Erin Hamilton can’t remember a time in her life when she wasn’t singing. She was surrounded by music from the time she was born and grew up hearing her famed mother, actress/comedienne Carol Burnett, vocalizing. Her father Joe Hamilton, produced “The Carol Burnett Show,” wrote its theme song, and performed with the Skylarks, a successful 1950s jazz group.
Now Erin’s on the precipice of her own fame with her new single “Dream Weaver” about to break through as a major dance hit, in which fate seems to have played a role. Erin was recording an album, in her home studio, of songs she had co-written but still needed a final cut. One day while driving she was thinking it would be fun for that last song to be a cover track when Gary Wright’s “Dream Weaver” came on the radio. Immediately she knew that was the one!
The youngest of three sisters, Erin was born and raised in Los Angeles. Every Friday after school she and her sisters would go to the taping of her mother’s variety show. “I always wanted to sit in the orchestra pit,” she fondly recalls. “I remember being totally star-struck watching everyone from Stevie Wonder to Elton John to Ray Charles perform.” To complete her secondary education, she attended the Cambridge School of Weston in Massachusetts, a performing arts academy, where she broadened her musical education before going on to Bennington College.
In her twenties, Erin moved back to Los Angeles and began auditioning for bands, taking voice lessons, and, to pay the rent, recording demo tapes for songwriters. She formed her own blues band, As Is, which played original music for which Erin wrote the melody and Lyrics, at clubs around L.A. After two years she was convinced to leave the band in favor of a solo career. Erin eventually formed another band to front, Komba Kalla. That group, which also performed songs she co-wrote with its other members, was among the bands that opened the House of Blues after several years they went their separate ways.
The vicissitudes of her music career heretofore have prepared Erin for the eminent success of her solo career with “Dream Weaver,” which is positioned to become a crossover hit. Although she is enjoying her busy live performance schedule with the dance single she hopes the recording’s popularity will provide a platform to record and perform her own songs. With her talent and ambition, that goal seems assured.
