Murry Hammond’s second-ever solo album took its time arriving.
The 61-year-old Hammond, whose day job for the last 33 years has been helping anchor the rhythm section of the Old 97’s on bass, released his solo debut 17 years ago, with 2008’s I Don’t Know Where I’m Going but I’m On My Way.
“Really, 17 years?” Hammond exclaimed during our recent conversation. “Yeah, I guess it is. That’s so weird. It doesn’t seem like that long ago. It was a whole lifetime ago for, like, my son is 18 years old and it’s kind of his whole life.”
On July 11, Way’s arresting follow-up, Trail Songs of the Deep, will hit shelves. It’s a work the Boyd native says is reflective of the deliberate nature of his own, non-97’s songwriting.
“It’s a funny thing — I’ve always trickled out stuff,” Hammond said. “When it comes, the songwriting — it’s a little harder for me than Rhett [Miller]; Rhett can just write. He’s probably written two songs today. I finished one last night, and I hadn’t finished one in a little while, because I definitely have that brain chemistry where … it’s hard for me to do two things at a time.”
Trail Songs of the Deep is a thing of widescreen beauty, folk delivered from an off-kilter angle, full of looming shadows and lonely expanses. Hammond’s embrace of vintage instruments, such as Mellotrons and cellos, only deepens the unstuck-in-time feeling of the 10-track collection produced by Hammond and Todd Burke in Hammond’s home studio.
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Deep is the first drop in what constitutes a flood of Hammond solo material, who already has two more solo albums (Another Idle Day and Down by the Ol’ Slipstream) ready for release in the next year.
I spoke with Hammond, who now calls the West Coast home, about the restlessness inherent in these new songs, getting comfortable creating with non-97’s musicians and what other, non-solo projects are on the horizon. The following conversation has been lightly edited and condensed.
There’s a recurring theme throughout all of Deep, whether explicitly or implicitly, about leaving, being left, traveling — was that unconscious or deliberate?
Hammond: The thing is — I write so much out of — I guess I have to say I write a lot during moments of bad mental health. … Depression is something I’ve fought my entire life. … During that time [of writing the songs on Deep] there was a lot of grief around me, not from people dying. My son was getting older; his short childhood was going away, and he was changing, and then COVID hit, and there was something about it — there was something deeply sad about it and it was hard for me to shake. It all came out.
Is it an easy thing to find an alchemy again with your new band on this record? You’ve had chemistry which has served you very well for 30-plus years, so to step into another scenario and do that from scratch again …
Yeah, yeah. [The solo band] very much has a sound and it’s very aligned with the first solo record I did. We got together in the exact same way and for the exact same reasons that the Old 97’s got together — they were just people I knew that were friends.
Talk to me about the next records.
One will be out in the summer next year — it’s called Another Idle Day, and it is … pretty ‘60s. There’s actually a lot of organ on it, but it sounds like it — in this record [Deep] could be, they could be a double album. They’re all really close. … [Day] is very much a sort of psychedelic pop — psyched-out folk, but with the ability to show up as pretty good pop music.
And then in the interim, you have other projects you’re producing, right?
Yeah, Rhett’s [next solo album] is done. When Rhett heard what I was doing, he heard Another Idle Day and heard Trail Songs — he just asked me “Would you do that for me?” I said, “Yeah, sounds interesting.” I’ve only produced one record, ever, before my own, and that was in 1989 for a 17-year-old Rhett Miller. I produced his very first record, and I’ve not produced one since. The next one I did for somebody besides myself was Rhett Miller at age 50.
Is it a project that, if you take yourself out of it, and look at it — you produced his first record, and in the years in between, you in that time have been honing your own tastes and interests, just as he’s been doing for himself. Can you imagine his record existing without that kind of foundation there, without all the years?
It’s absolutely a recipe of certain, very special ingredients — there’s a certain amount of Harry Potter magic potions about it. You got these elements you just can’t really get to unless you’ve lived X amount of time having gone through, right? There’s that experience and us having a common world together in the 97’s, but also us having two very, very different experiences in life. It all comes together, and it does this particular thing, yeah.
Preston Jones is a North Texas freelance writer and regular contributor to KXT. Email him at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky (@prestonjones.bsky.social).Our work is made possible by our generous, music-loving members. If you like how we lift up local music, consider becoming a KXT sustaining member right here.
