Invest time and listen carefully, and you may find reward with this deep, introspective record.
Trippers & Askers is the recording and songwriting project of Jay Hammond, musician, sound artist, educator and researcher. He is currently an Associate Professor of Practice in Recording Arts at Georgetown University. Hammond has previously played with No Lands, Eamon Fogarty, and Psychic Temple, and collaborated with Andy Stack and with Will Stratton. The name Trippers & Askers comes from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, a collection of poems that have become acknowledged as a significant work in American literature. Whitman talked of “The trippers and askers that surround us, the noise of daily life, of loss and exaltation“. Hammond’s music is described as experimental folk.
Tried To Do’s is Trippers & Askers’ sophomore album, following 2021’s debut, Acorn, a well-received outing about Hammond’s hometown of Jackson, Tennessee. Work on Tried To Do’s began as far back as 2019; however, over the intervening period, Hammond has experienced loss and upheaval, including the loss of family members and the upheaval from the time that Hurricane Helene hit Asheville, North Carolina, a town where Hammond lives. Over this period, the overall tone for the album has become focused on loss and dealing with grief.
The LP was recorded in studios in Durham, North Carolina and Brooklyn, New York, between summer 2022 and January 2025, produced by Hammond, Michael Hammond and Andy Stack. All of the songs were written by Hammond, except for Old Churchyard, which is a traditional song. The album’s title, Tried To Dos, is from a poem by the influential Black poet, Nikki Giovanni, with the lines “I really don’t think life’s about the I could have beens, I really think that life is all about the I tried to dos“.
Opening the set is New Churchyard, a short (one minute and two seconds) instrumental piece: it’s atmospheric and effectively sets the tone for the record, with fiddle and keyboards to the fore. This blends seamlessly into No Coming, No Going, which is a quite gorgeous song and the pinnacle of the album. The song features the vocal talents of Chessa Rich alongside Hammond, and their voices fit so well together. There’s also a neat (long) guitar solo by Hammond, and it’s easy to see why this track was chosen as one of three singles released in advance of the LP’s appearance. The song reflects the teachings of Thích Nhất Hạnh, a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, author and spiritualist leader, and founder of the Engaged Buddhism movement. Lyrics include “When I breathe, I don’t breathe, There is no breather, When I walk, I don’t walk, There is no walker, There is just breathing, There is just walking, There is just raining, There is just, being the wind“.
The record’s first single was Seven Homecomings, a song based around the teachings of Lama Rod Owens, a Buddhist minister and author. Its lyrics include “All the stories that I tell don’t touch into my feeling of sorrow and joy at last as one. I know that you are with me, in times of trial and tribulation that come-home love“. This has a good melody and has a faster pace than most of the songs on offer. In contrast, Re-Membering is slow-paced and, according to Hammond, touches on the subject of learning to love oneself as one moves through collective healing.
Kin is another of the album’s high spots; lyrically, it is set in Jackson, Tennessee, telling of how in 1962, Gil Scott-Heron was brought in to the Tigrett junior high school every day by bus, and how Scott-Heron was subjected to racial abuse as one of three black pupils chosen to desegregate the school. The song features another nice guitar solo.
The record concludes with Old Churchyard, the third single, a song that is the most straightforward folk song here. It opens with “Come, come with me to the old churchyard, I so well know those paths beneath the soft green sward, Friends in there that we once did regard, We will trace out their names in the old churchyard“.
You wouldn’t say that this album is particularly accessible to the casual listener. You’ll need to invest time in intentionally listening to the music and words to get the most out of it. The lyrics are generally deep and powerful, and they demand attention to lift the layers and find reward. Some of the instrumentation, and at times Hammond’s voice, bring to mind The The’s 1995 tribute to Hank Williams, Hanky Panky, though lyrically the two albums are at opposite ends of the spectrum.
