THE ‘ONE TO WATCH’ INTERVIEW

Hungrytown: ‘I couldn’t help noticing how easy it was for us to sing together’

Hungrytown’s Rebecca Hall and Ken Anderson on living in Greenwich Village in the late 1960s, singing together on their first date and giving up their day jobs to follow their dreams.

Questions by David Rea

29 November 2025

Photo: Rebecca Hall and Ken Anderson

What’s your earliest memory of hearing music?

Ken Anderson: From 1962 (when I was born) through 1968, my single mom and I lived in a tenement in New York’s Greenwich Village at 103 MacDougal Street. We were poor, and there was only one bedroom at the back of the apartment, which had the only window, and I was allowed to have it. My mother slept in the small living room. Greenwich Village was the artistic epicenter of the universe at that time and I remember falling asleep every night to the sound of various musicians practicing. Two that stand out are a trumpet player and tenor-range opera singer.

Rebecca Hall: When I was around 5 years old, I remember discovering that our little transistor radio played music and I became obsessed with this gadget. I used to sneak it into my room so that I could listen to it at night while I was supposed to be sleeping. The first song I remember noticing was Simon & Garfunkel doing ‘Scarborough Fair/Canticle.’

Was there a music fan in your early life who you looked up to and who influenced your music taste?

Ken: First, my mother, even though she never had the opportunity to play music herself. When we moved to Canada, she took a secretarial job with the Vancouver Symphony Society, so we got passes to performances by the Vancouver Symphony, and she dragged me to nearly every one. As a young and hyperactive brat, I didn’t want to go. I got bored sitting through hours of Mahler. Of course, in hindsight, those concerts were a big gift. I learned the sound of each instrument and how they go with one another. I learned about the importance of dynamics, tempo and the various other ways to convey emotion through arrangement. Decades later, I thanked her.

Rebecca: Yes, I had a close friend named Collin (we met when I was maybe in 5th grade) and we bonded forever over our love of watching Monkees reruns. We discovered a mutual love of 1960s pop that grew from there, and we remained friends and went to concerts together throughout high school and college. Back then, in the pre-internet days, discovering anything at all about bands you loved felt like a real accomplishment. We used to pore over whatever music magazines we could get our hands on, looking for any details about our musical heroes. Because of the Monkees, we discovered that we loved 1960s pop and rock and went down a rabbit hole with all the usual suspects — The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, The Byrds, The Zombies, The Left Banke — a treasure trove. This was during the early 1980s when this type of sound was unfashionable, so we felt a bit out of step and longed for a new band that might have some of these qualities. And then, boom, along came R.E.M. and that was world-changing for us; we were completely smitten.

What was the first record/tape/CD you remember buying?

Ken: The first LP I bought with my own money was a used copy of Raspberries Best [a 1976 compilation album by Raspberries].

Rebecca: The first single I ever bought was The Brothers Johnson’s ‘Strawberry Letter 23.’

Is there a song/album/record which changed everything for you?

Ken: I used to babysit a little boy downstairs, also with a single mom. She had a small record collection, including a 45 of ‘I Got You Babe’ by Sonny and Cher. I became infatuated with that recording, especially the murky guitars, oboe, glockenspiel and Hal Blaine’s wild drumming. That was the record that turned me on to the sound of 1960s music arrangement and production, which still fascinates and inspires me today.

Rebecca: The 1997 reissue of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music was one of those moments for sure. I listened to those songs endlessly, drawn in by the ghostly otherworldliness of the recordings as much as by the songs themselves. I had never before realized that folk music was, in fact, quite dark.

I remember This Mortal Coil released a box set in the 1990s, which included a bonus CD of the original versions of many of the songs they’d covered. That CD was my introduction to Gene Clark, Roy Harper, Pearls Before Swine, Chris Bell, Tim Buckley, Syd Barrett, Big Star and other songwriters and bands from the late 1960s and early 1970s, still my favorite period for music. The best part of being a music lover is that onion skin quality of peeling back the layers to find what influenced a band or singer, and who in turn influenced their predecessors, back and back and back.

“On our first date Ken took me out for lunch to his favorite burger joint. Afterwards we drove around for hours, listening to music in his car and singing along. I couldn’t help noticing how easy it was for us to sing together. I’m guessing that our day jobs were doomed from that moment.” — Rebecca Hall

What’s the record you’ve probably listened to the most in your life?

Ken: The Left Banke’s first album, Walk Away Renée/Pretty Ballerina.

Rebecca: Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left.

What’s the greatest gig you’ve ever seen?

Ken: The first time I saw Devo at Vancouver’s Pacific Coliseum. They were still in their yellow suits.

Rebecca: Some of my most memorable concert experiences were from our NYC days, when I managed to see Leonard Cohen, Nina Simone, Eartha Kitt (I remember she was playing regularly at Café Carlyle), Dead Can Dance and the Cocteau Twins.

What’s the most rock ‘n’ roll thing you’ve ever done?

Ken: Um, quitting my day job to become a folk singer?

Rebecca: What Ken said.

It seems your romantic and musical relationship were quite intertwined from the beginning. You met in 2003 and, one year later, you left your office jobs for New England to become full-time musicians. Could you tell us a little bit more about how you came together romantically and musically?

Ken: Rebecca’s answering this one.

Rebecca: On our first date Ken took me out for lunch to his favorite burger joint. Afterwards we drove around for hours, listening to music in his car. I was happy to discover that he had CDs by the Zombies and The Left Banke and we had so much fun singing to those songs while driving! I was impressed to discover that Ken knew all the harmony parts and could sing them effortlessly. He’s always been a natural harmony singer; he never even has to think about it. I couldn’t help noticing this and how easy it was for us to sing together. I’m guessing that our day jobs were doomed from that moment.

I think there are many artists out there who would love to do what you have done, leave their humdrum jobs and become full-time musicians. From where I’m sitting, it seems like a very brave thing to do. What have been some of the highs and lows of making that move?

Ken: For me the highs include leaving the structure and despair of an office job. It’s been great having the hours to create and record music with relatively little interruption. I love traveling throughout the US, the UK, Europe, New Zealand, and maybe beyond. We operate as a small corporation, so practically everything in our lives is tax deductible, which really helps since we don’t make a ton of money.

Lows: We don’t make a ton of money. Even though we’re not bound by office hours, we put in a lot more hours into our craft, which we love. But we’re busy almost constantly. And there’s always a certain precarity that goes without having a guaranteed paycheck. The existential threat of creative AI and the demise of physical music media also add insult to injury. In other words, outside our live performance fees, there’s now less to be made in merch sales, and no matter what anyone tells you, streaming royalties don’t add up to a hill of beans.

Rebecca: Living in NYC was incredibly stressful in the sense that we had to work all the time just to pay our bills. I was resentful and wanted to spend more time on music. I began to dream of a simpler life elsewhere, where hopefully the cost of living would be more manageable. I also got laid off from my day job at one point and I decided to use that time to record my second solo album, Sunday Afternoon. We recorded the entire album in our apartment, because we were interested in recording and producing our own material, but also because studio time was very expensive. To say that our neighbors were unhappy with this situation would be an understatement!

My first solo album Rebecca Hall Sings! got picked up by WFMU in New Jersey and played in heavy rotation. Because of this, we were invited to do more shows, including opening for John Renbourn at a concert hall in Westchester. This was a true ‘pinch me’ moment. I couldn’t believe we were opening for one of our musical heroes! We started playing more gigs outside the city, and some of these were even paid gigs. At one point we had a booking agent who booked us in to perform at a public library and we loved it. Here was a listening room venue that would pay us for doing music programs and we didn’t even have to be famous or anything. I couldn’t help wondering, at this point, if perhaps a life dedicated to music might be a possibility. After all, as a paid office worker I was subject to the whims of my employer, who could fire me anytime. At least in music I would be able to control our income to some degree, depending upon how hard I was willing to work to book our gigs and tours.

I think that if I had been more comfortable in my day job I would never have pursued a full-time music career; it was in fact the precarity of 9-5 work that contributed to our decision to devote our lives to music. I guess my thinking was that if my life is going to be economically precarious no matter what, I might as well do something I enjoy.

“Songs may be engendered in many ways. Rebecca might have a few verses, and I’ll come up with a middle eight or instrumental break. And plenty of back and forth and sometimes shouting along the way.” — Ken Anderson

Rebecca, I understand you write Hungrytown’s vocal melodies and lyrics and, Ken, you create the arrangements and instrumentation. I would love to hear a little bit about your creative process together.

Ken: Songs may be engendered in many ways. Rebecca might have an idea or be playing around with tunings and I’ll have an idea for a riff, or the next chord. I might come up with a concept or song or album title, and Rebecca will work from there. Rebecca might have a few verses, and I’ll come up with a middle eight or instrumental break. And plenty of back and forth and sometimes shouting along the way.

Rebecca: Every song has its own process, which keeps things interesting. Sometimes I will have a very clear idea for a particular story that I want to tell. This was the case for ‘Man of Poor Fortune’ and ‘Year Without a Summer’. Sometimes Ken will come up with a riff and I’ll write a melody and lyrics to go with it—this was how we came up with our song ‘Static.’ Once we have a handful of songs that seem to sit comfortably with each other we can feel the album taking shape, and at that point we are inspired to write more songs to complete it.

Your music has such a pristine quality, very bright-sounding instrumentation, and there is plenty of space between the different instruments and the vocal in the mix. Has that sound been inspired by any artists in particular?

Ken: For me, early Atlantic recordings, Phil Spector, 1960s Motown, Stax, Bacharach-David, Irma Thomas, early psychedelia, early baroque folk and pop, the Byrds, the Zombies, Pentangle, early Fairport Convention—and I haven’t even gotten started yet!

Rebecca: I guess that in the back of my mind I’m always hoping for a kind of late 1960s, early 1970s psych folk production sound, but just because that’s the music I listen to the most, more than a conscious effort to reproduce any kind of sound in particular. Vashti Bunyan, Pentangle, Trees, Nick Drake, Bert Jansch, Sandy Denny, Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, the Byrds—these are all huge sources of inspiration for us!

Your song ‘Year Without a Summer’, which features on State of Sound's November Collection, is just gorgeous. It starts out with a strong influence from traditional folk music and then, by the final minute of the song, it has built into more contemporary sounding baroque pop, reminiscent of Sufjan Stevens. Your music tends to bridge the old traditional world of folk and more contemporary genres, like indie folk, indie pop and baroque folk. Do you think that's true? And is that something you do intentionally or does it come naturally?

Ken: More often than not, I like my productions to build and have some degree of dynamic interest. If there’s a middle eight, I like to create a variation on a theme that exists elsewhere in the song; alternatively, I may create a new progression with a different melodic theme, or not! I’m starting to confuse myself. It’s all based on what I’ve learned over a lifetime of listening.

Rebecca: I love that description—traditional folk song structure with the influence of indie pop and baroque folk in the production. That makes sense to me because those are pretty much our most important influences, so I’m glad that it sounds that way to other people. I remember that it was a lot of fun to work on the vocal arrangement for that song, and that we wanted to write something along the lines of a descant to enhance the final verse.

Rebecca, your voice is just beautiful. To my mind, like your music, it bridges two worlds. It has some of the ‘English rose’ sound of someone like Shirley Collins (very pure, almost eerie) and something much warmer, more like contemporary vocalists like Harriet Wheeler from the Sundays. What artists have inspired you as a vocalist?

Rebecca: Thank you so much; that’s wonderful to hear as I love both of those singers! A few more of my favorites are: Anne Briggs, Jacqui McShee, Sandy Denny, Vashti Bunyan, Bridget St. John, Linda Thompson, Lisa Gerrard and Elizabeth Fraser. I guess my way of singing is just the result of a lifetime of being a fan of these singers and trying to learn from them and incorporate what I’ve learned into our songs. For me, the mood of the song is the most important thing, in terms of trying to get the delivery right. I’ve given up on trying to make things perfect, as it seems in my experience to be a bit of a musical dead end, but if I can get the mood right, I will feel that I’ve succeeded.

So what's next for you guys? What are you recording and performing plans?

Rebecca and Ken: We’re looking forward to our upcoming winter tour of the American South, Southwest and Midwest, followed by our spring 2026 tour of the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. Hopefully we’ll be starting a new recording project soon after that.