Old 97’s bassist Murry Hammond grew-up in Boyd, TX, a rural town outside of Ft. Worth whose population reached a staggering 1,400 residents in 2020. Growing up surrounded by wide open spaces is a metaphor for Hammond’s intrepid curiosity of the world, not only geographically, but for the people who populate it.

These themes have made their way from his lived experience into the characters illustrated in his music. Following the success of his debut solo album in 2022, Hammond got together with musical soulmates Annie Crawford, Faith Shippey, and Richard Hewitt and created a prodigious body of work yielding two albums of Hammond’s signature deeply illustrative songs and introducing strings, vintage organs, and Mellotrons for the first time.

The first album is Trail Songs of the Deep, a title that has a little bit of Hammond in every word. “Take This Heart And Lock It Up” finds us whistling out on the trail, far between pockets of civilization but in good spirits, taking in the scenery and passing the long hours with the posse sharing good songs and heavy stories. It’s a veritable example of what Old 97’s bandmate Rhett Miller calls, “the perfect distillation of [Hammond’s] grand vision.”

Trail Songs of the Deep is out July 11th on Fluff and Gravy Records.

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