Absolutely NineDays

How did ninedays come into existence as a band?

John Hampson: “Brian and I played guitar in a band together and that band just kind of didn’t work out. Brian and I decided because we had been talking that we wanted to write music and play in a band with songs that are really true to us. So we sat down, him and I and a drum machine and an eight track in an apartment that I had and just wrote songs and we did that for almost a year and then Vinnie, Nick, and Jeremy joined us a short time later and Nine Days was born.”

Where does the name ninedays come from?

John Hampson: “At this point we all sort of knew that this was something special and this was going to be a band. There was this song that I had called “Nine Days of Rain” and it was the last song we recorded for our first album. We were finishing it up that day. It was our last day in the studio, we ran out of money and Brian walks by the counsel and somebody had just wrote for short “Nine Days” for the song title and left it on there. So he looks at it and says to me “how long have we been in the studio,” and I said “you know I think we’ve been in here nine days, and then he was like “well that’s the name of our band.

Why was the album The Madding Crowd named after Thomas Hardy’s novel “Far From the Madding Crowd?”

"I read Far From the Madding Crowd at a time when I was in need of inspiration, and the line “love is a possible strength, in an actual weakness, was the most profound and brilliant line I had ever read," -John Hampson

What is the story and meaning to the song “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)” off the album The Madding Crowd?

John Hampson: "It's actually kind of funny, [we were] doing a show on Long Island. It was an outdoor show, and there was a big deck that we were playing on, and we got there really early for sound check. I was there with my girlfriend, and as typical, we were annoying each other.

"She's just aggravating me, so she walked [away] and started talking to somebody on the side of the club. So I'm just sitting there, and I was literally thinking to myself, 'Man, she drives me nuts. She totally drives me crazy.' But as I was thinking this, I was watching her, just looking at her, and she was having a conversation with someone and just started laughing.

"And I swear I thought to myself, 'Y'know, she totally drives me crazy, but I absolutely love her when she's happy, when she's smiling," Hampson continued. "I don't know what happened, but it just came out of my head. I started singing that chorus, and I kind of picked up the guitar, and the song kind of wrote itself. Pretty much ten minutes later, it was done. It was one of those things."

“It was a welcome thing to happen," Hampson said, "but it's pretty funny how the slightest thing can just influence you and set you down some road. That's what came out of [that incident]: a three-minute song.

What is the story and meaning behind the song “Good Friend,” off So Happily Unsatisfied:

John Hampson: “I was engaged to the girl who sort of inspired me to write “Story of a Girl,” and we ended up canceling the wedding and we broke the engagement. Mostly because I just wasn’t home for about a solid year and it really takes its toll when you don’t see each other. It’s very hard and frustrating thing to go through. We had just gotten off the road and my original wedding date was June 23 and I got a call from Epic, after we had called off the wedding saying, “listen there’s a show you got to do. You have to fly to Kansas City June 23 and do this show.” I was like “I can’t fly to Kansas City on the day I was supposed to get married and do a show”, because I had just started talking to Teresa again and I just can’t do this going to be a rough day to get through for the both of us. I finally agreed to do the show but they had to fly Teresa with me so we could be together. That was kind of a rough day. Probably about literally four days before that show I wrote “Good Friend,” because I wrote it about if it was really then end of our relationship I wanted her to know how important she was to me. It does have a happy ending, however. We ended up getting married in December and patched everything up.