“Swing That Hammer” was written by Bill Castle, a Kentucky songwriter born in Fleming County in 1934, who learned the basics of songwriting while serving in the army on Okinawa during the Korean War. His songs began to be recorded only in 1989, when the Hart Brothers cut “Church at Hickory Grove,” and he published them through his own Yonder Hill company, which he had started in 1982. He counted “Swing That Hammer” among his best songs. He died in Maysville, Kentucky, in February 2023, at 89.
The song is sung by a convict on a rock pile, breaking stone under a hot sun in shackles that fit too tight. Nobody smiles out there, and a man who does the work wrong gets knocked down. He has ten years left to serve and has become a number instead of a name, yet he says there is no point in complaining. At night old memories come back and the cell turns lonesome when the lights go out, and tomorrow brings another day of swinging the hammer.
The Lonesome River Band recorded it at Doobie Shea Studios in Boones Mill, Virginia, and made it the opening track of Talkin’ to Myself, released by Sugar Hill on 20 June 2000 (SH 3913). Don Rigsby sang lead and played mandolin, with Ronnie Bowman on bass, Sammy Shelor on banjo and Rickie Simpkins on fiddle, all three also singing harmony, and Kenny Smith on guitar. Sugar Hill included the track on the band’s 2007 compilation Best of the Sugar Hill Years.
