It’s been more than a decade since Murry Hammond, co-founder of alt-country pioneers Old 97’s, stepped out on his own. But with Trail Songs Of The Deep, the Texas-born troubadour finally returns with a soul-baring collection that feels like the album he was born to make. Long hailed as the secret spiritual engine of the Old 97’s, Hammond’s voice has always carried a quiet gravity in that it’s part prairie preacher, part lonesome poet. On Trail Songs Of The Deep, he leans fully into that persona, delivering 10 stark but tender songs that drift like tumbleweeds through a ghost town at golden hour.

The album comes across like a haunted diary, whispering with history even if that history can be a little scary. There's a raw grace to songs like “Take This Heart And Lock It Up,” where Hammond sounds like a man quietly sifting through the ashes of a heartbreak he’s not quite ready to let go of. Every line sinks under the weight of memory.

Produced with longtime friend Mark Neill (Black Keys, Charley Crockett), the record has the dusty intimacy of a forgotten field recording. Hammond is joined by pianist Annie Crawford, upright bassist Faith Shippey, and drummer Richard Hewett - a fine cast of fellow travelers who give the songs space to breathe, and when needed, to bleed. “It’s a bit like a windy old house attic,” Hammond says of his songwriting. “All disheveled, spooky, sometimes too blue - but also punctuated with warmth and light.”

Fans of his 2008 debut I Don’t Know Where I’m Going But I’m On My Way will recognize the same aching sincerity, but Trail Songs digs even deeper. It’s the sound of a man in communion with ghosts - musical, personal, and otherwise - and he wants you to be there with him for it. Rhett Miller, his Old 97’s bandmate of over three decades, puts it plainly: “Trail Songs Of The Deep is Murry’s greatest achievement… conclusive evidence of his centrality to the last half-century of American music.”