I'll Swing My Hammer With Both My Hands, released in 2014 by Cahalen Morrison and Eli West, is the third album from the Seattle-based duo, produced by Tim O'Brien — a meaningful passing-of-the-torch from the dean of progressive bluegrass to the leading edge of the Pacific Northwest stringband revival. Morrison plays banjo, mandolin, bouzouki, and Dobro alongside West's guitar and bouzouki, with O'Brien on mandolin and bouzouki, Brittany Haas and Ryan Drickey on fiddles, and Erin Youngblood on bass. The rough-hewn close harmony and Morrison's Depression-era-idiom writing share space with Monroe-style hoedowns and gospel pieces. The result is one of the period's clearest documents of a younger generation building old-time and bluegrass into a personal songwriting voice.
Tracklist
- 1 Fiddlehead Fern 3:30
- 2 Livin' in America 2:37
- 3 Pocket Full of Dust 4:07
- 4 Anxious Rows 3:25
- 5 James Is Out 3:28
- 6 Natural Thing to Do alt version 4:01
- 7 Down in the Lonesome Draw 4:37
- 8 Ritzville / Steamboats On the Saskatchewan 4:38
- 9 Off the Chama 4:06
- 10 Lorene 2:36
- 11 Green Pastures alt version 3:24
- 12 Sinner, Come Home 4:21
- 13 Voices of Evening 3:07
- 14 Fiddlehead Fern (Reprise) 2:07
