Self-described as the "Biggest thorn in the Bay Area's side for over a decade," Hammerlock shows just how they acquired that rep with True Grit: The First Five Years.

The album's 29 newly remastered tracks represent nearly every song from the band's first two CDs, American Asshole (1998) and Anthems For Outlaws (2000), both of which have been out of print and unavailable since Man's Ruin Records closed up shop in 2000.

Travis Kenney (guitar/vocals) started Hammerlock with his wife, Liza (bass/vocals) in 1995 and the band immediately stood out in the Bay Area music scene. "We were too country for the punk clubs and too punk for the country ones," says Travis. "Nobody knew where to put us or what to do with us." Eventually the band became friends with other bands and began getting gigs; once they did, their momentum built quickly, and by 1997 they released the "Knock Her Out" single on Man's Ruin and were beginning to headline shows and cultivate a following.

They took the term "Outlaw Music" and turned it into a rallying cry. "It's because we were doing it our way," says Liza. "We were doing it against what everybody else was doing, against what everybody else thought was right. The right thing to do in the '90s was to be the flavor of the month, to play real happy, poppy music. We don't have a problem with that but we didn't feel that way and we played exactly how we felt, and that wasn't the right thing to do. It isn't about being a criminal, it's about how you're turned into an outlaw just by living the way you want to live."

San Francisco isn't normally the first place you think of when it comes to restricting personal freedoms but, in the PC heyday of the '90s a lot of things got turned upside down. "We were living in San Francisco, right in the middle of it," adds Travis. "It seemed like we were constantly looking for a little bit of elbow room and a little bit of freedom. And you'd think in a city like that, you'd have a lot of freedom. You have the freedom to walk around naked or shoot heroin, but if you don't want to do those things then you don't have a whole lot of freedom. The kinds of things we're used to doing it seemed like we couldn't do. It seemed like every time we turned around another law or another ordinance was being passed in a city that was supposed to be so free and so open to everything, and that's what a lot of the songs on those first two records are about."

###