Tracks
- Where Is The Clown
- Handful Of Rain
- That’s How We Roll
- Emily
- When The Moon Was Young
- Deep Blue Sea
- Master Jack
- Sweet Soul Music
- When The Morning Comes
Musicians
Piet Botha (The Hammer): Vocals, guitars, keyboards, harmonica
Paul van de Waal (Duke): Drums
Tertius du Plessis (Bean): Bass
Johnathan Martin (The Kid): Guitars, vocals
Arthur Dennis: Guest guitars, vocals
Rudolph Dennis: Drums on “Handful Of Rain”, guest vocals
The Joostenberg Tabernacle Choir: Backing vocals
Soweto String Quartet appear on “Sweet Soul Music”.
Release information
CD / Download: January 2016, VH Music, no catalogue number
Comments
Recorded at VH Studios, Joostenbergvlakte, Cape Town during September 2015 by Peter Pearlson.
“Sweet Soul Music” recorded with The Soweto String Quartet at Jazzworks in Johannesburg for the Jam Sandwich TV series. Episode 2 of Season 3 premiered 19 December 2012 at 22h00 on SABC 2.
Original cover painting by Vernon Swart
Interview with Peter Pearlson
I met Piet in 1990 and we interacted a lot over the years and we became really good friends when I moved down here (Strand, Western Cape). We lived in the same hood so we saw a lot of each other. And then he came to me and said he was doing a new Jack Hammer album and would I produce it and I said, I’d would love to. What a privilege! We tracked it at a studio in Kraaifontein called VH studios. They’d never recorded an album live before. That was Handful Of Rain album, the last Jack Hammer album he did before he died. So yes, what a privilege to have worked with Piet. Amazing!
Jive Talking and Eyeballing interview, Ernesto Garcia Marques, 2 July 2020
Press release
The Jack Hammer line-up featuring on Handful of Rain has endured over the years, with Piet Botha (guitars, keys, harmonica, vocals), Johnathan Martin (guitars, vocals), Tertius du Plessis (bass) and Paul van de Waal (drums). The album also features guest artists Arthur Dennis (guitars, vocals) and Rudolph Dennis (drums, guest vocals) from Akkedis/Lyzyrd Kyngs. Piet Botha’s harmonica is present throughout the album, and the style is familiar, lingering long after, like a renegade’s signature tune in an old western.
The timbre in Piet Botha’s singing is full of longing and resistance. In the title track, he sings “Here I go again on a lonesome highway / A handful of rain and empty heart”, with Johnathan Martin, ‘The Kid’, by his side, harmonising, singing the same words. Cut from the same cloth. “That’s How We Roll” echoes Neil Young, “me, I got nothing / just this old guitar”; a song about this brotherhood of musicians defying the Man, choosing the road over the rat race with its fitting rock ‘n roll chorus. The haunting cover of Four Jacks and Jill’s “Master Jack”, a song about choosing solitude over society, flows into the album’s theme: “no hard feelings if I never come back.” Delving into the songwriting is a melancholy joy, and each listen reveals new meanings and interpretations. Is a song like “When the Moon Was Young” a love song first, a protest song second? Piet Botha gently contends,“They think they can own her / but even a fool knows / the moon belongs to lovers…”
The hair-raising harmonies of “Emily” and “Where Is the Clown” remind us why Jack Hammer are at their best when Piet Botha and Johnathan Martin come together. Not only do they whistle the same tune when it comes to existing and creating outside of the mainstream, but their musical accord completes Jack Hammer. Handful of Rain can best be summed up in “Sweet Soul Music”, Piet Botha’s collaboration with the Soweto String Quartet: violins, harmonica and electric guitars join on a song about rivers turning into seas, about songs turning our solitude into a universe of connected souls: “Keep the music in your heart / You will never walk alone.”
Videos
Discography
Piet Botha 