Hemlock Lane

Hemlock Lane, composed of Nate Hansen, Nathaniel Burmeister, Isaac Brickner and John Queant, has been together since 2012, when they were still in high school.
“It’s hard to date when we first got together, because Isaac and I have been playing together since we were in middle school,” drummer Nate Hansen says.

Now they’re all college students, taking their studies as seriously as their music and scheduling regular tours while making time for rigorous class schedules.

‘We’ve resigned ourselves to the fact that it’s going to be insane,” Hansen says with a smile.

Their polished debut release, “Last Night on Earth,” came out last February. They’ve got plans to head into the studio at the end of this month to record a new EP.

The Hemlock Lane sound is the kind of sharp alterna-pop that would draw masses at Coachella. And as with all the bands on the bill for the evening, it won’t be too long before we’re bragging to people that we knew them before they made it big.

While their youth has caused a few speed bumps in Hemlock Lane’s road to success (Brickner just turned 18, leaving certain venues off the table due to age restrictions), Hansen looks at growing up playing together as a bonus.

“It’s certainly different starting when you’re so young, and to continue doing it sort of influences who you become as a person, playing in a band. On a personal basis, but also on a musical basis, we sort of influenced each other, and our musical styles are rooted in playing with each other.” - The Register Guard

A lot went into writing your favorite song, but how much do you really know about it? This week Nate Hansen, drummer of progressive pop five-piece Hemlock Lane, delves into a life on the road, a $100 random act of kindess and breaking down in a 1994 van hundreds of miles from home.


Artist: Hemlock Lane

Song: “Bainbridge”

Album: Hemlock Lane

Release Date: February 20, 2013

What was your inspiration for writing the song? “Bainbridge” is all about the tour we went on last summer. We had just finished a show on Bainbridge Island when the transmission in the van blew out, stranding us several hundred miles away from home. Almost immediately, we realized that this was the perfect situation for a song.

What is the meaning behind the song? I feel like this song, especially the second verse and chorus, are less about the van breaking down and more about the longing to go back on tour. We had some unforgettable times during our brief period on the road, and soon as we got home, I felt a desire to get back out there. “Bainbridge” is a love song, but a love song about the road. Sure, relationships tend to creep into most of the things we write as a band (whether we want them to or not), and over time people have made implications about the female inspiration to this song. First and foremost though, “Bainbridge” is about that unmistakeable feeling you get when you’re in a new city, with your best friends, playing songs that you wrote in front of a bunch of strangers. And it doesn’t get any better than that.

When it was written: We first started working on “Bainbridge” at the beginning of the summer, just as a basic riff/song idea, but it got shelved after a little while. A few weeks later, when we were coming home from tour, our guitarist, John, started playing it. It just sounded right for the time, so we started working on it again, and we played it for the first time over Labor Day weekend.

Favorite line in the song: “Altogether we know for at least a moment we lived.” In a way, I feel like this line sums up what life in a band is like. For all the stupid things we deal with, the long drives, terrible sound people, sacrificing of relationships, the moments onstage make everything worth it.

Odd fact about song: The phrase “We don’t have any money, but we’re doing alright” is not exactly true. While we were very poor on the day the van broke down, we had been smart enough to save some money in case of an emergency. We also experienced a random act of kindness that helped us get home: As we sat by our broken van on the side of the road, we ran into a woman who had been to our show the night before. She told us that she had initially planned on simply dropping her daughter off, but wound up staying for entire thing. Seeing that we were in trouble, she gave us $100 “as a tip.” Now, that didn’t even begin to put a dent in the $3000 worth of repairs the van needed, but it helped us rent a U-Haul for our equipment and make our way home.

When was your favorite time performing it live? The first time ever playing it. We had not played a hometown show in a while, and no one knew how things were going to turn out. We just went for it, but we were all so stoked about what we had created. It definitely wasn’t perfect, but we more than made up for that by playing with a crazy amount of energy. That was reflected in the crowd, and by the end, we even had people singing along. Nothing feels better than people singing to a song that you wrote, regardless of if they’ve even heard it before. It was a great validation, I felt like we were onto something special after that show. - The Seattle Weekly

Hemlock Lane, an indie rock group from Eugene, Ore., found it rather difficult to leave Bainbridge Island after playing a show here several years ago.

They literally could not get themselves off the island.

The transmission in their van was busted.

“Several years ago, we played a tour that stopped through Bainbridge Island, I think it was at Island Center Hall, but I could be wrong,” said the group’s percussionist Nate Hansen. “It was our first tour when we were just starting out, and it was a complete disaster as all first tours usually go.”

Hansen said that Bainbridge was one of very few slated shows that actually held up for the group, with many venues falling through or canceling on them at the last minute.

“It was a great show,” he said of the island concert. “We had a nearly packed room and the energy of the people was great, they really responded.

“Then, the very next day, the transmission in our van went out and stranded us up there for two days. It ended up costing like two grand to fix it,” he recalled. “We had to rent a U-Haul and everything.”

Upon their eventual return home, the group began to immediately compose a song about their mixed-bag experience on Bainbridge.

The song, titled simply “Bainbridge,” retells the story of the group’s stranding and simultaneous fond memories of a great early gig on the island, with a catchy melody that sounds reminiscent of The Wallflowers and the early work of Matchbox Twenty.

Though it was recorded and unofficially released on YouTube already, the song proved such a popular number that Hemlock Lane included it on their newly released first official album, “Last Night On Earth.”

“It’s been a year and a half in the making so we’re excited to get it out there and see what happens,” Hansen said. “We actually recorded ‘Bainbridge’ a few years ago, and it became one of our biggest hits from the demo. At shows, people would be singing along and know all the words. It was crazy.”

The album is available now on iTunes and Amazon, and is also currently streaming on www.spotify.com.

Though they have no scheduled plans to tour again on Bainbridge, Hansen said that their upcoming summer schedule will certainly bring the group to Seattle.

For more information about Hemlock Lane, visit www.hemlocklane.bandcamp.com. - Bainbridge Island Review

A polished unit with a professional live show, Hemlock Lane adds edge to otherwise straightforward pop songs, creating a style now referred to as "progressive pop." - The News Review