If the blues ever had a séance, The Curse of K.K. Hammond would be the high priestess calling the spirits to attention. Her new single and video, “Ain’t No Grave”—featuring David & the Devil and Kaspar ‘Berry’ Rapkin—isn’t just a cover of a century-old gospel tune; it’s a resurrection. It’s what happens when three kindred souls take a song born from sickness and salvation and breathe into it a kind of cinematic darkness that feels both ancient and alarmingly present.
Brother Claude Ely first sang “Ain’t No Grave” as a boy fighting tuberculosis, whispering defiance in the face of death. In Hammond’s hands, that defiance becomes thunder. The track stomps to life like a ritual in a Louisiana graveyard—slide guitars snarling, percussion pounding like boots on wooden floors, and vocals that sound like they’ve clawed their way through smoke and ash just to testify. You don’t listen to this version so much as you feel it: in the chest, in the teeth, in the marrow.
Hammond’s partnership with David & the Devil has always been a thing of dark alchemy. Together, they make blues music sound dangerous again—raw, spectral, and deeply human. The two share a chemistry that’s equal parts seduction and salvation, the sonic equivalent of a preacher and a sinner fighting over the same soul. Their voices intertwine like smoke—her ethereal rasp and his gravelly growl meeting in the middle, summoning something otherworldly. Rapkin’s production seals the spell, layering swampy slide guitar and atmospheric echoes into a mix that feels like it was recorded in a thunderstorm over an open grave.
The track isn’t afraid of silence, either. Between each pulse of rhythm, there’s space—a haunted stillness where the ghosts breathe. It’s that tension between stillness and explosion that gives the song its spine. It’s faith turned feral, a hymn for anyone who’s been knocked down and clawed their way back up again, dirty but alive.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hxCy-upw9F8
And then there’s the video—a visual sermon of decay and deliverance. Shot by Hammond, David Hick, Rapkin, and Jellybean Hammond, and edited by David & the Devil and Justin Ramell, it’s equal parts folk horror and poetic meditation. Mud, fog, candlelight, the slow turning of a shovel—it’s as if the song itself is being unearthed on film. Every frame drips with symbolism, from the flickering lanterns to the slow pan across a desolate field. This isn’t a performance clip; it’s an invocation.
K.K. Hammond has built her career on taking the bones of Delta blues and infusing them with Gothic blood. She’s not reviving the past; she’s redefining it. Her previous collaborations—like “Death Roll Blues,” “The Ballad of Lampshade Ed,” and “Walk With Me Through the Fire”—proved she could turn pain into poetry. But “Ain’t No Grave” feels different. It’s heavier, bolder, and more primal. It’s the sound of an artist who has made peace with the dark and invited it to dance.
This Halloween release isn’t just for fans of blues or Americana. It’s for anyone who’s ever stared down the end of something—a dream, a love, a life—and decided to rise anyway. In the hands of The Curse of K.K. Hammond, “Ain’t No Grave” isn’t just a song. It’s a promise.
–Lonnie Nabors