Auto sales plummeted, and inflation – which had been a scourge on working people for most of the decade – ratcheted past 10 percent. Remember that the Iranian Revolution early in the year caused the price of oil to soar, which upended the economy as a whole. Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound, released in November 1979, rates among his greatest works. He was, as he brags in the live version of “My Name Is Bocephus,” the “platinum boy that does the rock ’n’ roll-country-blues.” & Friends LP in 1975, when he embraced the outlaw ethos, through his last truly great album, Lone Wolf in 1990, he released a string of solid-to-stellar studio albums along with a truly stupendous live set, 1987’s Hank Live, and not one, not two, but three best-of collections. At worst, they don’t think of him at all. At best, in their eyes, he’s the cartoonish buffoon who sings the Monday Night Football theme. as a reactionary clown due to the conservative canards he long ago embraced, and a wide swath of America has done just that. Long may they stagger.(As noted in my first Essentials entry, this is an occasional series in which I spotlight albums that, in my estimation, everyone should experience at least once.) Like Weil’s cowboy shirts, Hellbound Glory evokes Western style, in this case the 1970s hard country-rock amalgam defined by Waylon Jennings and others, in fine fashion. Missing from the set was “I’ll Be Your Rock (at Rock Bottom),” another fine Virgil original that captures the days of wine and roses. The band’s signature tune seems to be “Get Your Shit and Go,” which acutely describes the vicissitudes of booze-lubricated romantic relationships it went over like free beer with the small crowd that remained. With drummer Chico Kortan anchoring a solid backbeat and bassist Frank Median dishing out the occasional two-step “eat shit” bass pattern, Virgil and Fingers powered through the band’s repertoire of songs that catalog various alcoholic behaviors-drinking, more drinking, getting arrested for drunk driving (“Hello, Five-0”). My only complaint was that he set his amp’s volume a few notches under 11, probably out of respect for the families the band ended up scaring off anyway. Johnny Fingers has that cool Tele tone, the kind of sound that’s bright like the chrome must’ve looked on a showroom Mercury circa 1956 the notes come at you all stiff-legged and frantic, like a young Johnny Cash hopped up on truck-driver whites trying to dance like James Brown. The high point of each song was when he’d yell, “Take it away, Johnny,” and the guy to his right with the straw cowboy hat would unleash a flurry of sonic sparks from the fretboard of his black Telecaster. Virgil barked lyrics into a makeshift mic that sounded like it was purloined from a sheriff’s department inventory of jailhouse bullhorns, accompanying himself on a blond Fender Telecaster. Soon, most of those folks disappeared, kids in tow, in a line of taillights heading south along the river road.īut Hellbound Glory, just off its first national tour, was just getting started. A few songs later, there was a noticeable gap between the tattooed drinkers near the stage and the folks hunkering at the far back. It didn’t take long for the audience to stratify: A couple songs in, the band lurched into Hank Jr.’s classic “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound,” and you could sense a shift a cover choice like that telegraphs its punch quite succinctly as to what’s up ahead. Its 90-minute set, under Jupiter bright amid a rich sweep of stars, was a fine mix of Virgil-penned originals, many of them from the band’s recent release, Scumbag Country (on the Woodland-based indie label Gearhead Records), and nuggets from the songbooks of Hank Williams Jr., Charlie Daniels, David Allan Coe and other two-wheeled redneck favorites. Hellbound Glory got there as the sun was setting, and began playing around 8:15 p.m. The early evening crowd there Friday was middle-aged with a slight Sturgis lean, with kids running around on the patio’s brown grass and blacktop. That bar and restaurant is set in a field of denuded alfalfa among old Ford Model Ts and As, an old fire truck, a totaled demolition-derby beater-once a Dodge Charger?-along with a big sycamore and a few scrubby oaks. Weil was the Denver clothier who invented the Western shirt, the kind with the sawtooth pockets and snaps, one of which was being worn by singer-guitarist Leroy Virgil (né Bower), frontman for the Reno outlaw country-rock band Hellbound Glory, on the patio of the Elkhorn Station Roadside Bar and Grill, a nice little joint in what’s technically West Sacramento, just south of the Interstate 5 bridge over the Sacramento River on the Yolo County side.
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