He delivers tight renditions of the haunting Muddy Waters vehicle "Same Thing" and the Waits house-rocker "Gin Soaked Boy" with a kind of back-porch ease that demonstrates utter kinship with the tunes. His head-bobbin' version of "Spider and the Fly," an old-school Rolling Stones blues piece, packs almost as much attitudinal good humor as the original. But Hammond ultimately lets loose, as only a ramblin' man of 60 can, on the venerable George Jones country vamps "Color of the Blues" and "Just One More." Gamely, the singer's beer-drunk vocal affect -- "One drink/ Just one more/ And then a-nother ..." -- comes across blearily cracked, almost tender, and strangely lovable. Meanwhile, Soozie Tyrell's fiddle props up Hammond's impish take on the archetypal Nashville ballad. Her oh-so-winsome empathy transports listeners to another era, when a man crying in his beer was just another come-on -- like the great American melodies on Ready for Love.
