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Nine Pound Hammer - Mark O'Connor, Jerry Douglas, Tony Rice, John Cowan, Sam Bush, Bela Fleck

MerleFest 1988. The first one.

"Merle Watson had just died, and there was an effort by all of us to put on a little music festival for Doc Watson our hero and to be there during the time just after his son's death, our good friend Merle. Merle was a close friend to me and we traveled together in the states and in Europe with his Dad and T. Michael Coleman. I was devastated over his tragic death that took him from all of us. My son Forrest was born just 3 weeks earlier and this was his first festival he attended - the first live music he took in. Many people there thought it was the passing of one son and the birth of a new son to this musical family. We took the stage and musical fireworks of a bluegrass jam took place - on the back of a tractor trailer for a stage and with just a few hundred people in attendance. We began everything with that set with the 6 of us (Tony Rice, Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, John Cowan and me), and the with Doc there, Earl Scruggs, Chet Atkins, John Hartford, Emmy Lou Harris and others who we all joined in with on stage as the day unfolded. Today, MerleFest is one of the greatest bluegrass festivals in the world." -Mark O'Connor

This nine pound hammer is a little too heavy
For my size, Buddy for my size

Roll on buddy, don't you roll so slow
How can I roll, when the wheels won't roll

“Have you heard any of the stuff that was done by the group of myself and Sam, and Bela and Flux, and Mark O’Connor? Have you heard any of that stuff? It was back at MerleFest, there’s quite a bit of footage of us playing live. There’s tunes like Freeborn Man and Nine Pound Hammer, were - you talk about an ensemble. And uh – I don’t know – Mark O’Connor playing that bluegrass fiddle like that was just absolutely mind-blowing. I’ll go and get on my computer and listen to that stuff and listen to him paying the solos in Freeborn Man and Nine Pound Hammer – listen to Jerry Douglas’s solos and I think Jesus, this is just amazing shit.” –Tony Rice (taken from “A Conversation with Tony Rice directed by Jan Johansson, in 2019)


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