Nine Pound Hammer
Nine Pound Hammer is an American cowpunk band formed in 1985 by vocalist Scott Luallen and guitarist Blaine Cartwright (later of Nashville Pussy) in their hometown of Owensboro, Kentucky. Though not recorded until 1988, the band was one of the initial wave of acts to combine the roots sound of country music with punk rock, and became a forerunner to subsequent roots-punk artists.
History
Nine Pound Hammer first played at The Ross Theater, opening for the Xtian rap group, The Disciples Of Decadence, in nearby Evansville, Indiana, with drummer Toby Myrig, David Epperson, and bassist Brian (Forrest) Payne, in 1984. David and Brian left, and Bart Altman, thunderstick man from The Disciples Of Decadence, joined on bass. This lineup played a single show at the Ross Theater as The Yuppie Mop Dogs on August 31, 1985. The band played locally in Owensboro, Kentucky and Evansville, Indiana, garnering a very loyal following before relocating to Lexington, Kentucky as the Raw Recruits. The band then changed their name to The Black Sheep and became the house band at Great Scott's Depot. Darren Howard replaced Toby, and the band became Nine Pound Hammer again. The name of the band is taken from the Merle Travis song Nine Pound Hammer.
Take This Hammer
"Take This Hammer" (Roud 4299, AFS 745B1) is a prison, logging, and railroad work song, which has the same Roud number as another song, "Nine Pound Hammer", with which it shares verses. "Swannanoa Tunnel" and "Ashville Junction" are similar. Together, this group of songs are referred to as "hammer songs" or "roll songs" (after a group of wheelbarrow-hauling songs with much the same structure, though not mentioning hammers). Numerous bluegrass bands and singers like Scott McGill and Mississippi John Hurt also recorded commercial versions of this song, nearly all of them containing verses about the legendary spike driver, John Henry; and even when they do not, writes folklorist Kip Lornell, "one feels his strong and valorous presence in the song".
Background
For almost a hundred years after the abolition of slavery, convicts, mostly African American, were leased to work as forced labor in the mines, railroad camps, brickyards, turpentine farms, and then on road gangs of the American South. Forced labor on chain gangs, levees, and huge, plantation-like prison farms continued well into the twentieth century. It was not unusual for work songs like "Take this Hammer" and its "floating verses" to drift between occupations along with the itinerant laborers who sang them. The elements of both the ballad of "John Henry" and the "Take This Hammer" complex appear to date from the late nineteenth century, probably the 1870s.
Podcasts:
Nine Pound Hammer
ALBUMS
- Country Classics released: 2010
- Sex, Drugs and Bill Monroe released: 2008
- Mulebite Deluxe released: 2005
- Kentucky Breakdown released: 2004
- Live at the Vera released: 1998
- Hayseed Timebomb released: 1994
- Smokin' Taters released: 1991
Live at the Vera
Released 1998- Hayseed Timebomb
- Surfabilly
- Skin a Buck
- Drive-in
- Little Help
- Headbangin' Stockboy
- Shakey Puddin'
- Gearhead Blues
- Feelin' Kinda Froggy
- He's Gone
- Fuck Pie
- Crawdaddy
- Redneck Romance
- Shotgun in a Chevy
- Run Fatboy Run
- Cadillac Inn
- I Don't Think So
- Radar Love
- Long Gone Daddy
- On Fire
- Keep a Knockin'
- Two Tub Man
- That's Good That's Bad
- Train Kept a Rollin'
Smokin' Taters
Released 1991- Long Gone Daddy
- Cadillac Inn
- Everything You Know Is Wrong
- Feelin' Kinda Froggy
- Don't Get No
- Folsom Prison Blues
- Turned Traitor for a Piece of Tail
- I'm on Fire
- Wrong Side of the Road
- Head Bangin' Stockboy
- Surfabilly
- The Weasel
- I Don't Think So
- Crawdaddy
- Redneck Romance
- Drive-in
- Little Help
- He's Gone
- Doomsday Poptarts
- Runaway Train
- She's So Cool
- Bye, Bye, Glen Frey
- Lookin' for Somebody
- Gear Head
- Hate to Think
- Barefoot County
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Ain't Hurtin' Nobody
by: Nine Pound HammerI ain't hurtin' nobody
So get off of my land
What part of this sentence
Don't you understand
I'm trying to fix my truck
I gotta go to work
Now I know that yer the law
But somebody's gonna wind up hurt
Before you open up
Remember these words I said
I got a feelin'
Somebody's gonna wind up dead
They're hidin' in the woods
They got a chopper in the air
I've only got one good arm
This fight really don't seem fair
Yeah, I grow a little weed
Like everyone around
So if you boys were smart
You'd be headin' back to town
'Coz I won this purple heart
For bein' a killin' machine
And I got no problem with