John Hall Band

John Hall (born July 23, 1948, Baltimore, Maryland) is currently the Congressman for New York's 19th congressional district in the United States. He was a rock musician who co-founded the 1970s band Orleans.

Hall was a student at the University of Notre Dame when he quit to devote himself to music. Songwriting and session time with such artists as Janis Joplin, Seals & Crofts and Bonnie Raitt preceded his founding of Orleans in January 1972 in Ulster County, New York with Wells Kelly and Larry Hoppen. Lance Hoppen, Larry's brother, joined the band later in that year.

The band's work included an album, Waking and Dreaming, with a cover on which all the band members, including Hall, posed stripped to the waist.

In 1977, Hall left to begin a solo career and became active in the anti-nuclear movement, co-founding Musicians United for Safe Energy. Another group, the John Hall Band, released two albums, but disbanded after limited chart success. "Crazy (Keep On Fallin')", from the album All of the Above, was the band's only major hit.

Hall spent the next few decades writing songs for other artists and reunited with Orleans in 1990, 1996, and 2000. In 2005, he released the album Rock Me on the Water, an album of songs inspired by an extensive sailing trip that took him from Kingston, New York to Havana, Cuba, the Florida Keys, Martha's Vineyard, Cuttyhunk and Annapolis, Maryland. He also formed Gulf Stream Night with longtime Orleans drummer Peter O'Brien, percussionist Joakim Lartey, bassist Bobby MacDougal and wife Pamela Melanie Hall on second guitar.

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