MUSIC: The return of Dirk Hamilton
Dirk Hamilton plays Alva’s Showroom in San Pedro Friday night. Dirk Hamilton was the one that got away. Back in the mid 1970s, it was apparent to anyone who saw and heard Hamilton perform that he was headed for big things. He was a tall, rangy, handsome kid with a soul singer’s voice and an exuberant musicality that fairly burst from the stage and left audiences agape. What was more is that Hamilton could write. His early work drew comparisons to Dylan and Van Morrison that were not hyperbolic – he possessed true poetic gifts, a rollicking sense of word rhythm that marked him as a rare and potentially large magnitude artist. Hamilton was a staple of the South Bay music scene in the Halcyon days of a venue called Sweetwater Café in Redondo Beach, where artists such as Vince Gil and Linda Ronstadt were regulars. It was a time and place where the stars had aligned and the music was flowing. “We were all kids and our heads were all in the same place,” Hamilton recalled in an interview this week. “We all loved music and wanted to change the world and have as much fun as possible. So everything was cool.” So it came as little surprise when Hamilton began his ascension. He signed a…
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