Wayne Hancock
A-Town Blues (2001)

review by: David Brown
Date: 6/1/03

These days the average music afficianado/rock snob has a certain appreciation for country music. But it rarely strays much beyond names like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard or Willie Nelson. If you admire any of those guys, you should make room in your country-western universe for Wayne Hancock.

Hancock is a brilliant songwriter whose music has a sound that recalls the early years of country music. This is probably what Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams would have sounded like with the benefit of modern musicianship and recording equipment. Hancock's voice is eerily similar to Williams', both in its twangy timbre and its honest appeal. This may be why Hank Williams III, in the liner notes to his first album, called Hancock "the realist singer/songwriter and performer in Country Music today!!!"

The band on A-Town Blues features three stellar guitar players. It isn't the typical guitar style generally heard in nightmare that is country radio. This music reminds you more of Django Reinhardt. The jazz and blues elements of Hancock's songs bring out the best in his guitar players, most notably steel guitarist Jeremy Wakefield.

As a songwriter, Hancock is nearly perfect. His tunes all fall in the gypsy jazz, southern blues, Texas swing tradition, and every cut on this album is a great one. They're all relatively unsophisticated in structure with lyrics that will send you scrambling for the libretto. Most of his songs deal with life on the road in the flatlands of middle and Southern America, conjuring up banged-around pickup trucks cruising the desolate roads and barren towns of rural Texas. No doubt this is how Hancock has spent much of his career as a musician.

In fact, if you must put a label on Hancock's style, call it "highway music." This is how he describes it in the liner notes: "If you like music that moves and the trash on the radio can't satisfy your wanderlust then try this CD and burn a thousand miles. I'll see you out on the highway." 'Nuff said.