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Don Hammontree's passion for all things Indian had humble enough origins: He thought Bollywood starlet Juh [+]SEE DON LIVE!!! (SCROLL TO BOTTOM)
THESE SONGS ARE DOWNLOADABLE (OR WILL SOON BE DOWNLOADABLE) AT APPLE iTUNES, MSN MUSIC AND MUSICMATCH
Don Hammontree's passion for all things Indian had humble enough origins: He thought Bollywood starlet Juhi Chawla was hot.
It was 1998, and Hammontree lived only a short distance away from Chicago's Devon Avenue, one of the nation's epicenters of Indo-American commerce, and was working part-time as a proofreader for an English-language newspaper that covered the Windy City's Indian community.
"You could say it was osmosis," said Hammontree, now a resident of Fall River, Mass., of his growing interest in the subcontinent. "As time went on, I became more and more fascinated by Indian culture - the politics, the history, the music, and of course, Bollywood (the nickname of India's burgeoning motion picture industry)."
Soon Hammontree was regularly renting Bollywood films from the video shops along Devon Avenue and devouring Indian movie magazines, eventually becoming a smitten admirer of Juhi Chawla and Karisma Kapoor, two of the industry's most
popular actresses.
At the time, Hammontree was the guitarist and chief songwriter for the Chicago band Six Feet Over, and as they worked on their second CD "This" in 1999, Hammontree penned "Juhi Chawla," a humorous musical tribute to his
favorite actress. The band eventually recorded the song with the help of some young Indian musicians, and it became one of the band's most popular tracks.
"It was a fun song to do, and it got us a lot of publicity in the Indian community both here and overseas," said Hammontree. "Unfortunately, things were pretty tense in the band at the time, and we broke up before we could do
much with the CD."
Fast-forward to 2004.
Hammontree, now living in New England, was playing shows throughout the American Northeast to support his successful debut solo release, "Mount Hope Days," much of which had been co-produced by former Til Tuesday guitarist Robert Holmes. One night, while surfing the Internet, Hammontree received an instant message from an Indian journalist who wanted to know about the song "Juhi Chawla."
"I was a bit surprised, to say the least," said Hammontree.
"Apparently he'd read about it in an issue of an Engl
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