Wayne 'the Train' Hancock flips off Nashville
Too seldom do any of us shake hands with juke nobility. So when it does come through the door, we all should savor the moment.
At this writing, Wayne is enthusiastically undertaking a honky-tonk, barnstorming stampede. Beginning last January, he and joint-jumping brothers-in-rhythm have delighted crowds throughout the land. Further swing-your-partner exploits are on calendars.
Texas Rockabilly scramble has always figured in Wayne's music. Rip-rollicking Country Swing jollity gulps oxygen, too. Whirling dancers don't worry about genre strictures any more than does the man at the microphone, himself.
Much was made of Wayne's significance, when he first landed shoes in national consciousness with 1995's top-drawer "Thunderstorms and Neon Signs" (produced by Lloyd Maines).
"Wayne the Train," as he was soon hailed, personified buoyant juke joint rhythm slinging. His battered and furiously downstroked acoustic, rough hewn everyman drawl, and the mischievous, toothy, sideways grin he flashed - as slap bass walked the line, electric lead-picking stung, and steel caromed off jump-bop rhythms - earned broad renown. Lofty expectations became hand-tooled truths.
He has a hell of a ball - as do all who hear him.
Great things have since come from the starkly rustic raconteur, in whose twangy voice seemed to lurk the limber-limbed ghosts of every time-lost honky-tonk under the risen troubled moon.
Accompanists have entered and exited, across decades of shows and miles of road doggery. But all have been players of awe-striking caliber. They drew deeply from Country Swing and Jazz pools, eager to sit in on the man's merriment.
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 relaxes still further, now and again, delivering sonorous, back-porch plaints of universal melancholia.
Amid interchangeable, corporate cut-outs who illegitimately claim kinship with bygone radio and Opry luminaries - genuinely talented folks who serenaded generations of calloused-hands Americans - "Wayne the Train" poses a threat both natural and needed.
"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!"
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