Lawrence Hammond - Coyote's Dream (Takoma, 1976)

Hammond was the singer for one of the more interesting (and less popular) San Francisco '60s psych bands, Mad River. They released two albums that were a bit like a combo platter of Quicksilver Messenger Service's angular guitar improvs, Moby Grape's roots-inflected songcraft, and the Doors' creepy mystery. You can get both of them now on a Collector's Choice twofer, and you should, if you have an interest in the period and style. Singer/multi-instrumentalist Hammond (who at some point between Mad River and his solo album changed the spelling of his name from "Laurence" to "Lawrence," don't ask me) contributed poetic lyrics intoned in weird, high, tremulous voice that I guarantee you'll see described as a "nervous quaver" in 9 out of 10 reviews after a quick Google search.

Apparently, one of Hammond's early interests was country music (a touch of country flavor crops up here and there on the Mad River records, though they're predominantly of the wild psychedelic bent). A few years after the band's seemingly inevitable breakup, he put together the Whiplash band and started playing around SF as a straight-ahead country singer/songwriter. This album for John Fahey's Takoma label was his first. He may have released another one several years later in Europe, but details are sketchy. Any details of Hammond's post-Coyote's Dream activities are seemingly non-existent. However, one of the perks of owning this particular promo copy of the LP is that I discovered a full press kit inside the sleeve, including several contemporaneous articles, reviews, and interviews. That's the kind of thing that can really help to contextualize something like this, putting it into the setting of the period, and contributing even more to the "time capsule" feel that's already intrinsic to an obscure old LP.

Hammond is ably backed by the aforementioned Whiplash Band, and the arrangements are mostly acoustic-oriented, mixing folk, country, and bluegrass, though a couple of tracks venture into a more upbeat country-rock feel. Nevertheless, this is really not a country-rock record, it's a country singer/songwriter album. A couple of former Mad River pals make guest appearance, but they go strictly with the country flow. Hammond's lyrical style is extremely well developed here. Apparently he got all the Jim Morrison manque urges out of his system with Mad River. These songs are full of literary flair with a plainspoken stance; novelistic eye and writerly details abound, as does a light-hearted, wry sense of humor that goes well with the earthy-yet-breezy production, and it's all for the sake of the song, as Townes Van Zandt would say. In fact, Van Zandt's not a bad reference point here, but closer to the mark would be slightly left-of-center country storytellers like Tom T. Hall, Sammy Walker, Tom Pacheco, or Dick Feller. And Hammond's freak-flag voice has undergon some considerable alterations as well; the angst-ridden, over-the-top tremolo is gone, replaced by a homespun, twangy tone halfway between Dylan and John Prine that's probably much closer to his natural manner of singing. Any fan of the songwriters referenced in this paragraph would do well to seek this out.

PS - Apparently, one of Hammond's songs, "John Deere Tractor," which is not on this album, was recorded by the Judds on their first LP, and then for some reason, redone by them on their popular Love Can Build a Bridge album, also turning up on the accompanying video and on one of their Best Of albums, so presumably Hammond has made a fair amount of money off something that has nothing to do with either this album or Mad River. You never know...