This is one of those jewels that one wants to play again and again in his record player. Wayne “The Train” Hancock, born in 1965 in Rockne, Texas, has brought to our show this beautiful “Cold Lonesome Wind”, included in his debut album from 1995 “Thunderstorms and Neon Signs”.
He started playing in juke joints in Texas as a teenager, and at the age of 18 he won a prestigious talent competition called “Wrangler Country Showdown”, right before enlisting in the Marines where he would spend six years before returning home and resuming his job as a singer combined with dead-end jobs to make ends meet. He soon got tired of this kind of living and moved to Austin, the capital of the state, where the important stuff related to music was taking place, and he got to meet imporant country legends such as Robert Earl Keen or Terry Allen, till finally he was able to record his first album with the independent record label Deja Disc, produced by the legendary steel guitar player Lloyd Maines, selling over 20,000 copies mostly by word of mouth, somehow attracting the attention of a larger independent label, Ark 21, which signed Hancock for his sophomore album “That’s What Daddy Wants”, delving more deeply into rockabilly and Western Swing. Here’s the first track of that album from 1997, the one giving name to the album: “That’s what daddy wants”.
In April 2014, that’s almost 5 years to the day, Hancock had a serious motorcycle accident with the result of a fractured elbow and a collapsed lung. He was forced to cancel several months' worth of tour dates as a result of the wreck, but by the end of the year fortunately he was fully recovered and was back on the road. In 2016, Hancock returned to the studio with producer Lloyd Maines to cut his eighth studio album Slingin' Rhythm, again as satisfying as a cold drink on a hot day, from which we have just listened the song “Divorce me C.O.D.”, a classic from the late guitar picker and country legend Merle Travis. The acronym C.O.D. means “cash on delivery”, which is the sale of goods by mail order where payment is made on delivery rather than in advance.
Hancock’s voice has been compared throughout his career with one of the most important voices of all-time in country music: Hank Williams, and there is no doubt that he was influenced by him at the beginning of his career, as we could hear in the first song of the show. In fact, the Hank Williams’s grandson, Hank III, a talented musician following the steps of this granddad and father, has always said that Hancock has more of his grandfather than Hank Jr. or himself. Hank wanted to honour Wayne by singing one of his songs that in fact is included in this second album of Wayne, “That’s what daddy wants”, song called “87 southbound”. We’ll say goodbye to Wayne and to Hank III by listening to Hank singing “87 Southbound”, included in his own second album “Rising Outlaw”, from 1999, and just pay attention to how similar their voiced were twenty years ago. So we’ll put a coin in the jukebox to go on a quest for this tune in the voice of Hank Williams’s grandson.
A singer and a hell of a guitarist whose fantastic blend of country and rock & roll helped make him become a successful country music singer, Junior Brown was born in 1952 and raised in the state of Indiana. He had his first approach to an instrument through his father, who taught him to play the piano and exposed him to country through radio and TV, becoming a fan of Ernest Tubb's music and television program. He became a professional musician in the '60s, while he was still an adolescent.
Brown became an instructor at the Hank Thompson School of Country Music in the 70s, where he met the steel guitar legend Leon McAuliffe, a onetime member of Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys, and where he also met "the lovely Miss Tanya Rae," a student whom he would later marry in 1988 and who eventually joined his band as a rhythm guitarist and backing vocalist. At the same time, a dream prompted him to create an instrument fusing a six-string guitar with its steel counterpart. Contacting guitar maker Michael Stevens in 1985, he developed the "guit-steel," a double-necked guitar combining the standard instrument with the steel. (A decade later, the two men reunited to update the "guit-steel," and Brown's cherry axe, "Big Red," was born.)
Just a moment ago we heard “Another Honkeytonk Burned Down”, one of the songs of Junior Brown’s last album from 2018, called “Deep in the Heart of Me”, an excellent collection of traditional sound.
It is widely known that country music bears a resemblance to Hawaiian sound thanks to the influence of the Hawaiian slide guitar and the steel guitar, especially after Hawaii became a state of the USA in the 1950s. This is mainly the reason why country and Hawaiian music share certain features. To finish our visit to Junior Brown, we’ll go back to 1993 to his debut album “12 shades of Brown”, to hear his rendition to Hawaiian music with his fantastic “Hillbilly Hula Gal”. For those not in the know, “Hula” is the name of the traditional hawaiian art of dancing with the hands and movements of the body. Here’s a lovely mix of traditional honky tonk, Western Swing, Hawaiian music, and rockabilly, like when we listened to Wayne Hancock and Hank III early in the show. We’ll put a coin in our Wurlitzer record player, and we’ll listen to “Hillbilly Hula Gal”. Junior Brown.
Since early in the 70s until this last year, Asleep at the Wheel have never taken a break, playing a permanent number of shows every single year and especially recording a new album every three to 4 years. We’ve just listened to one of their tracks of their new album, “New Routes”, from 2018, with the voice of Ray Benson and their new fiddler Katie Shore providing a sweet contrast that of Ray’s. Apart from that she is a sharp songwriter, proving to be an important asset for the band.
It is commonly known that Asleep at the Wheel have been the most important force in keeping the sound of Western swing alive. In reviving the freewheeling, eclectic sensibility of Western swing godfather Bob Wills, the Wheel have earned critical praise throughout their lengthy career; they have not only preserved classic sounds that had all but disappeared from country music, but they've also been able to update the music, keeping it a living, breathing art form. Typically featuring eight to 11 musicians, the group has gone through myriad personnel changes (at last count, over 80 members had passed through their ranks), but 6'7" frontman Ray Benson has held it together for four decades, keeping Asleep at the Wheel a viable recording and touring concern and maintaining their devotion to classic-style Western swing.
In much the same way as Willie & Waylon collaborated in the 70s and 80s, or George Jones and Tammy Wynette, or Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty in the 60s, Ray Benson, the lead singer of Asleep at the Wheel, collaborated in 2017 with Texas troubadour Dale Watson, work that was decades in the making, especially thanks to their intersecting career paths.
The musicians’ long and winding connection can be traced all the way back to a mid-70s episode of Austin City Limits featuring Asleep at the Wheel. The guys soon began crossing paths in honky-tonks and concert halls across Texas, and Benson recognized a similarity to their voices and approach to songwriting. They finally decided to put an album together in 2017, a great collection of songs written by both of them from beginning to end, full of western swing. From this album we’ll taste the song “Nobody’s ever down in Texas”, before moving on to Dale Watson’s new song from 2019.
Wonderful new single by Dale Watson from his new album “Call me Lucky”, the 27th of his career, soon to be released..., in february if I’m not mistaken. The song we’ve listened to is called “The Dumb Song”, with a rhythm that resembles that of Johnny Cash. Next month when we get hold of it we will comment and play some of the best tracks of the album, which judging from this first single, outlooks just as brilliant as all the previous works from this excellent Texan singer.
And just as good as this “The Dumb Song” is the new single of Tami Neilson, a Canadian-born, New Zealand-based country & soul singer/songwriter, winner of the Best Country Album at the New Zealand Music Awards in 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2015,[3] and Best Female Artist at the New Zealand Country Music Awards in 2010, 2011 & 2014. Her album 'Don't Be Afraid' debuted at No. 1 on the New Zealand Music Charts, and her previous release 'Dynamite!' was listed in The Guardian as one of the top ten country albums of the year for 2014. She’s an excellent songwriter, and proof of that are his next two songs from this album, called “Whiskey and Kisses”, and Honey Girl”. We’ll finish today’s show with a taste of her latest release, soon to be released. The first single to be released from her last album is a cover of Patsi Cline’s classic “Crazy”. So first “Whiskey and Kisses”, then “Honey Girl”, and finally the rendition to Patsi Cline’s “Crazy”.
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