Hillbilly Casino
Hang Your Stockings, Say Your Prayers
(Self-issued)
The present writer understands that Thanksgiving has yet to arrive (and despises stores rushing to stock Yuletide goods and banners), but finds this reissue so diverting that waiting is not reasonable.
Hillbilly Casino is lauded for both its brawny fix on roots sensibilities and determination to pull American stylings of old into contemporary convention. They do so with the fervor of true believers.
The four-man juggernaut has long been a favorite of average working folks, the sort who swarm the honky-tonk dance floors of Nashville and beyond, casting off real-world cares in favor of midnight-hour bacchanalia.
Like the band, they understand that there are only two kinds of songs, good ones and bad ones. Having fun is more rewarding than obsessing over genre distinctions.
Hang Your Stockings, Say Your Prayers was first issued for Xmas 2008, but is again being made available. It captures why Hillbilly Casino is vital in a world that can never have too many principled minstrels.
Rousingly reinvented Yuletide chestnuts appear, and their celebratory swingings establish personality. But muscling into their company are originals that proffer further seasonal merriment. Those unspool in joyful consonance with the much-loved standards.
Hillbilly Casino has always conveyed ecstatic looseness in its performances, both in studio and before audiences. That it imbues their interpretations of holiday tributes hardly surprises.
As if riding in a one-horse open sleigh, the band dashes over icy fields and scatters musical notes on new-fallen snow. Up and down hills they go, rocking all the way.
Even persons who've seen so many Christmases they've become jaded will be spurred.
The band's rambunctious oeuvre towers as testament to its consequence. Every outing features, in vigorous exercise, slap-bass navigations, the bent-string exclamations of Ronnie Crutcher, and thunderous percussive insistence. One hears why Hillbilly Casino is indispensible for fans the world over.
Add in frontman Nic Roullette's irrepressible vocal declarations and onstage gymnastics, and one perceives the stuff of legends -- in their own time.
Hang Your Stockings, Say Your Prayers teaches, to our delight, that strapping rockabilly temperament and the "Jolly old elf" are not at all incompatible. And wouldn't that be a fine gift to find beneath the tree?
(Note: This CD features original members bassist Geoff Firebaugh and drummer Andrew Dickson. Now filling those positions are Colin Taylor and Sam Clay, respectively.)
Recommended: "Santabilly Boogie," "Run Run Rudolph," "Here Comes Santa Claus," "Jingle Bell Rock," "Holly Jolly Christmas," "Tangled Up," "Santa's Back," "Jingle Bells," "Let It Snow," "Up 'n' At 'em Old Saint Nick," "Blue Christmas"
Video: "Santabilly Boogie" (live, pre-CD)
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