Note: video above is performance of a song not on album, but is a demonstration of Hammond’s acumen on a 12-string acoustic guitar.
In recent years, Sacramento-based guitar ace Ross Hammond has pivoted from playing jazz to playing folk/blues/Appalachian styled music but in another sense, Hammond has always been the same musician. He’s always been a largely improvisational musician, he’s simply improvising in a different sandbox. But within that sandbox, Hammond has thrived by changing things up, by pairing up with different musicians or by going solo and changing up his acoustic fretted instrument.
The music itself have been largely hypnotic, cogitative, single-key explorations that share a lot of qualities with prewar country blues, gospel and folk. Ross Hammond is sticking to this template for his latest offering Our Time (Ramble Records). In the past, we’ve heard him make this music with a lap steel, slide, dobro guitar, but this time he’s turned to the full richness of sonorities that a twelve string guitar can offer.
Once again, Hammond’s inventiveness shines through even with only a single, unadorned instrument at his disposal. His fingerpicking style is unlike any other, bending notes on “A Strength In Silence” at surprising points, for instance.
Since much of these songs are essentially drones, Indian influences often lurk in the background such as for raga-like trance “For Rob Noyes.” Hammond turns the instrument into a chameleon, able to make it sound different for each song. For “Zephyr Cove” as well as “Unafraid,” it sort of resembles a banjo.
“Shillito” is where Hammond exploits the fuller resonance of the 12-string, almost like hearing two guitarists. The same goes for “Swarm,” where a lush cascade of chords is unleashed, where those chords collide into each other like wind chimes.
“The Blue Elephant” is the closest Hammond comes to a conventional song format, a very discernible melody that would be easy to apply lyrics to. He also uses a slide here and again during “If This Is the End, It Was Beautiful,” inserted slyly underneath the main chord.
Not many people can create music that at once strongly evokes the sounds of a century ago and also be very experimental, but that comes naturally to Ross Hammond, and he does it again for Our Time.
Our Time is available from streaming services and Ramble Records’ Bandcamp site. Vinyl copies can be obtained here.
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