courtesy photo
by Chance Solem-Pfeifer
Wayne Hancock is routinely mistaken for being 80.
In actuality, he’s 48: likely aged in the minds of the public for both the juke joint swing music to which he pledges allegiance and by the many addictive and depressive roads he’s traveled.
Nicknamed “The Train,” Hancock has been riding them for 20 years, since his acclaimed 1995 debut Thunderstorms and Neon Signs. But not always to the benefit of his personal health or state of mind. Stints in jail (for “nothing serious, just stupid stuff”), a failed marriage and alcoholism darkly cloud the landscape of an otherwise picturesque career spent on the American interstate system.
Hancock’s most recent album Ride, his eighth studio effort released earlier this year, represents a personal turning point, even if the music swings and jukes in much the same way as it did two decades before, still conjuring a now second-nature Hank Williams comparison. With Ride comes a newfound sobriety both from alcohol and prescription medications for his manic depressive disorder. And though Hancock says his teeth and Nashville big wigs aren’t as plentiful in his life as they once were, a clear writing head was a welcome rediscovery. And he owes it, in part, to his new love affair with motorcycles. On his Harley Superglide, Hancock finds an instigator for some of his best songs and an almost involuntary writing process.
“Some of my best songs I’ve just, I don’t know where they come from, man. It’s almost like someone was dictating them to me. I just write them down,” Hancock says. “I’m not too vocal about that because I don’t want people to think I’m crazy. Maybe I am crazy. But wherever it is they come from, I’m glad they come.”
Hancock will perform at The Bourbon on Tuesday night — Hank Williams’ birthday as fate would have it — supported by the similarly traditional country sounds of Lincoln’s Lloyd McCarter and the Honky Tonk Revival.
But first Hancock spoke to Hear Nebraska from his home in north Texas about Hank epiphanies, sitting still and life with a helmet but no windshield.
Listen to the full interview with Wayne Hancock here:
Hear Nebraska: Well, let me start with the record from this year, Ride. You’ve talked about how for you being out on the freeway riding a motorcycle is important because it lets you not think about anything. I would assume that while you’re on the bike that includes songwriting and music as well. So when did you realize the motorcycle would be central image of this record?
Wayne Hancock: I think I thought it would be a good change. Everything I do, all my albums, because I live on the road pretty much, most of my albums are always about driving or going somewhere. I’d never really penned any songs about actually riding a bike before. I thought it might open it up to a bigger crowd.
I’m — what do you call a guy like me — manic depressive? I had been on all kinds of medications and all this business for my disorder. But they all have side effects, you know? And sometimes they just make you even worse. So I got to the point where I went out and bought a bike, an old ‘76 Forster. I rode that first and then went got a bigger bike, a Harley Davidson Superglide.
And bikes, you start riding them, and something about having the wind at you. I don’t have a windshield on my bike; I do wear a helmet. Something about being on that bike, you almost feel free from everything.
HN: Sure, well, you’ve talked about how the feeling of exposure and vulnerability is important to riding. Are those the kinds of moments that speak to you artistically, too? The ones you try to capture?
WH: Definitely. When my mind is free, I can think a lot clearer. I noticed that when I was on the bike, I was the happiest. Kind of like I am when I’m driving.
Actually, probably the happiest is when I’m on stage playing. Travelling and music for some reason go hand-in-hand. I was able to get off all my medication because of that. All that stuff the doctors tell you, “If you quit taking this, you might try to kill yourself,” or something ridiculous. That was the best thing I ever did, getting off all that stuff.
HN: Well, how fitting, I guess, that music kind of became the antidote to that.
WH: Yeah, writing is definitely a good antidote to all that stuff. My wife and I got separated. We’re still married and very good friends. She’s living in Arkansas, but I’m living in North Texas now.
HN: I’m curious, Wayne, for someone who travel as much as you do, spending your whole life on the road and how that does make you happy at times — can the road ever become like a home or is it always something a bit different than that?
WH: A home or a hole?
HN: (Laughs.) A home, like a place where you live.
WH: Yeah, definitely. I would definitely say this year I’ve lived more in hotels than I have at my own place. So yeah, the road is definitely my home.
HN: Does it feel like you’re home, though?
WH: Yeah, I’ve been on the road for 20 years now. And pretty much every place I go to, I don’t know how many times you hit some place in 20 years, probably 40 or 50 different times. Every town you go to you always know somebody. Especially when I go to like Long Beach. I have friends there who when I met them they were teenagers. Now they're in their thirties and have children who are grown. So you develop a pretty tight bond with your audience.
HN: When you’re hanging out with people like that who’ve known your music for 20 years, what do they say about the new stuff?
WH: They like it. I’ve never had any complaints. I’ve had people tell me, “You sound a lot like Hank Williams.”
Well, tell me something I don’t know. But nobody ever complains about anything. I’ve been called a purist or traditionalist, but I don’t really feel like I’m either one of those. I just want to have a good time.
I’ve found a formula that works really good for me: blues and swing and stuff like that and little bit of rockabilly and rock ‘n’ roll. Dare I say country, but country is so different, but I don’t know if me and the word fit in the same sentence or not.
HN: I want to get to that in a second, but let me duck back to Ride. When I listen to the actual song, it almost feels like the escape you would describe riding on an actual motorcycle. Like it gears up for 30 seconds of lyrics and the middle three minutes really is an instrumental play-along with you and your musicians, and you have solos in there. And it’s kind of escaping from the verse-chorus-verse-chorus song formula. Were you trying to capture in that song the escape of being on the bike?
WH: Yeah, I was trying to convey how I feel when I ride. Anywho, when you’re on the bike you always think rock ‘n’ roll. Bikers love rock ‘n’ roll for some reason. As is with Johnny Law, too. Same thing.
Thinking of hard-driving, you think of da-na-na-na (electric guitar strumming noises). That’s pretty much what I was trying to do. The song came to me really fast. I wrote the song in five or ten minutes.
HN: That’s an interesting idea because when you're on the bike, you’re not thinking about too much of anything and not the actual writing of the words. Do you think of that time as important in your songwriting, the time you don’t spend thinking about it is crucial when you come back later?
WH: Yeah, because you can write a song and think about it too much and it gets so complicated even the listener gets lost. Some of my best songs I’ve just, I don’t know where they come from, man. It’s almost like someone was dictating them to me. I just write them down.
I’m not too vocal about that because I don’t want people to think I’m crazy. Maybe I am crazy. But wherever it is they come from, I’m glad they come.
HN: Well, they’ve served you well. You’ve said, Wayne, that Ride could probably be the most personal album you’ve had. When you take it on the road and you play some of the songs that come from difficult place or difficult emotions, do you re-experience those emotions when you’re on stage? Or once they’re in songs are they kind of let go from your heart and your mind?
WH: That’s an interesting question. Sometimes I can experience it again, but a lot of times they’re written almost in a healing process, you know? We play our music and I’m almost grinning on stage and smiling. A lot of the songs people might consider sad songs or blue songs on my album, they’re really songs about healing and moving on with life: “OK, this didn’t work, it’s not the end of the world, things are going to be better again.”
“Low Down Blues” and “Fair Weather Blues,” some of those songs I can sing them and if I put myself in the place where I was when I wrote them, people in the audience would be crying.
HN: But you don’t necessarily do that.
WH: Well, there's always somebody who can relate to everything you’re singing about. Sometimes, they’ll just like it ‘cause they like the tune or maybe they have a good memory that goes with it. Some have bad memories with them.
I’ll give you an example with a song I didn’t write. I was doing openers with Reverend Horton Heat and the Reverend had me get up and do a couple numbers. They’re cover tunes, so I did a couple Hank Williams tunes. And the first one was “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” I started thinking about the lyrics of the song. I’ve been singing that song all my life, but never stopped and thought about what the lyrics meant. When I was doing this song a few times on stage, “Wow, my life really parallels his in a lot of ways.”
You know he sings the line where he says, “Have you ever seen a robin weep / And the leaves begin to die / Like me he’s lost the will to live / I’m so lonesome I could cry.”
I was putting myself in that position and trying to sing it, maybe what he was feeling. People burst into tears, man. But that’s not always what I want to do. I want people to feel good about things. I’m just like everybody else I go through that stuff. I have hard times, too.
I ain’t no millionaire songwriter. I’m not an old guy either. People think I’m in my eighties and I’m not. I’m in my forties. But I like to promote healing. If I write something about something that’s gone wrong, I always make sure I write a way out, so the listener doesn't feel like they’re trapped.
HN: Always a silver lining.
WH: Yeah, sometimes you can’t always see the silver lining. Sometimes it takes a long time for you to see it. Because people are going through the same situation. They’re feeling the same thing I’m feeling.
If you can offer some hope to those people … say someone loses a limb in the war and can’t walk, but their attitude is everything. They’re gonna walk again, and maybe it’s gonna be on artificial legs, but they’re gonna walk again. People who read about that, that gives them hope.
Songwriting is the same way. That whole album was really about my marriage. If it hadn’t been called Ride, and I always say this, it would have been called Boy, I Sure Miss My Wife.
HN: Since we’re talking about the young you for a second and now the forty-something Wayne. Whether you think it’s true or not, you always seem to be placed on one side of this whole authentic country debate and other other side being more like pop, corporate country. People associate you with the “authentic” side of that. When you were younger, Wayne, were you more concerned with what was authentic and what wasn’t? You said you've found a formula that works, is there a point for you at which that formula becomes internalized and you don’t have to think about it anymore?
WH: To tell you the truth, I’ve always been like that. I’ve always felt that I was either born 40 years too late or 40 years too early. I’ve never figured it out. Even when I first started playing guitar. Before I heard a Hank Williams record, there was Hank Thompson or Woody Guthrie. Even then, I remember if I was gonna play any of those songs I wanted to play them the way that they were played. Because it gave me this feeling like this really good feeling, made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, when something gives you goosebumps.
HN: When you say 40 years too early, are you predicting a comeback in juke joint swing music?
WH: (Laughs.) I don’t know, man. I just always felt like I didn't belong. Now I feel great. A lot of people are like, “I’m getting older and it’s terrible and I’m having a midlife crisis.”
I’m actually enjoying it. I’ve got gray in my hair now and I don't mind it. One of these days I’m gonna go all the way gray. I’ll probably have to buy some dentures at some point. I have all my top teeth, but all my lower back teeth are gone. But I feel like I fit in better now than I did when I was younger. When I was younger, I was really struggling trying to figure out where I belong in this world.
HN: What do you mean? What do you know now that you didn’t know then?
WH: Now I play music and I’ve been playing it for years. When I was starting out I was trying to figure where I fit in the workforce. I never could find a job. My mind seemed to wander quite a bit. I’ve lost more jobs than I’ve had, I’ll put it that way. That doesn’t even make sense (laughs.) I’ve been fired off of every job I’ve ever had except for the ones I quit before they fired me.
When I found music, it was so easy and so effortless to do something which a lot of people consider really hard. Sure, you have to practice, but I don’t practice anymore because I play so much that I don’t feel like I need to.
I’m accepted now for who I am. When you’re young, you’re trying to find your place and acceptance from your peers. Some people have that natural ability to be accepted, but I really had to work at it.
When I first started playing, people were telling me I’d never get anywhere with this kind of music, that I should just take the money and just do what they tell me. I was telling somebody the other day that you could offer me a million dollars to change, and I wouldn’t do it. People will say, “Well, you’re an idiot.” Maybe I am, but I have integrity. I’d rather be able to listen to my music and live a nice moderate lifestyle in the lower middle class than be an uppity son of bitch who writes crap. Pardon my profanity there.
HN: It’s fine. There’s a quote from you where you compared yourself to a stab wound on the fabric of country music in Nashville, like a blood stain that’s slowly spreading. That’s an evocative analogy. Were you implying that at that time there were people who wished the style of music you were playing would have not been there in the fabric?
WH: Sure. I think what I was trying to say there is that I’m not going away. And every time I play a show, my crowd gets bigger. That was my analogy of what my following was almost like blood stain when you … well, I don’t know I’ve never stabbed somebody in my life. But if somebody gets a knife wound, that blood spreads out slowly and gets thicker and deeper. And I was trying to say I’m the knife.
HN: Who’s the cloth then? Who doesn’t want you to do that?
WH: Well, the cloth in my mind back then was the establishment that I was going to try and penetrate through that big wall of pop country that they put it up. And prove to people there was a following and there was this kind of music.
HN: Did that give you a chip on your shoulder when you were younger?
WH: Yeah, just a little bit of one. I went to Nashville like everybody else did. I’ve been with some pretty big booking agencies and record companies earlier in my life. They’re always constantly trying to change your sound. But if you lose your identity, then who the hell are you?
Record companies are famous for that because that show they make their money. They convince you to change your style, and then your songs change and you lose that something that made you special to begin with. If you do that, in an essence, you’re turning your back on your audience.
Maybe Garth Brooks. Well, not Garth Brooks. But what about somebody who started out doing bluegrass and then metal starts paying your bills? Then you can’t go back once you start down that road. Once you get on that road you’re on that road and that’s what people expect to hear from you from then on. I wasn’t willing to turn my back on my audience. I like the fact that I can listen to my records and I’m not embarrassed by them.
HN: Let me look ahead with you for a second. You’ve talked pretty extensively how about how along with this new record Ride, comes a new era of sobriety for you. I think in the way we conceive of songwriters, we imagine these very sad, booze-slinging people, somehow producing the best, deepest music. Has there ever been any concern for you as you look toward hope and look toward sobriety that somehow that would curtail your message?
WH: I don’t think so, man. I’ve been a screw-up long enough that I don’t need to go back and relive it. Those are just character-building traits.
I’ve been in jail more time than I care to talk about. Nothing serious, just dumb stuff. I remember a cop telling me: “Your boss ain’t gonna like that. You’ll probably lose your job because of this.”
I said, “My job is in the music business and that just makes me look that much better.”
Man, when you're down and you're drinking and you're doing drugs, you can’t really write very good when you’re drunk. The only way I can write good songs is if I can reflect on that experience and recall it with a clearer head. Make a comparison to what I have now and what I had then.
No, I definitely wouldn’t recommend anybody going back to drinking.
HN: Is that a little bit of trap, though, when you’re a younger artist? Did you ever think when you were a younger artist, “The lower I am, the drunker I am…” Did you think in those moments that what you were writing was better somehow or did you always come of those moments know that wasn’t any good?
WH: Usually, I never really wrote anything until was sobered up enough to write it. I had to be off whatever it was. The best songwriting comes when I’m starting to pull out of something, when I’m on my way to healing or getting better.
HN: If there’s a sequel to Ride, is it an album about being OK with sitting still? Could you ever write that album, looking forward?
WH: Certainly, man, the older I get, I can’t be on the road forever. That probably ain’t going to happen for another 20 years, I hope. It’s always really nice to be able to have a home to go to.
Maybe I’ll put that to some consideration. I could have always have a record about home where there is a picture of my bike is in the shop and my car has a flat. I’ll have one shoe on and one shoe off! (Laughs.)
Chance Solem-Pfeifer is Hear Nebraska’s staff writer. Talking to Wayne makes him feel like he knows nothing about the big, hard, concrete world. And this is probably true. Reach Chance at chancesp@hearnebraska.org.