Today we’d like to introduce you to Noëlle Hampton.
Hi Noëlle, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I have been in the music business for over 25 years and I still feel like I am just getting started. My journey began at 20 years old when I dropped out of college, not really sure of what I wanted to do with my life and I picked up a guitar for the first time. It was like a lighting bolt struck me. Playing music was the most inspired feeling I had ever experienced. I was young, living in Northern California, playing open mics, getting first gigs, building a scene with my band at the time and beginning to see results in large crowds and buzz about the new girl on the scene.
Growing up I listened to all kinds of music, from stuff my parents had lying around to my own obsessions that extended from Dolly Parton, James Taylor, The Beatles, Tom Waits, Fleetwood Mac and more to my ultimate love of 80s Synth Pop, R&B and hip hop. I always love to write a catchy hook and I made that my mission whether I was making a rock album, Americana or Alt-Pop, which is my focus with our current project, The Belle Sounds.
In the early 90s had hit a creative wall with my first band and decided to try new things. Around that time I met my husband/guitar player André Moran at a club in San Francisco. I walked in and saw him from across the room and knew instantly that he was going to be the love of my life. We started dating and falling in love, but didn’t play together at first out of fear it would break us up if we worked together. Shortly after the old band broke up, Sarah McLachlan announced she was holding local contests for acts to play the Lilith Fair. I recorded a demo on my 4-Track and sent in the tape. (Yes, the TAPE.) I was in the top 5 and had to play live in front of thousands of people to get the slot. Since I didn’t have a band at the time, André agreed to play with me. We won the contest, played the festival and never looked back. He has been my musical partner ever since and we are still going strong after all these years.
Winning the contest sparked our career in a whole new way. We were opening for huge artists like Bob Dylan, Jewel, Richard Thompson, Paula Cole, Train, Wilco, Chris Isaak, Pat Benatar, Joan Armatrading and more. We released our first full length album and saw our songs placed in film and TV. We ended up releasing three albums under my name and I was also featured in the first Apple iTunes commercial alongside Iggy Pop, Aimee Mann, Jeff Tweedy, Michael Penn, Ziggy Marley and more.
So many things were great about our careers back then, but the Bay Area is a very difficult place to be a live musician. We started touring and spent a lot of time in Austin, TX, eventually falling for its enticing lifestyle and unbelievable music scene, so we packed up and moved here, leaving everything we had built in San Francisco and starting over from scratch.
Austin has been a great place for us creatively. This town is unbelievably rich in SO many kinds of music. The community is tight and we all have a lot of love for each other. It’s extraordinarily supportive. André and I not only play in our band, but join other bands as side musicians. I play a few instruments including guitar, piano/synths, harmonica and drums/percussion and make good use of all of these in various projects.
During our time here we have recorded one roots/rock album under my name (Thin Line) and then I found my way back to the alt-pop music that was always in my blood, bringing back the dreamy electrics/synths/keys and lush harmonies in our current band, The Belle Sounds.
We’ve recorded three full length albums and one 5 song EP as The Belle Sounds.The sound has continued to evolve. A few years ago I finally installed Logic software on my computer so I could begin to produce myself again, this time with the ultimate control over what was happening. It has COMPLETELY changed my life. Why did I wait so long? All of my 80s influence is coming back in a big way, while always holding onto our own sound.
Last year, during the insane pandemic, we released 12 singles, one each month. I just compiled them into one album on Bandcamp only called, “Stay Alive – The 2020 Singles.” I am now hard at work writing and recording for a five-song EP to be released as soon as we can.
As a side job I teach vocal lessons and also have a jewelry design business. I have recently been helping some of my women friends to learn Logic so they too can begin to take control of their production and vision. André teaches recording classes at Austin Community College and is the head engineer at Congress House Studio here in Austin. These days it is crucial that you have the skills to manage almost everything for your your own project. I do 99% of our graphic design, book the band, created the website and keep it updated, make music videos and also take care of all of our social media and anything else that needs to get done.
We have so much more to offer. As I said before, I still feel like I am just getting started. We look forward to what the next chapters reveal.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I am fairly sure that if you asked anyone in the music business if it had been a smooth road you are going to get the same answer, “No way.” The bumps are essential to our art, our craft. Perfection is definitely overrated. We live a strange life, operating during any and all hours of the day, never fully shutting off. Our nights are late and the stress is nonstop. How do we pay our rent/mortgage, band, bills and ourselves, especially during this pandemic?
Most professions have an arch. You can see room for advancement, for promotion, more money and security, heath insurance. We don’t have any of those things, unless you are already a big name in the business. So we scrape and claw and and fight our way through the hard times, but we always do it because we can’t see anything other than music in our lives.
I have battled through stress, panic attacks, depression, drinking and partying way too much, self-deprecation and doubt around my music. I guess the good news is that I know from experience that these things are usually waves that travel through and then you get some really great moments that fill up your emotional gas tank for a while more, until the next wave hits you. The difference between our woes and other professions is that we get to write our anger, sadness, love, fear and everything else into song. It’s the best therapy ever.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
Networking and mentoring are such important things in the music business. It has always come naturally to me to be social and fall into leadership roles and mentoring opportunities. In the recent past I was a vocal coach for teens through Anthropos, a non-profit in Austin that brings music lessons free of charge to kids in underserved communities. It allowed me to mentor the kids in more than just music/vocals, but confidence, motivation, performance and for them to see the reward for hard work. More importantly I was able to just give unconditional love and support and be a sounding board for them. Right now I just have private vocal students and help people learn Logic for recording. I have also organized and participated in MANY concerts for various charities/organizations throughout my years in the business.
The part I need to work on is asking for help with certain aspects of my own career. It’s such an uncomfortable thing for me to do, but I am trying to get better at it and we have some amazing resources here in Austin to offer that help up.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
We create alt-pop, harmony rich music. Genres have become harder and herder to define because music continues to mesh and combine in ways that it didn’t in the past. The music I am making now feels like the most authentic representation of myself that I have encountered yet. I think that is because I have finally taken more control over the creation of each song, playing all of the instruments in the beginning stages of the songs, etching out the sonic destiny for each creation. It gives me the opportunity to see it in a bigger way up front. We then take my sessions and re-record the needed parts with André, who is a brilliant engineer, inviting band mates and additional musicians to add their talents.
I have a huge amount of pride in all of our recordings because they all represent a piece of me and many people worked so hard to make them come to life. I take a lot of pride in our TV and film placements as well as a few short films that André and I scored back in the day. I watch a TON of TV and movies and almost all of my songs come from those story lines so when we have our own music put to a visual like that I am always so excited. We have a goal to start scoring movies again knowing everything that we know now. We could create some amazing content.
My friend Seela and I created a fabulous music video last year for our song Now You See Me. It’s one of the coolest things I have ever done. She does computer animation and we joined forces on a piece of visual art that you just have to see. We made the music video happen remotely during a pandemic. Similarly I am SO proud of the insane music video for Like A Villain that my friend Barbara FG and I created years back to showcase (in a very avant-garde and dark fashion) how a panic attack and anxiety can ravage you within seconds. Both videos are on our YouTube channel.
Contact Info:
- Email: noelle@thebellesounds.com
- Website: https://www.thebellesounds.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Noelle_TheBelleSounds
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebellesounds
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/thebellesounds
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBAilR4Iy3k6KhImGevreKQ
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/thebellesounds
- Other: https://linktr.ee/thebellesounds
Image Credits:
Barbara FG Photography
Valerie Fremin Photography
Dave Pedley Photography
Andy Strong Photography
Eric Benitez Photography
