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OK, roll up, roll up! Get yerself a bottle �o bourbon and listen up
y'all, as these here kings of bluegrass banjo - oh I'm sorry that's
'rockgrass' to you good folks - well they sure as hell have excelled
themselves this time. So you all thought they was jus' a tribyute band
rippin' off them classic rock bands like AC/DC, like Kiss (see
Kiss My Grass), and diddlin' around with dat Aerosmith classic
Walk This Way? Well shucks...
This here is no one-trick tribyute album, this band is spreadin' its
wings, and boy are they gonna fly...
OK, OK - let's get serious now. Hayseed Dixie got going in 2001 with
an album of faithful AC/DC covers gone Hillbilly bluegrass
style. Back In Black, Have A Drink On Me and (of course) Big Balls all got
the treatment. Skip forward a few years and onto A Hot Piece Of Grass
and the repetoire has expanded. The album is split almost 50/50 covers
to original numbers. The former include classics by
Black Sabbath, Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, Green
Day and (more on this later) Outkast. It really, really
shouldn't work but it does.
Let's go back-to-front and start with the original stuff. It's damn
good. Blind Beggar Breakdown kicks off the second half of this album with
a technically dazzling bluegrass instrumental that will leave most
guitar players chins on the floor at just how fast these boys can roll.
Kirby Hill and Uncle Virgil are purest hillbilly goodness. Mountain Man
shows a little cock-rock influence in its main riff whilst
almost-an-instrumental Marijuana is something of a stoner-surfer number with a latin
feel to it.
There's more puerile stoner humour on Moonshiner's Daughter and
especially on Wish I Was You, which is simply so dumb that you have to
admire them for it - like all the original stuff it would probably be right
at home on a Farrelly Brothers soundtrack, and it's not a role worse
for it. It would probably be the lasting memory of the album, if not for
that pesky Outkast cover...
Yup, the covers. Bluegrass War Pigs? Check. Works a treat. Led
Zep's Black Dog, or Whole Lotta Love? They were always gonna work. A bit
of Van Halen? Not so sure. Every one is absolutely faithful to
the structure of the original song, and as the originals were often a
little longer than a bluegrass number wants to be they can drag a little
in places, especially after a few listens - but that's really a minor
quibble.
It's not just established classics this time - and, scarily enough,
when Hayseed Dixie take on music's current superstars the results are
often better than the originals. Franz Ferdinand get the
treatment, with a frantic This fffire that makes the original seem a little lazy
by comparison. Likewise Green Day's Holiday is reborn as spiky
and as confident despite the absence of drums and heavy guitars. With
Outkast's Roses, however, they've gone that step further and
created something dangerous.
Be warned. If you don't like Outkast, or Hayseed Dixie for
that matter, then don't whatever you do listen to this track. Even if you
do, take care. Hayseed Dixie's Roses is the musical equivalent of the
bird-flu virus - highly infectious, and once you've got the bugger going
round your head it'll be with you forever. First it'll be the end that
hooks you, the oddness of hearing phrases like "punk-ass bitch!" over
the twirling banjos. Then the chorus will embed itself in your brain and
never let go. The original becomes simply dull. Basically it's
brilliant.
But in the end, if Hayseed Dixie really show us anything, it's that
being shit-hot at playing your instruments can still have an impact on
the listener. Which is good. The album closes with a run through
Duelling Banjos, whose co-writer fathered two of the Dixie boys. Don' it jus'
warm your heart?
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