Hambridge moved to Nashville in 1999, as Tedeschi’s Just Won’t Burn was taking off. At that point he was playing 200 to 300 shows a year as a sideman for such artists as Chuck Berry and Roy Buchanan and as the leader of his own T.H. and the Wreckage. Since relocating, he’s notched things up by establishing himself as a solo artist, producing dozens of blues and singer-songwriter sessions including tracks for Johnny Winter, Shemekia Copeland, and George Thorogood, working as a session and touring drummer, showcasing his tunes at the famed Bluebird Café, and placing numbers with popular country artists like T. Graham Brown and Montgomery Gentry. Last year he signed a song-publishing deal with EMI and has been writing with Jonny Lang and Delbert McClinton.
His furious pace might suggest that he’s nervous all those doors could close if he stepped through them less often. Actually, he says, “that’s not the case here. Nashville’s a small town.” According to recent census figures, it has roughly the same population as Boston: about 549,000.
“The music industry is concentrated here,” he continues. “Music Row [with its host of publishing companies, record labels, and studios] is two streets. If the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd are recording in town, they’ll run into each other at lunch. I’ve been in line at Starbucks with Keith Urban, Vince Gill, and Ben Folds. Once you’re part of the scene, you can’t get lost.”
As an old hand on the scene, Miller isn’t so sure it’s changed much in the last 10 years. “We’ve still got every kind of country music there is,” he says, laughing. “And we’ve got some better food.”
He goes on, “For me, making Nashville with Solomon was a labor of love, because I’ve always believed that soul music and country music intersected. And now that there’s a little more diversity in the scene, people can make their own worlds to live in without the major labels or the big showcase clubs. There are many different communities of songwriters, musicians, and artists. Sometimes they intersect and sometimes they don’t, but today there’s enough of that creative energy to go around for everybody.”
