DEBORAH HANAN
Deborah Hanan is an American songwriter, lyricist, multi-instrumentalist and lead vocalist most known as the co-founder and front person of the critically-acclaimed, popular college radio "cosmic cowboy" psyche-billy band Lost Pilots and the indie adult alternative rock ensemble Deborah Hanan and Ministers of Culture.
Hanan has been writing and performing music professionally since the age of 16, when she was scouted during an open mic night at Ciro's on the Sunset Strip by American rhythm and blues producer, manager, label exec. Lee Magid. Magid, most associated with discovering and nurturing the careers of R & B artists Lou Rawls, Della Reese, OC Smith, T-Bone Walker and Big Joe Turner, signed Hanan to a publishing and management contract. It is through Magid that Hanan would meet Donna Sekulidis, (who, years later would become the much beloved manager and "5th Pilot" of Lost Pilots).
Three years after Hanan signed with Magid, their business relationship came to an end over creative disagreements concerning her musical direction. Hanan had become more political and increasingly performed as a rock musician on acoustic and electric guitar while minimizing her focus on her more physically constrained blues acoustic piano performances. For Magid, this change was unacceptable. For Hanan, it was inevitable because she was insistent on not being bound by creative restrictions of any kind. After leaving Magid, Hanan took a brief hiatus from performing and moved to San Francisco where she immersed herself in the city's lingering psychedelic and emerging punk music scenes. Her writing intensified during this period, and when she returned to Los Angeles she met and began working with other musicians who were similarly interested in genre-blending experimentation. It is during this period that she met Larry Hancock and formed the band Lost Pilots (see "Lost Pilots 1982-1988" below).
Lost Pilots had a fairly long and successful 6-year run until it officially disbanded in 1988. Hanan and fellow Pilot Larry Hancock continued to perform together and, not too long after, American record executive and hard rock manager Vicky Hamilton (Guns 'n' Roses, Faster Pussycat, Stryper, Motley Crüe) signed Hanan to a development deal with Geffen Records. The solo deal never was fully realized and Hanan was dropped from the label not too long before Hamilton's departure from the company and Geffen's merge with MCA (Universal Music Group). It was shortly after this experience that Hanan reassembled several musicians with whom she had previously worked and formed the ensemble project Deborah Hanan and Ministers of Culture (see "Ministers Through The Years" below).
In 1993, Hanan was signed once again as a solo artist to a fledgling boutique label named GEC. After two years of the company's failure to perform, she sued the label for breach of contract. The suit was based on a rarely used state labor code designed to prevent the enslavement of contracted labor (creative or otherwise). The case was arbitrated in Hanan's favor, and the money Hanan received from the suit was used to fund the 12-track CD This Ain’t No Hayride under the artist's own label Blue Rocker Records.
After the suit, Hanan took a much needed break from the industry that was going through its own unavoidable growing pains, due largely to digitalization and major media mergers. She went back to school for the first time in decades, to understand more deeply the arts relationship with the entertainment industry. She ended up earning completing her college experience, earning two Masters degrees and a PhD in media studies and communication. While she was no longer performing regularly, she remained in contact with many of her former musical comrades, and after some coaxing from her long-time pal Vicky Hamilton, Hanan stepped back on stage in 2013 for the first time in over a decade with a one-time assemblage of musicians that Hamilton put together and dubbed The Secret Society. On the heels of that event, Hanan reconvened Ministers of Culture with former Lost Pilot Nucci Solazzo, former Minister of Culture bandmates as well as other newly initiated Ministers. The 2021 LP release Taming Horus and its associated 2020 singles ("The Deadening," and "Just Like Me,") are the first offerings from this ensemble marking Hanan's creative return.
Features Ministers David Morrisson and Nucci Solazzo.
Features Ministers Mio Alvarado and Nucci Solazzo.