Hatful of Rain was formed July ’09
Chloe had been doing the rounds of various folk clubs playing guitar and singing alone - looking desperately for other musicians who were into Americana/bluegrass style stuff.
She found Ben (banjo) on a forum for the site ukbluegrass.com - only days after posting a status on facebook which read something like "Chloe Overton is hoping that an Appalachian banjo player will turn up in Portslade". They met up, got on well and started jamming weekly.
Soon got to the stage where they were looking to find someone else to add to the project and upright bass was top of the wanted list. A tall order: they imagined they'd be forced into buying a bass on Ebay and bullying someone they knew into learning! Then, while performing at Shoreham folk day, Phil literally appeared by magic with the line "hi, I loved your set, really into that sort of music...I play double bass"!
They've been meeting regularly since then - swapping stories, sharing albums, learning favourite songs, writing some original stuff too and generally having a laugh.
The name 'Hatful of rain' comes from a line in the Tom Waits song 'Long way home' which is the first song they attempted to learn together (one very stormy night in Chloe's kitchen).
