“After we formed the band, we were driving through northern Mississippi on our way to a gig, and we still needed a name,” says Justin Moore, singer/guitarist for the four-piece, Memphis-based band that now bears the aforementioned moniker. “There was an exit sign along the highway, and it actually says ‘Ingram’s Mill,’ but I misread the sign as ‘Ingram Hill,’ and when we were deciding what to call ourselves, we liked the name and where it came from, so we decided to use it. After we had the name for a while and told people where it came from, they were like, ‘You idiots – it’s Ingram’s Mill.’” So maybe they were a little bit off, but it was close enough for rock & roll.
Ingram Hill’s brand of rock & roll as revealed on June’s Picture Show, the band’s full-length debut, is dynamic, tuneful and purposeful, with the hint of a southern accent. Moore describes the band’s approach as “pop rock with a southern twist” – as opposed to the codified idiom known as southern rock, which is the domain of older, hairier groups like the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd. “We’re a rock & roll band,” says Moore, “and we want to have guitar solos, but we also write songs. I’m a huge Tom Petty fan, and I grew up listening to Elton John and Billy Joel. Someone once said that if there was a southern pop category, we’d own it. I kinda like that. We’re proud of where we’re from, and we’re proud of what we do.”
The remarkable cohesiveness of Ingram Hill’s songwriting and playing is the direct result of the closeness of the bandmembers, three of whom—Moore, Bogard and bassist Shea Sowell—are lifelong friends. The band coalesced quite naturally in 2000 soon after Moore and Bogard’s previous group fell apart—all it took was two phone calls. On the first call, Bogard enlisted their buddy Sowell; on the second, Moore tapped Matt Chambless, his roommate the University of Memphis, to play drums. Before it even had a name, the band started intensive road work, initially by replacing the broken-up group on the bills of a series of dates that had already been booked. They toured tirelessly, averaging 200 shows a year. “We’re on our fourth van,” says Bogard. To this day, the bandmembers don’t actually live anywhere – they just keep their stuff at their parents’ houses, hoping they’ll find freshly laundered clothes when they come off the road. They opened for headliners of various stylistic persuasions, from Maroon 5 to Lisa Marie Presley, and made enough of an impression that they were able to headline themselves the second time through a city.
In 2002 they recorded an EP, Until Now, so that they’d have something to sell at gigs. The gambit worked: they sold in excess of 10,000 copies (the one-night record was 385 at a show in Michigan), and Until Now generated airplay throughout the Southeast. “To go into a new town and play for an audience that’s never heard of you, and then have them buy your CD afterward, is an amazing feeling,” says Bogard. Remarkably, the self-released Until Now climbed all the way to #5 on the Memphis retail charts
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The latest chapter of the band’s story starts with new album June’s Picture Show. Investing the money they’d made from selling tickets and copies of the EP in their collective future, the band entered the studio with producer Rick Beato (Shinedown, Trey Anastasio), a longtime fan, to make its first album. Ingram Hill initially issued June’s Picture Show on their own, planning to support it with another round of DIY promotion and nonstop touring. But a month after the band put out the album, Hollywood Records signed the band and repackaged it for release on the label. “We’ve worked really hard for everything we’ve achieved so far,” says Moore, “but there’s only so much we can do on our own. Now we’ve got a major label behind us, and it feels really good.”
As for Ingram Hill’s ambitions, says Bogard, “I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I would love to end up something like U2. Something that’s huge and lasts forever – that would definitely be the ultimate goal.” The band has put the finishing touhes on their new CD slated for an early 2007 release.
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