Dear John Hammond Jr.

A different kind of “Dear John” letter

This is a different kind of “Dear John” letter.

This one is written to John Hammond Jr.

Dear John,

I already miss you so much. For as long as I’ve been alive, there has been … John Hammond, Jr.

This has been a consoling truth for a very long time.

It’s a little harder to be consoled tonight.

If you were a young white boy in love with the country blues in the mid 1980’s, and you wanted to believe there might be a future in this music for you, you didn’t have a lot of north stars to sight by.

Particularly if you wanted to play slide guitar.

There was Roy Rogers, who put out “Chops not Chaps” in 1985. And there were those solo tracks on the Johnny Winter releases for Alligator. And, of course, John Mooney had put out “Comin’ your Way” in 1979. Good pickins, but slim ones.

But then there was you.

This thing with you for me, with you, was your courage. You didn’t play note-for-note versions like all the “experts” you can find on YouTube today. And you didn’t play clean or pretty. You just played hard as hell, with a kineticism that was so powerful. And you sang your heart out, and it wasn’t note-for-note or clean or pretty either. Your singing was part of your guitar playing, and your guitar playing was part of your singing, and it was all so rhythmic. That was the thing above all else, you just seemed to deeply understand that a National is as much a percussion instrument as it is a guitar. That country blues music is rhythm music. You helped me make sense of Bukka White, Son House, Fred McDowell, and Robert Johnson. You helped me understand that you had to be all the way brave, or nothing at all. There was no alternative: you either went for it with everything you had or you didn’t bother. And you used everything you had, your hands, your feet, your voice, your soul. Watching you play, you were like a marionette getting pulled in all directions at once; just a dervish of energy. It was beautiful, and it gave me hope.

It was really Roy Rogers and John Mooney that led me to Blind Pig Records in the first place. I’ve told that story many times elsewhere, so I won’t retell it here. But that first “Preacher Boy and the Natural Blues” record was really a culmination of so many moments that had brought me to the place where I was able to write songs and make an album for a record label. I didn’t have to prepare it from a listening standpoint; I just had to write and then play.

But for the second album, which would become “Gutters and Pews,” I knew I had a lot of growing to do, and that meant I had a lot of listening to do. That’s when John Hammond Jr. came back into my life in a big way.

You’d helped me through my teenage years, trying to learn a music I had no real rights to learn, trying to find a voice I didn’t know I had, trying to develop a style that brought together everything I loved and wanted to be. And you helped me, through your example, to make it through that difficult sophomore record.

I could have desperately used you in 1998 and 2000, when I was making “Crow” and “The Devil’s Buttermilk,” respectively. Because by that time, I was lost. I didn’t know how to get from where I was musically and creatively to where I needed to be. I’d developed a sound that was starting to zero in on the authenticity I was after, and I’d settled into the one thing my voice seemed suited to do. And I’d written a handful of songs that hinted at something promising. But I wasn’t holding it all together, and I started to lose my ability to hold myself together.

For “Crow,” I made the mistake of moving away from the National, thinking it was constraining me. I was so wrong. So very wrong. But the thing is, I’d let John Hammond Jr. slip too far from my ears, and I suddenly didn’t know any better.

I started to crawl my way back a bit with “The Devil’s Buttermilk”, but while I got more in touch with my guitar again, I was still too far away from the physicality, the kineticism, the raw power that you represented. I was wandering in the desert, falling further and further from the lessons of my gods.

Eagle-Eye Cherry saved me at that point by taking me on tour. I performed in nearly 20 different countries as his support act, in rooms ranging from 700–800 people to 3,000–4,000 people. And I did it all solo acoustic. And you better believe I leaned on John Hammond Jr. hard then, because you have to be a special kind of somebody to hold a huge room with just yourself and a guitar. It was those first lessons, coming back to save me again — give it every single thing you’ve got, or don’t bother.

In 2001, you released “Wicked Grin,” which pretty much buttoned up for me so much of what I’d been trying to do with “The Devil’s Buttermilk,” which was to answer the question that had been driving me since my earliest days: how can I write like Dylan and sound like Willie Johnson? Well, John Hammond singing Tom Waits is pretty damn close, and that album stood as a true proof-of-concept of what I’d been evangelizing for, for a long time — that country blues was a SONGWRITER’S genre; the style wasn’t enough, the sound wasn’t enough, the look wasn’t enough. You had to have the songs. Sleepy John Estes had the songs. Bukka White had the songs. Skip James had the songs. “Wicked Grin” had the songs.

From that point forward, I wasn’t going to make the mistake again of letting John Hammond Jr. get too far out of my hearing. My 2004 album “Demanding to be Next” was pretty much as close to directly emulating you as I’d yet attempted. And that desire to walk that particular road would stay with me for a long ol’ while, even through the years where I stayed away from music to earn an MFA, write poetry, get married, and have a child.

When I came back to music, it was in keeping with that desire that the album I announced my return with was The National Blues. Me and my National, just like you taught me. That album was followed by Country Blues. More of your influence. I even strapped on the ol’ neck rack and played some harmonica. John Hammond Jr. again.

And so now, here I am, and here we are, and it’s 2026, and you have quite literally shuffled off this mortal coil, and I, like everyone I know, feel so bereft.

What I am trying to remember is that the energy that coursed through your body, mind, heart, and soul was never born, and it never dies. It only migrates and transforms. And inside every single one of us who loved your music, there is now a bit more of that energy, that kineticism. And what is left to us now is to keep honoring the music you loved so dearly, and to keep bringing it into the world. Keep listening, keep sharing, keep writing, keep performing.

I know what my marching orders are. Do it with everything I’ve got, or don’t bother.

John Hammond Jr, I will bother.

Deep bows to you, dear John. Thank you for everything, and then some.

Yours,

Preacher Boy