Trippers & Askers - Tried To Do's [LP]

"Tried To Do's is the second full length album from Trippers & Askers - the songwriting and recording project of Jay Hammond. Drafts of this record started as early as 2019. The initial idea was a Parable of the Talents concept album to follow 2021's Parable of the Sower concept album Acorn and/or an album about Hammond's hometown of Jackson, TN. Many moves, much traveling and many losses later - the loss of his future child, the loss of his grandmother, the near loss of his father in law, and the hit of hurricane Helene in his adopted hometown of Asheville, NC - this record became a record about loss. It's a record about ways of mourning, ways of "re-membering", both with the family in which Hammond was raised as a child and the family of which he has come to inhabit multiple roles as an adult. The songs on Tried To Do's deal with the quotidian themes of love, family and loss through the prism of both Buddhist and Christian ways of mourning. Through songs and stories of loss in relation to Hammond's upbringing in the bible belt U. S. South, Tried To Do's sets up a productive tension between Buddhist and Christian rituals and beliefs about mourning. The album was recorded over a series of three sessions in Durham, NC and Brooklyn, NY, and features mainstays of the scenes in both of those cities including Andy Stack (Wye Oak, Lambchop, Helado Negro), Joe Westerlund (Bon Iver, Califone), Casey Toll (Nathan Bowles), Libby Rodenbough (Mipso, Fust), Chessa Rich, Joseph Decosimo, Stephanie Coleman (Nora Brown), Matt O'Connell, Matt Evans, Adrian Knight, Michael Hammond, and Greg Chudzic. The cover art was created by critically acclaimed songwriter Will Stratton.