Our story starts with a lady named Francesca. One day, while performing at The Steaming Cup, Francesca met a man named Chris Koterba and struck up a conversation with him. At her next show, Francesca saw that the man had returned and he had brought some friends along. Chris became a regular audience member at her shows, often bringing different people to see her. It turned out that Chris was a Singer/songwriter as well and soon Francesca and Chris became good friends.
One day a conversation started up regarding Francesca’s next CD. When was she going to record it? What was going to be on it? Francesca wanted to record another CD but lamented about the cost of this process. Chris said he had an idea. It happened that Chris had been building a recording studio and he offered to record Francesca’s next CD for free in exchange for patience as he learned more about the recording process. Francesca agreed and after some planning they scheduled a date and began recording. They recorded several songs the very first day! There was much jubilation at Rainbird Studios as they left that day. However, clouds were on the horizon. Francesca gave a copy of the songs to her friend Jerry Danks, a fellow she’d performed with a couple of times and asked him to critique them. He returned to her with a 2 sided coin. On the one side, Jerry said the songs were great and well recorded.
Unfortunately, they were all out of tune. Disappointed but not disheartened she relayed the assessment to Chris who, after careful review, agreed and asked if Jerry might be interested in lending hand with the recording. Jerry agreed to help and began showing up at the sessions as well as performing with Francesca regularly at The Steaming Cup. Jerry also began suggesting harmony parts for the vocals and since they were performing these songs in public, it was necessary to add his guitar parts to the tracks already recorded so they would sound complete. At one point Jerry suggested adding a bass line to a song. Chris had played bass in a band before so he added a bass line to that song and a couple others. At Francesca’s next show they noticed that the songs that had bass lines added to them in the studio, felt empty when performed without them. Francesca asked Chris if he would be interested in sitting in with them when they performed.
He was.
Over time, the three of them, Francesca with Jerry and Chris supporting, blended talents and became regular performers together. They continued work on the CD, often recording and re-recording songs because they were learning and improving dramatically, making current recordings far superior to previous recordings. They also collaborated on new material. Someone would have an idea for a song to cover or Francesca would write a new song and the trio would spend their rehearsal night forging it into music that highlighted their unique and diverse backgrounds. Often they would be asked what their band name was and they would explain that they didn’t really have one. There were some minor discussions regarding a name but nothing really seemed to fit.
One day in late November, Chris arrived at rehearsal with a suggestion. He had been thinking about a conversation that took place at a recent recording session. He remembered Francesca asking about the noise that was being generated by one of the amplifiers. Jerry, an electrician by trade, explained it was similar to the hum you hear from power lines and that being 440 cycles which is related to a tonal pitch of “A”. He called it a “440 hum”. Francesca joked about that being the new band name. Chris got to thinking that even though they weren’t really and rock band that depended on electric instruments, they did use amplifiers. More importantly, the three of them took a genre of music known for being unplugged and added a noticeable spark or buzz to it. He also saw that they were no longer a group consisting of two musicians sitting in with a singer/songwriter but had coalesced into a musical kinship with a common horizon. The more he thought about it, the more he liked it so he suggested it.
Francesca and the 440 Hum
Francesca and Jerry were in agreement and the three of them decided to formally announce the official band name beginning in 2012 with the launching of this website.
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