´óÏó´«Ã½

Jamie and Hamfatter impressed Peter Jones with their tuneful pitch in the Den but have they been racing up the charts since?

When we last caught up with Hamfatter they’d recorded a new album and were touring hard to promote the new tunes. Since then the band have had some ups and downs but Jamie says they are happy to have "successfully reached a whole new audience of people who love the music" including Dragon Peter Jones.

On the glamorous side the band have attracted some big-name producers to work on their new album and Eoin counts performing a duet with Levi Roots at Peter's Christmas party amongst his 2008 highlights. Unfortunately, like many independent acts, Hamfatter haven't escaped the UK's economic woes; suffering from the closure of their main distributors Pinnacle, EUK and music store Zavvi.

Jamie explains however that there is still hope for new music: "What we did with Hamfatter sparked off a huge debate in the music industry; discussing whether private investment was a viable option for bands to release music. Since then, I've set up Jamie Turner New Music which aims to innovate the industry with new concepts and technologies to discover new music whilst primarily supporting grassroots music."

In addition to his work with new bands and industry professionals, Jamie's currently working on a charitable iphone app with busker George Cook, aiming to donate half of all the profits to The Big Issue. Eoin meanwhile has reinvented himself as Owen Mahoney and will be touring his solo material later this year with a new Hamfatter album due out in 2010.

Jamie was interviewed for this article on 21 July 2009