but that’s about it unless I bring something myself. This year, my immediate family brought an asparagus casserole that is almost entirely vegan, with the exception of egg-whites, to share with the extended family.
Another thing that makes family Thanksgiving difficult to maneuver as a vegetarian, is that everything is made with family recipes. So I can’t google whether or not Mawmaw’s corn pudding has gelatin or chicken stock in it (it did not seem to, but I’m still unsure what all is in it). Usually, if I can’t tell whether something has meat in it or not, like with most casseroles, I won’t eat it. Much of my family knows I’m vegetarian, but that means that they’ll point out the stuff I can’t eat rather than making something that I can.
Thanksgiving is still my favorite holiday. It’s about family and loved ones and spending time together rather than gift-giving or religious ceremony. It’s about coming together after a hard year and putting it all behind us and eating our fill. Thanksgiving is about finding the good things in the hard times and bringing the family together with good food and company and football. But even with all that, I can’t help but feel it’s lost some significance for me. All the food is out of my reach.
It’s like being a little kid again before I could reach the counter, with my mom walking through the kitchen, me on her hip, pointing out the things she thinks I’ll like. I have to consult with the whole family before I begin eating anything to make sure I won’t end up sick afterward. And who knows whether they’re remembering the recipe exactly, or what they did to change it “to make it better.” I just have to use my instincts and hope, and for many meals, that’s the best I can do.