Hammerbox caught me at exactly the right time.
I first heard them back in Queens in ’91.
Somebody at the store had their first record, the one on C/Z, and Carrie Akre’s voice got me immediately.
She could really sing.
I don’t mean that as some backhanded thing about punk singers. Carrie just had this huge voice that could cut straight through the guitars without sounding like she was fighting them.
“Bred,” “Size of the World,” “Ask Why,” “When 3 Is 2.”
I played that record a lot.
By the time I moved to Seattle the following year, Hammerbox were one of those bands I already knew from records but suddenly started seeing mentioned everywhere around town.
Carrie Akre, Harris Thurmond, James Atkins and Dave Bosch.
Four people. Nice and simple for once.
No family tree required.
Well, not yet anyway.
Their first record had come out on C/Z in ’91, which obviously got my attention once I started realizing how many records in my collection had that little logo on the back.
Then A&M signed them.
Of course they did.
By 1992 every major label seemed convinced there was another Nirvana hiding behind a dumpster somewhere in Seattle.
Numb came out in ’93.
I remember being surprised by how big it sounded compared to the first record. Michael Beinhorn produced it — he ended up doing Soundgarden’s Superunknown the following year — and you can hear that kind of scale in there.
But it still sounded like Hammerbox.
“Hole” is a hell of an opener. “Hed,” “Blur,” “Outside,” “Trip.” And they did another version of “When 3 Is 2,” which had already been on the C/Z record.
For a little while it looked like things might actually happen for them. They were touring all over, playing bigger shows, and they did Endfest over in Bremerton in front of something like fourteen thousand people.
Then basically nothing happened.
A&M dropped them.
That part of the Seattle story doesn’t get talked about nearly as much.
Once Nevermind blew up, labels signed an unbelievable number of bands around here. Everybody remembers the ones that sold millions. There were plenty of others who got signed, made one record for a major, got thrown out on the road and then discovered that having a major-label logo on the CD didn’t necessarily mean anybody at the label knew what the hell to do with you.
Hammerbox were one of those bands.
Carrie left in ’94 and that was pretty much it.
Then she started Goodness.
And if you’ve spent any time around Seattle clubs in the last few years, you already know how that story went. Carrie just kept singing.
She’s also been doing stuff with the Rockfords with Mike McCready, and she put out her own record, Home, a couple years ago.
So Hammerbox feels less like a band that disappeared and more like one chapter in a much longer story.
I still go back to that first C/Z record more than Numb.
Maybe because that’s how I heard them first.
Maybe because it sounds like four people in a room before anybody started wondering whether Seattle bands could sell a million records.
Either way, it still works.
And Carrie can still sing her ass off.
