Melanie Hammet is a strange mixture. A musician and composer with a long history of performance and musical theater, Hammet is also a two-term city council person in her hometown near Atlanta and was the 2010 president of the Dekalb Municipal Association (Dekalb County, Georgia).
Elected official and musician? It turns out that imagination, collaboration, creative friction, and optimism—the operating principles of an artist---are an easy fit into the world of community service and small-town politics.
In the last year, Hammet has refocused her songwriting on a new genre she calls “documentary songmaking.” The first collection in the new series, “Edifice Complex and other urban plans,” is an EP of songs exploring elements of urban design: http://edificecomplex.net/. “Altered States,” an album describing a 6000-mile drive through the American west is currently under construction.
