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Nine Days
This Long Island quintet won WLIR's Best Unsigned Band and WBAB's Homegrown Talent Search, and it's easy to hear why. Nine Days add grunged-out guitars to their otherwise sanitized pop for a sound that's mostly clean, but still a bit messy around the edges. And with that sort of non-offensive, mass-appeal sound, it's no wonder songs such as 'Absolutely (Story of a Girl)' have topped the Top-40 and Adult Alternative charts.
Nine Days was formed on Long Island by singer/songwriter/guitarists John Hampson and Brian Desveaux, who had previously played together and apart in a series of local groups. The band was filled out by keyboard player Jeremy Dean, bass player Nick Dimichino, and drummer Vincent Tattanelli. Focusing on their songwriting and shared lead vocals, Hampson and Desveaux holed up in Hampson's apartment in Deer Park wood shedding, then released their own debut album and began playing live shows. They won WBAB's Homegrown Talent Search and WLIR's Best Unsigned Band competition, made a second CD on their own, and finally signed to Epic/550 Music, which released their debut major-label album, The Madding Crowd (its title a comment on Thomas Hardy's novel Far from the Madding Crowd) in May 2000.
'Realness' applies to lyrical content too. 'We're conscientious about our lyrics without being extreme,' Hampson says. 'There are a lot of things on the record that deal with the difficulties of relationships, what everyone goes through in one form or another.'
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Artist Biography - Nine Days
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 Which brings him back to the album title, and the book that inspired it: 'I felt that these songs are the little episodes about the problems that make relationships hard to establish and to keep alive. They are the stories of being in the madding crowd, not away from it.'
On stage, Nine Days unleash the full force of their youthful drive and impressive chops. They're not afraid to expand upon the recorded framework of their songs, yet the music never drifts off into aimless self-indulgence. A Nine Days performance blends the warmth and musicianship of a good jam band with the hook-filled melodies and hard-rocking, on-point delivery of the best alternative bands.
Hampson says the band feel lucky that people--from those in the audience to those in the industry--have welcomed Nine Days' music so open-heartedly.
'People respond to it immediately. Nobody's trying to attach something to it because, 'Hey, you have to do this or that because this is the way bands are marketed now.' Everybody seems to understand that these are just really good songs. They seem to feel--straight to the heart--what we're trying to put across.'
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For more information , enjoy the official homepage of Nine Days
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