Of brother Shine                                                               

Even in death, Tennessee's James Louis "Shine" Wilbourn maintains as rightful a grasp on American music as anyone found on this site. He was reportedly a staple at the West Tennessee Farmer's Market. He ran a shoeshine stand there, into his seventies, and entertained by unspooling familiar musics of the region in one-man guitar / harmonica renditions -- a feat not in common evidence today.

No record establishing his final year could be located when this piece was being prepared. But an account relates he was active as recently as October 2014; in fact, he was that year made the first recipient of the Jack and Jerry Smith Community Spirit Award, in Nashville.

A Jackson Sun newspaper account at the time related that "When it was announced that Wilbourn had won the award, the craft room at the West Tennessee Farmer's Market was filled with shouts of joy and clapping from friends."

He had devoted decades of his hard life to folk musics -- Blues, Rock'n'Roll, Country, Bluegrass, and Gospel. In 2012, Shine (he'd gotten the nickname while shining shoes as a youngster) explained to an interviewer how he came to music; more precisely, how it had come to him.

"Well, down in Toone in the 1950s, my uncle had a cafe," he recalled. "On Friday, after people had worked in the fields all week, they'd come to Uncle Ray's. The Kids would play outside while the grown-ups danced to the jukebox. They listened and danced to everything from Elvis to Chuck Berry, Fats Domino to Gospel.

"Sometimes us kids would look in, and they'd be crying. We guessed they had the blues."

He eventually took up a guitar. And he was soon inspired to also reach for the harmonica. 

"I worked at Old Country Store, and the Bluegrass players would come out and play. I'd hang around behind the counter. And while they played, I'd play along 'til I could make my sound fit theirs."

In Shine's autumn years, he operated a Memphis shoeshine stand. But he could on a moment's notice produce a harmonica and give free, loud, and stirring vent to real-world feelings familiar to all. 

Some said he was closely associated with Jaxon Records, located just down the street from his shoeshine stand. But accounts differ as to whether he personally recorded for the label. (An email query sent to Jaxon was not answered by presstime. Perhaps the label is now inactive.)

Underscored by Shine's story is the vital connection everyday people have to music. It belongs to those unheralded by fame machinery, no less than the limousine fortunate.

Patsy Cline

American Country Legend

(Sun Label Group LLC)

Per the Country Hall of Fame site, Patsy was killed in the same tragic 1963 plane crash that took pilot Randy Hughes, as well as her fellow Opry stars Hawkshaw Hawkins and Cowboy Copas. She was without equal as a stylist, whether emoting sonorously in torch balladry or snapping her fringed cowgirl skirt with wink and beaming grin. Produced by Owen Bradley, "Lovesick Blues" is but one cut featuring Hank Garland, Floyd Cramer, Grady Martin, and Buddy Harman rattling Nashville studio tiles.

It's both testament to Miss Patsy's lofty status and cursed injustice that in 2026, elevator speakers blare her immortal soundings in voiceless, annoying muzak manifestations.

Recommended: "Walkin' After Midnight," "Too Many Secrets," "Stop the World (I Want to Get Off)," "A Church, a Courtroom, and Then Goodbye," "I'm Blue Again," "Honky Tonk Merry-Go-Round," "I Cried All the Way to the Altar," "Lovesick Blues," "Cry Not for Me"

Videos: "Too Many Secrets"   "A Church, a Courtroom, and Then Goodbye"   "I'm Blue Again"   "Lovesick Blues"

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Hillbilly Casino: World's toughest bar band                                       

"I defy you to find five other bands in the U.S. that can play Hank Sr. back-to-back with Motorhead, back-to-back with Ernest Tubb, back-to-back with Tex Ritter, back-to-back with the Ramones," first-era slap-bassist Geoff Firebaugh declared.

The amalgam of crunch-blast dynamism and individualist tunecraft locates the group miles over the headset mics of choreographed in-fashion video mannequins. Profoundly American roots-music stylings old and new, raved forth unaffectedly and with devotion a-burnin' rollick, sway, and reel until time and space lose significance and all around is bacchanalian abandon. 

Currently in this barnstorming, Honky Tonk-hearted confederacy are six-string assassin Ronnie Crutcher, straight-out skins-attacker Sam Clay, double-bass wrestler Colin Taylor, and windmilling frontman Nic Roulette. 

Roulette's manically howled sermons ricochet from neon beer-signs to scuffed hardwood and from shoulder-to-shoulder blue-collar brethren to sudsily euphoric dimensions not locatable by eggheaded NASA star-charters. 

Hillbilly Casino's is a diversely splendored Rock'n'Roll of feverish honesty. And it is possible that they are the most important, most eminently grounded in Americana, and most knockabout agitative band in the land.

Hillbilly Casino's maiden wax was 2006's Sucker Punched. As was made manifest, the group was never blueprinted as hidebound. (Members then included bassman Geoff Firebaugh and drummer Andrew Dickson, who today fills in on occasion.) 

During 2008's Buy In DVD, hip-chained tumbler/mic guru Nic Roulette spelled out the combo's ethos: While roots musics gush through members' circulatory systems and have spattered innumerable of the group's stage boards, innovation, too, has formative pull. Syd Nathan and Norman Petty didn't use Rudy Vallee-era technology, after all. 

Reverence for both Ernest Tubb commoness and Johnny R. chordal blitzkrieg were etched with bold-font bravado. Billybo-butcher Ronnie Crutcher pared deftly and slammed out broadsides that evidenced forward-and-backward knowledge of the Americana repertoire. 

Videos: "Plain to See" (live)   "Shoe Leather" (live)   "Way Past Gone"    "Mimes of the Old West"   "Blanche's Song" (backstage)

Disc #4, Tennessee Stomp (Hobolight), portrayed self-made sideburned rovers. HC's anti-Industry bootstrapism -- entailing self-recording / booking / everything -- had grown organically from the band's above-all calling: taking Rock'n'Roll (in all of its sundry aspects, including Country and Punk) to barrooms full of hoarse-throated, mug-waving true believers. 

Unanticipated permutations, rendered with brawn nobody better've looked at funny, posted notice that a uniquely multi-faceted proposition had maintained its jaw-jutting residence beneath spotlights.

The band's rambunctious oeuvre towered as testament to its consequence. Every outing featured, in vigorous exercise, slap-bass navigations, Ronnie's bent-string exclamations, and percussive insistence. One hears why Hillbilly Casino is indispensible for fans the world over.

Videos: "Tennessee Stomp" (live)   "Heartburn and Heartbreak" (live)   "The Doctor" (live)   "Psycho"   "Violets in May"

Platter the sixth was Red, White, and Bruised (Hobolight).

HC had by this moment become a favorite of average working folks in Nashville and all hep points beyond. Like HC, swarm honky tonk dance floors and throw off real-world cares. Like Hillbilly Casino, folks that swarm joint dance floors and throw away real-life concerns grasp that there are only two kinds of songs - good ones and bad ones.

Each portion of Red, White, and Bruised huffed with limber-limbed freshness and an audacity possible only for dynamite-in-every-paw roustabouts. One was knocked flat by the economical storminess. 

Add in frontman Nic Roullette's irrepressible vocal declarations and onstage gymnastics, and one perceived the stuff of legends -- in their own time.

Videos: "Knockin' at Your Door" (official video)   "She's Got Tricks" (official video)   "It's Not Me It's You"   "Jibber Jabber" (live)   "Troubles"

Come now the crispest: Singles "Tow Truck" and "Red on the Line" - initially issued as 2024 digital-only efforts - landed in bins last October, having been paired on 7" Swelltune vinyl.

The ecstatic squad remained in the first rank. Founders Nic and Billy-Bo suzerain Ronnie were abetted by fresh accomplices Sam Clay and Colin Taylor in storming through characteristic Americana genre-grafting that here pulls fresh oxygen. 

In a Facebook post, balletic energy crisis Nic disclosed: "Replacing 2 members of Hillbilly Casino has been quite a challenge. The fact that these two talented young men live 7 hours away from Ronnie and I make the entire project a different animal, altogether. We are doing our best, though, and I personally feel like the band has taken strides toward cultivating a great sound that is better than I could have imagined."

Videos: "Tow Truck" (live)   "Red On the Line" 

Rock'n'Roll this unaffected, cleverly folding populist lilts and barroom stomp into forcibly guitar-mastered celebration, may never realize the corporate success that demands numbing, processed music product for the ringtone legions. 

Remember, though, that that is not the only mark of distinction. For truly, no music scene can have too many sheerly devout, crazy-from-the-heart back-alley minstrels. 

Nic Roulette & the Ricochets

Cindy Walker penned this for Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, who recorded it for Columbia in 1941. Now, Nashville's Ricochets put down as genteel and slyly spry a take as has caressed ears since Mr. Wills and his booted minstrels two-foured into the descending sun. And Hillbilly Casino dervish, Nic, proves to be exactly the voice needed to crest Jackpot Ridge.

Video: "It's All Your Fault"

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Dale Watson: Music as the reckoning of a man

Does Dale Watson realize how important he and his music are?

The man upholds and advances traditional Country Music -- the hand-tooled kind that reflects the aspirations, heartaches, and end-of-work-week, shout-and-stomp barroom release that a million corporate Nashville types twiddling computerized studio knobs for a million years couldn't replicate.

From his easy smile and laconic drawl to his silver, mile-high pomp and classy, Grand Ole Opry-redolent, populist troubadour clothes, Dale couldn't be anything but the authentic Country music last call luminary his loyal fan base lauds. And, issued earlier in the year by 40 Below Records, fresh platter Unwanted offers the many splendored barroom serenading for which Dale has long been known.

Steel-guitared romps bounce affably, with winks and cosmopolitan assurance. ("Gotta Try Harder," "Never Mend the Broken Spoke.") Sporadic punctuation arrives, in the person of movingly introspective material whose subdued manner is of wholly Country bearing. ("If You Truly Love Me," "If I Can.")

Located here and again are even strapping numbers that might could drive a fella to try his hand at that mustang nobody could break. ("What the Hell Happened To the Cadillac," "Don't Let the Honky Tonks Go," and the five-star title cut.)

Dale's Telecaster rhythms pulse and shimmer, his inventive leads sing out, and his ingratiating vocal warmth encourages all to pull up bar stools. Whether the clever material is dynamically uptempo, infectious and witty, articulating profound emotions, or charging gleefully into melodic mischief, adjoining players negotiate every backroad and neon-lighted avenue in sterling manner, as their leader maintains good-hearted command.

His objective importance lies in his priceless role as devoted counter to insipid Pop-Country. (A sterile contraption that can neither speak for plain home-folks, nor goad them to don whirlyspurs.) That needed function, and simply because the music itself is so damned good, is why Dale Watson is of significance to every listener who knows Real Country when he is lucky enough to hear it. 

In fact, Dale Watson and Wayne 'The Train' Hancock are of the same rank: crucial, contemporary interpreters of bona fide classic Country styles who have every right to be hailed and featured by industry award-bestowers and powers-that-be, but who are too real and uncompromising to ever turn painstakingly manicured 'show me the money' heads.      

As long as music this wood-grained and leather-worked is accessible, does it really matter that industry-calculated honors generally salute dreckish artificiality? After all, such foolish, televised corporate pageantry doesn't impede appreciators of the real deal from enjoying it. 

Historians recall Thomas Jefferson remarking, when asked how he could abide the free exercise of religions other than his own: "They neither break my arm, nor pick my pocket." With similar indifference, we will let the clothes-horses prance. 

Dale Watson must realize how important he and his music are. If he doesn't, he's the only one.

"South of Roundrock Texas" (Austin1996?)   "I Lie When I Drink" (Austin City Limits 2014)   "Don't Let the Honky Tonks Go"   "What the Hell Happened to the Cadillac" (both from new Unwanted)   

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Back in the Day, 2006

Hillbilly Casino

Sucker Punched

(Self-issued)

Hillbilly Casino was never intended as hidebound. During 2008's Buy In DVD, hip-chained tumbler/mic guru Nic Roulette spelled out the combo's ethos: While roots musics gush through members' circulatory systems and have spattered innumerable of the group's stage boards, innovation, too, has formative pull. Syd Nathan and Norman Petty didn't use Rudy Vallee-era technology, after all. 

Reverence for both Ernest Tubb commoness and Johnny R. chordal blitzkrieg were etched with bold-font bravado. Billybo-butcher Ronnie Crutcher pared deftly and slammed out broadsides that evidenced forward-and-backward knowledge of the Americana repertoire. 

Each Sucker Punched portion huffed with youthful freshness and an audacity possible only for dynamite-in-every-paw roustabouts. One was as knocked flat by the economical storminess as songcraft several levels above the standard. Unanticipated permutations, rendered with brawn nobody better look at funny, posted notice that a uniquely multi-faceted proposition had taken up jaw-jutting residence beneath spotlights.

(At the time, Blue Suede News magnate Marc Bristol noted many tracks were co-written by Nic and Kenny Taylor. The two had previously locked shoulders in the Blue Moon Boys.)

Glad tidings are bellowed with sudsy breath: Today - with band personnel a bit reshuffled - Hillbilly Casino have scaled to the lofty height promised by this handle-with-asbestos-gloves debut waxing. 

Recommended: "Plain to See," "Pretty Baby," "Shoe Leather," "Smashed Down Flat," "Way Past Gone," "Filler Up," "PBR," "Come on Camille," "Voodoo Doll," "Devil Comes to Town," "Sooner than Today," "Mimes of the Old West," "County Jail," "Blanche's Song"

Videos: "Plain to See" (live)   "Shoe Leather" (live)   "Way Past Gone"    "Mimes of the Old West"   "Blanche's Song" (backstage)

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Hillbilly Casino, Sucker Punched era

Hillbilly Casino today

Early James

Medium Raw

(Easy Eye Sound)

Producer and Easy Eye Records suzerain Dan Auerbach told Tinnitist in January that James recorded his third release in an olden Nashville manse dubbed Honky Chateau. Appointments were of dated quality. Vintage equipment was employed, and players operated from separate rooms (see videos below). That attention to primitivism yielded bounteous reward; ambient spaciousness facilitated starkness that rightly located Blues arrestingness at the center of everything. Battle-ribboned accompanists lodge directness born from real-world scarrings. Lacking their firepower, James wouldn't burst as effectively. And burst, he does - his plaintive, grained voicings and resonator strikes resound movingly. He has the faith.

Recommended: "Steely Knives," "Nothing Surprises Me Anymore," "Tinfoil Hat," "Gravy Train," "Rag Doll," "I Could Just Die Right Now," "Unspeakable Things," "Dig To China," "I Got This Problem"

Videos: "Tinfoil Hat"   "Rag Doll"   "I Could Just Die Right Now"

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