Herman Jolly

(The Herman Jolly band is now called Little Pieces ! Check it out...) Like Robyn Hitchcock, former Sunset Valley frontman (and current Seattle resident) Herman Jolly has a knack for writing wonderfully off-kilter yet oddly beautiful pop songs—the kind that are so distinctive they'd sound strange and slightly forced coming from anyone else, but fit his faintly cracked voice and tilted worldview to a T. He's returned to performing under his own name (although he's joined onstage by a rhythm section) and he's got a new album coming out really soon, so hopefully '07 will see this talented feller get the recognition he deserves. BARBARA MITCHELL -The Stranger __________________________________________________________ For whatever reason, some albums end up defining certain periods of your life. For me, Herman Jolly's 1999 album Mad Cowboy Disease defined my junior year of college. I had just met a girl and I was living in a house with a bunch of dudes who stayed up until 6 a.m. snorting toot off our coffee table. My bedroom was right off the living room, so if I wanted to get any sleep while they ran their mouths and ground their teeth, this girl and I would have to put on music to fall asleep. Jolly's cracked, sparse folk numbers hissed out of those speakers, drowning out the cokehead roommates better than any other record I owned. The way he sang and played made it seem like he was holed up on a dark Saturday morning in Portland, with the rain streaking his bedroom windows and his cats crying for food, exactly the distraction we needed from the endless sniffling of the roommates. BRIAN J. BARR -Seattle WeeklyI edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4