In 2018, he’ll be playing with Dave Alvin, Colin Gilmore, Butch Hancock and Joe Ely (the Flatlanders), Carrie Rodriguez, Ruthie Foster (the Texas Troubadours), Bill Kirchen, Marty Muse (Highway 71), Christine Albert, Chris Gage, and others. The band's style mixed country, rock and roll, Western swing, rockabilly, and jump blues together on a foundation of boogie-woogie piano. (MC5 manager/activist John Sinclair got them a dealon the ESP-Disk label, home of Sun Ra, but the band turned it down.) Those two were cowritten by his wife, Louise; “Goner” also features frequent contributor Sarah Brown (coincidentally also raised in Ann Arbor).Kirchen likes collaborating: on Word to the Wise, a musical reminiscence of sorts, he tapped several favorite artists to join him,carefully selecting or writing songs for each. If there’s a laugh to be reached for — or stooped to —Kirchen’s goin’ for it; you don’t survive years in a band named Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen, or drop album titles like Seeds and Stems, without possessing a gleefully subversive, double-entendre-loving funny bone. While learning to play banjo and guitar, his musical interest began to extend beyond folk music and included the blues and various string bands. And songs like “Tell Me the Reason” or “Get a Little Goner” illustrate another truism: Kirchen often sets the saddest or mostbiting lyrics to the jauntiest melodies. [3] Kirchen's Commander Cody band broke apart in 1976 and he formed a "swing orchestra" called the Moonlighters and began a decades-long collaboration with British musician Nick Lowe. The eleven songs on Hammer of the Honky-Tonk Gods are the most straight-ahead rockers, the title track an homage to Kirchen’s instrument of choice. He’s already booked a couple of shows in North Carolina and Tennessee for January with another guitar legend, Bill Kirchen, that they’re calling, “Two Fools on Stools.” Roth is an actress, musician and trained chef raised in Northern Westchester, New York. Bill Kirchen is not due to play near your location currently - but they are scheduled to play 1 concert across 1 country in 2021-2022. Their 1983 album Rush Hour was produced by Nick Lowe. “I enjoy doing them. Waxworks, is a vinyl best-of version of the full collection. A well-balanced mix of engaging originals and wonderfully rendered covers, The Proper Years admirably conveys Kirchen’s versatility as a player and singer — one of the first to mash up rockabilly, country, western swing, honky-tonk, jump blues, jazz, boogie-woogie and even the “psychedelic folk rock” he played with the Seventh Seal, the band he formed while attending  the University of Michigan. Their rootsy mix of blues, country and rock caught on — and germinated the pub rock movement, whose acolytes included Brinsley Schwarz, in which Lowe played bass. Louise held her ground and the rest, as they say, is … Well, you know what it … While learning to play banjo and guitar, his musical interest began to extend beyond folk music and included the blues and various string bands. Kirchen likes collaborating; on Word to the Wise, a musical reminiscence of sorts, he tapped several favorite artists to join him, carefully selecting or writing songs for each. He was a member of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen from 1967 to the mid-1970s and is known as a "The Titan of The Telecaster" for his musical prowess on the guitar. [3] Kirchen's signature sound has been dubbed "dieselbilly" and incorporates elements of country, blues, rockabilly, Western swing and boogie-woogie, laced with themes of American truck driving music. During the mid-80s, Kirchen and his wife, a southern Maryland native, had a baby and moved to the Washington, D.C. area. The record featured many guests including: Paul Carrack, Elvis Costello, Commander Cody, Blackie Farrell, Dan Hicks, Nick Lowe, Maria Muldaur and more. Upon tallying how many decades he’s worked as a professional guitar slinger, Telecaster master Bill Kirchen quips, “Well, they don't make 50 years like they used to.” They don’t often make careers like his, either. in Evanston. "[5] Kirchen is said to have "one of the most distinctive, pure-Fender Telecaster tone guitar sounds in modern music". 8 p.m. Fri. $25-$35. We played this for three years in a row and he had acts like Grateful Dead, The Beach Boys, Elton John, The Doobie Brothers, New Riders of the Purple Sage, and had maybe 80-100,000 people.  But whatever label Kirchen’s music wears, it’s always notable for its balance of high-octane energy and deft understatement. The Proper Years. In 1967 they became the nucleus and co-founders of Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen. Special thanks to my wife Jan for putting up with me. “They’re the best.” That’s just another twist in an incredible career trajectory set in motion, according to Kirchen, by two pivotal events: the 1964 and ’65 Newport Folk Festivals. That album was engineered by Paul Riley, who eventually would produce all four of Kirchen’s Proper Records albums. A devoted Anglophile, thanks to two aunts who married Brits, Kirchen began recording for the label after owner Malcolm Mills promised, “I'm going to give you the best deal you've had in 25 years.”  He did, too. Five years later, he found himself sharing a bill with John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Stevie Wonder, when Commander Cody and the Airmen, who’d formed in Ann Arbor, played a benefit for Sinclair after he got 10 years for two joints. A mere 50 years later, Kirchen’s still having a blast. People forever request them. But for every injection of humor, there’s an equal dose of heart (and in some cases, heartbreak). [4], Kirchen began to develop as guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and performer. No guitar hero this side of Junior Brown has celebrated the bonds between the long-distance trucker and the road-warrior musician better than Bill Kirchen. Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen is an American country rock band founded in 1967. Dan Hicks, who delivered a note-perfect duet on the title tune — written for him —died in 2016. The song references the civil rights struggles of 60’s America, most notably the Berkeley riots and Gurf Morlix again returns to add dark, threatening guitar licks to proceedings. Other instrumentalists are pianist Floyd Domino, cellist Brian Standefer, guitarists Carolyn Wonderland and Bill Kirchen, violinist Warren Hood, drummer Brannen Temple. 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