OK, remember a little over three years ago, when you and your cronies were sitting around downing Natural Lights and bitching about the sorry state of music, just like you always do? When talk inevitably turned to future trends, to the next big breakout genre, can you recall somebody saying, "Listen, a growing disaffection with insubstantial contemporary sounds will no doubt lead to the widespread rediscovery of languishing Eastern American roots, pre-country and old-time styles." I can't; to the best of my recollection, we were all in agreement that Asian disco-pop was poised to take the fuck over.
"Our culture is so money-driven and goal-oriented — I feel that people are disenchanted because there's a lack of spirit in their life. It doesn't matter what its name is," says Shiner, guitarist, singer and one of four principal songwriters for the Hackensaw Boys out of Charlottesville, Va.
The Hackensaw Boys are one of the most noteworthy bands currently garnering national attention for plying wildly varying updates of seminal bluegrass/old-time influences. Long nurtured by the Deadhead/jam-band contingent and independent radio, the "newgrass" scene has crept onto the mainstream radar screen over the last couple of years, thanks in large part to the Coen Brothers film O Brother, Where Art Thou? and its mind-bogglingly successful soundtrack. Pundits also cite the Sept. 11 tragedy and ensuing economic troubles as reasons behind our culture's current taste for the honest, earnest and down-home.
"America's got a lot of problems," Shiner (nee David Sickmen) says. "So when you present them with something fun and spirited, but has a good message, they feel it."
Like most contemporary mountain-music outfits, the Hackensaws deviate from traditional standards. While they do incorporate the mandatory sounds of banjo, fiddle and rudimentary percussion (what the hell is a charismo?), the 10-man band's tuneage seems more acoustic guitar-driven and eclectic, drawing equally from Blue Ridge chicken pickin', Celtic folk and early C&W. The result is a rollicking, danceable amalgam Shiner refers to as "streetgrass." Since their origins jamming on Charlottesville's downtown mall in 1999, the boys have honed their frenzied, audience-inclusive "hootenanny vibe" to near-perfection.
"Honestly, we're best on street corners. It's just true," he says. "The street is where it's at. It kind of takes on this — it gets a little more Pentecostal."
The band's diverse sound, youth and exaggerated image — a somewhat caricatured hick motif that includes nicknames like Skeeter and Peepaw, extremely pronounced southern accents and a bio that reads like a particularly befuddling episode of The Beverly Hillbillies — have occasionally disgruntled a purist or two. Shiner admits that some traditionalists are reluctant to lend The Hackensaw Boys their blessing, but that they get as many kudos as complaints from the old guard. Besides, they never claimed to be some kind of reverent resurgence act.
"We never said we were a traditional old-time bluegrass band anyway. The way I see it is, they should be honored, not pissed off about it," he says. "It's kind of biting off your nose to spite your face to say we're bastardizing (bluegrass), because we're keeping it alive."
Neither the debut full-length Get Some nor the newly released sophomore disc Keep It Simple are exactly true to bluegrass tradition. However, both are raw, invigorating slabs of updated old-time roots music that ably mix a sepia-toned mood with the manic uproar of The Hackensaw Boys' acclaimed live show. If the purists don't dig it, a new breed of roots-music fan certainly does — the group was tapped earlier this year to open a string of dates for alt/college-rock iconoclasts Cake and was astounded at the overwhelmingly favorable response their sets received.
The new breed of whatevergrass bands, Hackensaw Boys included, is enjoying favor from all walks of American life, from hippies to alt-country kids to the VH-1 set. And the trend may seem to have come out of nowhere, but Shiner claims that the styles that have inspired and influenced his Boys have always been there, and will continue to thrive after the hubbub dies down, even if Asian disco-pop finally takes over.
"It was never fleeting," he says. "It's just that nobody in Nashville has figured out a way to make money off of it before now."
Besides performing at Tropical Heatwave, The Hackensaw Boys play Skipper's Smokehouse on Fri., May 17, with openers Southern Lite. 8 p.m. $7.
Scott Harrell can be reached at 813-248-8888, ext. 109, or at scott. harrell@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in May 15-21, 2002.