Mr. Jukebox. The Mayor of Lower Broadway. The Singin’ Professor of Country & Western. Whatever you want to call him, Joshua Hedley has been a radical preservationist of actual country music for years, holding court in a continuing residency at Robert’s Western World on Lower Broadway in Nashville, helping to beat back the rising tide of bad music.
Everything that Joshua Hedley does is country. For him, it’s not a question of genres, but eras. In 2018, he awoke the Countrypolitan era with Mr. Jukebox. In 2022, he was ahead of the game by evoking ’90s country with Neon Blue, including numerous songs co-written by some kid named Zach Top. Hedley could’ve returned to that well again since ’90s country is so hot, but he’s always stayed one step ahead of the game in rekindling the past. So on his new album All Hat out October 24th on New West Records, Hedley’s going Western Swing.
Hedley’s no stranger to the subgenre. In fact, his first ever record was a tribute to Western Swing the singer and fiddle player recorded when he was only 15 years old. At that point, he’d already been playing fiddle for seven years.
“I found a copy of it recently, and it’s not as bad as I expected. I’d only been singing in public for about two weeks, but I might’ve been a better fiddle player then than I am now,” Hedley says. “I didn’t grow up playing in garage bands. I grew up at the goddamned VFW hall. I grew up playing with guys in their fifties and sixties. When I first heard Asleep at the Wheel and their Bob Wills tribute, it blew my mind that there was a band out there still playing this kind of music.”
That’s why when Hedley decided to make a new Western Swing album, he went directly to the source for help. All Hat was produced by Ray Benson of Asleep At The Wheel, with numerous members of the band participating in the recordings as well, including well-respected fiddler Jason Roberts.
“Obviously [Ray] was in the producer role and he did produce the shit out of this record, but a lot of it was him just letting us cut loose and see what happens,” Hedley explains. “We’d work out a song and he’d step in with some suggestions. It was amazing to see how it’s done not only in real time, but from one of the greats. I don’t think he knows just how much he was teaching me.”
Though when some think of Western Swing, they might thing of a stuffy, outmoded, fuddy duddy version of country, that’s not the approach Hedley takes to it. “At its core Western Swing is just dance music,” he says. “Bob Wills didn’t play theatres; he played dance halls. The music is for dancing, and that’s what I wanted to come through on these songs.”
Who knows, perhaps Hedley will be the spearhead for the revitalization of Western Swing as a popular art form, similar to what he did for ’90s country. Why is bluegrass such a massive music category, and Western Swing so under-represented? Hedley will do his part in presenting the beauty of the art form come October 24th. New song “Fresh Hot Biscuits” is out now.
All Hat is now available for pre-save/pre-order.
TRACK LIST:
1. All Hat (No Cattle)
2. Boogie Woogie Tennessee
3. Fresh Hot Biscuits
4. Stuck in Texas (feat. Ray Benson)
5. Hedliner Polka
6. Come Take A Ride With Me
7. Clueless
8. Mean Mama Blues
9. Crawlin’ Home To You
10. The Waltz I Promised To You
11. Over The Line
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source savingcountrymusic.com ’
