Liner Notes: Murry Hammond on 'I Don't Know Where I'm Going But I'm on My Way'

MURRY HAMMOND'S SOLO DEBUT isn't a concept album.

It's a metaphor record about trains as spiritual vehicles, traveling a dangerous route to a heavenly destination.

The collection reflects his lifelong fascination with not only with Texas railroads but with old-time music in general. Fittingly, "I Don't Know Where I'm Going but I'm on My Way" sounds worlds removed form the music Hammond makes with his day-job band, the Old 97's. Instead of power pop with a country edge, he puts the "western" back in country & western, creating sepia-toned songs about trains, travels and tribulations. Hammond yodels, croons, yearns and prays throughout his own originals as well as Carter Family covers and compositions by Mormon poet Eliza R. Snow.

It's an album as a long journey, relating disappointment and grief but ultimately arriving at a hard-won redemption.

Hammond retraced his footprints for Express track by track, and you can follow along by listening to the album at Last.fm. (And if that doesn't work, several songs can be heard at his MySpace page or at CD Baby.)

» "What Are They Doing in Heaven Today?"
I heard this old gospel song by Washington Phillips, who was a Texas jack-leg preacher who traveled around with this unusual instrument that's like a giant zither. He plucked these heavenly harplike tunes on it, and actually cut some sides in the 20s.

I do music at church every Wednesday night when I'm not traveling with the Old 97's, and I spend a lot of spare time up there just by myself on the big PA. I had forgotten what that song mostly sounded like, and I just worked up that version while getting ready for the Wednesday night services. I decided it should be more of a singing cowboy song with the yodeling part that wasn't there before.

» "I Will Never Marry" and "In the Shadow of Clinch Mountain"
The Carter Family, as great as they are, and old-time music in general, as great as it is, are not for everybody. It's not something that most people quickly take to. When the Old 97's started up, I was discovering a lot of old country music and I bought a Country Music Hall of Fame album that had "In the Shadow of Clinch Mountain" on it. I just couldn't believe the atmosphere on it. My jaw dropped when I heard it, and I've been playing it ever since.

Between getting off an Old 97's tour and finishing up an Old 97's record, my dad was dying and I went to Utah to disconnect him life support. There was a bunch of music that led up to that moment, and "I Will Never Marry" was part of it. I guess I first heard Mother Maybelle do a live version of it at one of the Newport festivals. I wanted to take it from being a strummed guitar song to a drony ambience, make it a little darker.

» "Wreck of the 97"
That is a reference to the Old 97 Murry Hammond. It's a cheeky title [based on Johnny Cash's "The Wreck of the Old 97s," where the band took its name]. It's a regret song. It's about a person I didn't treat very well and my regret about that. I felt I had done great injury to myself in that situation, so I call it "Wreck of the 97". This is how I wrecked myself.

» "Between the Switches" and "Next Time Take the Train"
I'm kind of a history nut, and for years I've done a web site on railroads and sawmills and that sort of thing in Texas and Louisiana. I just always want to be around trains. It's always been like that. I don't know why. My first drawings were of trains when I was little. We have lots of railroad people in our family, and that's part of it. It sort of nestled in my bones growing up. And having a love of Johnny Cash growing up, I understood what the train metaphor was. It tends to trickle out all over the place.

» "Life Is Often Like a Mountain Railroad," "You Will Often Meet Obstruction," and "As You Roll Across the Trestle"
Eliza Snow is one of the major Church of Latter Day Saints writers, and apparently she was extremely well known and very prolific. These three songs were originally one work called "Life Railway to Heaven," and I wanted to chop it up into three pieces and advance the notion that there's some sort of traveling going on the record.

My brother got real excited about the Eliza Snow songs because he married a Mormon girl in Utah. We don't have a Mormon background or anything, but he remarried in the middle of his life and it happened to be to this really wonderful Mormon girl from Louisiana.

» "Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down" (instrumental) and "Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down" (vocal)
For the first version, I bought one of these kit banjos with a tiny wooden head and a very small canvas resonator drum. It's a craft version of the ones you see being made all over Appalachia. I broke a string immediately, but never replaced it. So, rather than tune the banjo correctly, I tuned it to a tuning for my own making, where I could pluck out the tune in my head. And I thought it had the feel of "Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down." I wanted to give it with my fingers a spacey, trancey thing at the end using my thumb to wander up and down the strings to make a manual phase thing like Pink Floyd or Hawkwind.

The vocal version is actually two Psalms. It's supposed to be someone praying to God on one channel, and God talking back to the person on the other. One prayer is about frightened in the world, and the other is about getting comfort outside the world. And that goes into "Satan You Kingdom Must Come Down." It's sort of the last emotional valley and you climb out of the record from there.

» Iota, 2832 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, Va.; Mon., Sept. 22, 8:30 p.m., $12; 703-522-8340. (Clarendon)

Written by Express contributor Stephen M. Deusner
Photos by Chris Strother