Wayne Hancock

Slingin' Rhythm, plus essay

(Bloodshot)

A scan of this blog's history revealed that 2016's Slingin' Rhythm had no ink, here. While not storied western-swing troubadour Wayne's freshest release, it numbers among his more sterling. The man's reputation for assembling only first-chair accompanists well-versed in the ways of bouncing melodies was reinforced; jaunty airs offered running-gear motivations abloom with rustic pleasures. And, as always, the man's own hoi polloi drawlings cultivated welcoming climate.

(Among links below appears one for a Go Fund Me page. Its ambition is to secure monies enabling Wayne to maintain his town-to-town roving.)

Recommended: "Slingin' Rhythm," "Dirty House Blues," "Two-String Boogie," "Over Easy," "Small Bouquet of Roses," "Divorce Me C.O.D.," "Love You Always"

Video: "Slingin' Rhythm" (live)

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Go Fund Me (Help Wayne stay on the road.)

The below essay is excerpted from this writer's 2017 Flesh Made Music:

Wayne Hancock 

The upstart who overturned Nashville 

Much was made of Wayne's significance when he first broke into national consciousness with 1995's Thunderstorms and Neon Signs. 

'Wayne the Train,' as he quickly was hailed, was a vital  personification of buoyant juke joint swing. His battered and furiously downstroked acoustic, rough hewn, everyman throat, and the mischievous sideways grin he flashed as slap bass walked the line, electric lead-picking stung, and steel caromed off jump-bop rhythms earned broad renown. 

Great things, then, were expected of the dirt-road raconteur in whose twangy voice lurked the limber-limbed ghosts of every time-lost honky tonk under the risen troubled moon. 

Texas rockabilly scramble has always figured in Wayne's music. Rip-rollicking big band jollity draws deep breaths, too. 

When Wayne slips into swaybacked, mid-tempo country blues he evokes Hank Williams, Sr - a genuine touchstone for all who would tread this unadorned path. And he even relaxes still further now and again, delivering sonorous, back-porch plaints of universal melancholia.

Too seldom do any of us shake hands with justice. So when it does come through the door, we all should savor the moment. It visits singular bounty on Wayne every time a crowded dance floor erupts with full-throated regular folks cheering his roots music melange. 

"Man, I'm like a stab wound in the country music of Nashville," the paradoxically rebellious traditionalist once laughed. "See that bloodstain slowly spreading? That's me!"