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Old 97 fans know that Murry has played many memorable solo shows over the years, but it was certain events in his life - including the death of both parents, leaving Texas to start a family in California, and a renewed spiritual sense, that inspired him to begin recording his first full-length album outside of the band. The result was “I Don’t Know Where I’m Going But I’m On My Way.”
Asked to write an account of his life, Murry wrote the following:
“I was born in Fort Worth, Texas July 2, 1964 to my mother Doris Beam Hammond, a former country girl and homemaker, and Donald Hammond, a mechanical engineer who came down to Texas from the Chicago area. After I finished the first grade they moved my brother and me to Boyd, a little town of about a 1000 people outside of Fort Worth, where all the rest of our extended family lived. It was one of those little towns we have spread out all over Texas: a little grey water tank looks down on where a state highway crosses a railroad and a farm-to-market road. Texas has a ton of those little towns and Boyd was mine. I started second-grade there and graduated high school in 1982.
“I had trouble at home and trouble fitting in at school, and that gave me the tendency to stay to myself, and my spare time was often spent bicycling around little county roads and hanging out along the railroad tracks that ran through town. I just did a whole lot of daydreaming, planning the future. Even into my adult years I’ve occasionally found it helpful to go sit on a particular big railroad bridge out there when I had some important decision to make or thinking to do. There was a lot of trouble around me in those days, so I just created my own idyllic childhood wherever I could.
“By the time I was a teen I became very, very restless to leave my home and Boyd for good. At times it was all I could do to not just run away. I remember being angry all the time, and during this period I got into lefty politics and punk rock music. I didn’t play an instrument, so I started writing, and before I even graduated high school I was publishing a little Xeroxed hardcore punk fanzine. I wanted to spread the word on music I thought was important to the times, so I sought to interview bands like Dead Kennedy’s, M.D.C., Minor Threat, Husker Du, Meat Puppets, etc. I got even more involved with punk music after I quit college and got my own place in Dallas. There I could put up touring bands and fund my fanzine with a phone answer service job I found. In 1984 the big Republican National Convention was coming to town, and all us little punk kids were hoping to make a difference in that election. We were overly optimistic. The convention came and went, Reagan was re-elected, and it all somehow took the steam out of me, out of a lot of us. I was already disillusioned with the violence and negativity in punk rock, so I just sort of “broke up” with the punk scene, and decided to put my energy into forming my first band, the Peyote Cowboys.
“The Peyote Cowboys existed from 1984 until 1987. We weren’t remarkable, but we were different, being a sort of 60’s freak-beat band in a world of pure 1980’s. The birth of the band coincided with the beginning of Dallas’ Deep Ellum scene and so we saw that scene’s birth and heyday from the inside. While we weren’t exactly with the times musically – we were way too 60’s – we did fit in well enough, and we played with many great bands, such as Redd Kross, Butthole Surfers, and the Flaming Lips.
“When the Peyote Cowboys broke up in 1987, I pressed on as best I could. I had already met a young kid named Rhett Miller in 1986 and even though he was only 16 at the time, I began writing with him, and we struck up a friendship and a good creative partnership. I even produced a little home-made CD he did in 1989. Rhett and I formed our first band Sleepy Heroes in 1990, but for us the sound wasn’t “right” yet, and we went through a few false starts trying to find that sound, until the spring of 1993 when I was just fed up. I had come a long way just to be an unknown musician in an unremarkable “alternative rock” band in a small southern music scene, and I got fed up. I had become the type of guy I used to make fun of - chasing popularity at local rock clubs, wanting the mythical Record Contract, desiring to stand out for the sake of standing out.
“So, I telephoned Rhett with a bold suggestion: First, we should immediately break up our lame alternative rock band, shun the commercial music world forever by stripping everything we did down to its folk/roots center, and finally, never set foot in another music club again and inhabit only coffee houses, beer joints, and old fraternal lodges. In this bold new world we would live happily ever after, writing and performing music we loved for the simple pleasure of doing so, and by doing so, we would never be popular, never leave our home state, and we would never, ever make a dime from our efforts. I even had a name for this experiment: “The Old 97’s.” For some reason Rhett thought it was a good idea.
The 97’s started out very humbly, playing to only our roommates and girlfriends and their friends, but the band soon clicked with Dallas crowds, and we got the confidence to record our first full-length. Not wanting to wait until we “got big” in our hometown or even our home state, we began traveling, and we traveled a lot. One thing lead to another, and the 97’s are now 15 years old with seven studio albums, including a three-album stint on Elektra, a double-live release, and even a Rhino Greatest Hits. All the while, it’s been the same four guys we started out with – no easy feat, and something I’m the most proud of about our band.
“I have gone to church off and on for about 18 years now. While I called myself a Christian back as far back as at the beginning of the 97’s, it took me years to fully leave the wilder life-style behind. But, I finally did, and I became involved with various church activities and missions. Nowadays I provide the music for Wednesday services whenever I’m in town, and I’ve gotten behind fund raising for an organization called Project Mercy, which is nearly identical in mission to Habitat for Humanity, in that they build simple houses in one day for the poorest of the poor down in Tijuana, Mexico. I’m able to raise a good bit by donating all money I take in from my CD sales at 97’s shows, as it takes only about 230 CDs to build one house. When band schedules allow, I try to go down with the building crew. Seeing it in person always has a changing effect on me, and for the better, so I try to be there.
“Nowadays, I’m pretty darn happy. I left Texas in 2001, which was sad for me, but it was for a very good reason, to marry a wonderful girl named Grey DeLisle. She’s an animation voice actress who does Emily Elizabeth on Clifford the Big Red Dog, Daphne on Scooby Doo, and a bunch of others. We are happily married and raising our son Tex in southern California, but we get back to Texas and Louisiana often enough to make me happy with being so far away from all my old home places. It’s been an interesting journey so far, and these are truly the happiest days of all, and for me it looks like many more such days are just over the hill. And I’m going to keep making music, both with the 97’s and by myself, till I’m in the ground, and I’ll probably always take with me a good chunk of the daydreamer I was when I was a little boy, all those years ago.”
Murry Hammond, 2008
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