The classic-country period of popular music,
which roughly lasted 1950-1965, was a time when hillbillies really
came from the hills, Okies were a legitimate group of immigrants in
California, and electricity was rearing its ugly head to influence
the sound of musical instruments. It was a glorious time now
emulated a generation (or two) later by musicians craving the
beauty and the beat of a music complex in its sheer simplicity. The
rules are set for re-enactment of classic country. Certain topics,
chord progressions, instruments, and clothing are required for
membership in this very private country club.
Rex Hobart is a believer in and user of all
the regulations, yet he finds a way to work well within the limits
of what constitutes the genre while seeming as fresh as a steaming
cow pie. An alumnus of a popular Kansas City punk-rock band from
several years back, Hobart stuck his foot into the quicksand of
honky-tonk and was sucked in for good.
Since his conversion, Hobart and the Misery
Boys have established themselves nationally as a major force in the
minor world of alternative/classic-country music. His voice is not
of stunning quality, but it has the proper amount and use of
passion necessary to convince us of the validity of his woes. He keeps the subject
matter where it belongs — cheatin’, drinkin’, and
other mainstays of the honky-tonk world. Dancing, an often overlooked
but important point of properly performed classic country, is a
pleasure with the gentle swing and hillbilly boogie of the Misery Boys.
The band dresses sharply in musical-cowboy clothes and comes armed with
acoustic guitars and basses, (minimal) drums, steel guitars, and
chicken-pickin’ six-strings.
After working with producer Lou Whitney on its
first two CDs, the group was nabbed by Bloodshot Records of
Chicago. The popular alt-country label describes the band’s
fourth CD, Empty House (just released Feb. 22), as delivering
“on the promise that between nostalgia and progress is
timelessness.”
The Bloodshot publicity crew, known for their
fine use of hyperbole and downright disgust for the contemporary
Nashville scene, are onto something here. I’m not exactly
sure what it is, but I believe they mean to say that if you can
dance to it, drink to it, and think to it, it’s the good
stuff. /p>
Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys lope into the
Underground City Tavern (700 E. Adams St.; 217-789-1530) on
Saturday, March 5, for a 9 p.m. show.
This article appears in Mar 3-9, 2005.
