Photo by Robbie Jeffers
Alan Hampton is a bassist/composer/singer who’s toured, written, and recorded with several leading artists in a variety of genres. In 2023 he worked as Musical Director for Rufus Wainwright’s Folkocracy Tour which included a star studded performance at Los Angeles’s Disney Hall, featuring Chaka Khan, Van Dyke Parks, Susanna Hoffs, among others. He was recruited by Andrew Bird in 2011 and has since played on 7 of his albums, including Grammy Nominated “My Finest Work Yet” and “Hark,” featuring Hampton original “Glad.” Recently Hampton and Bird scored Chris Pine’s highly anticipated directorial debut Poolman, staring Danny DeVito, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Annette Bening. In 2021 they scored the Peabody Award Winning and Emmy Nominated documentary Storm Lake. He performed regularly on Chris Thile’s Live From Here, where he met I’m With Her, with whom he performed the Grammys in 2019. His bass playing is featured on Larry Goldings’s score for the Netflix series Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam CJ Walker. The title track from ERIMAJ’s “Conflict of a Man,” was featured on HBO’s new series Insecure. “Still,” one of many collaborations between Hampton and Grammy nominated vocalist Gretchen Parlato, was performed on French television in Manu Katche’s One Shot Not. His vocals are featured on a Hexum/Hampton co-write entitled “This Time of Year” in the opening scene of A Cinderella Christmas. In addition to writing and contributing dozens of songs for other artists, including “Places That the Mind Goes” recorded by 311 and “If It Was,” recorded by Iceland’s Silva & Steini, he has also released two albums under his own name: The Moving Sidewalk, and Origami For the Fire, which received critical acclaim from Ben Ratliff of the New York Times:
“Alan Hampton is a songwriter who makes you reach for platitudes about ‘good music’ — how people don’t write adventurous or honest pop songs anymore, how it’s all archness and monotony now, how our harmony-starved ears have shrunk….He does that because he’s got loads of talent.”