“Rock Salt and Nails” was written by U. Utah Phillips, the labour-folk singer and songwriter who built a long career around topical songs, working-class narratives, and traditional reinventions. Phillips wrote the song in the early 1960s; it was first widely circulated through his self-released recordings and the early-1960s folk-revival circuit before crossing into broader country and bluegrass circles.
The lyric is a hard-edged kiss-off: the narrator wishing he had a shotgun loaded with rock salt and nails to fire at every neighbour woman who wronged him — a comic-aggressive turn on the heartbreak narrator that Phillips would quietly disavow in his later years. The song’s directness and the unusual shotgun-shell image gave it a distinctive identity in the early-1960s folk-revival songbook.
J.D. Crowe and the New South’s 1975 reading on their self-titled Rounder debut is one of the bluegrass-canonical recordings of the song. The album, recorded at the New South’s tightest configuration with Tony Rice, Ricky Skaggs, Jerry Douglas, and Crowe, was a foundational document of the late-1970s “newgrass-traditional” aesthetic. The song works as a moderate-tempo vocal piece in G with a strong harmony slot.
