Seventeen years and fourteen albums after Hayseed Dixie formed, they come to Manchester’s Club Academy.
The band began one day when legend has it John Wheeler and Mike Daly drank roughly enough whiskey to float a battleship from the Florida Coast over to Portugal and back and decided to play around in John’s studio.
Having spent the previous few years touring around with assorted country hat-acts, John had assembled a proper pile of recording equipment. Thus when he and Mike discovered in their drunken epiphany that the Lost Highway of Reverend Hank Williams and the Highway to Hell of Bishop Bon Scott were indeed the same identical stretch of tarmac, they were well and truly prepared to document this revelation in situ.
The band performs a mixture of cover versions of hard rock songs and original compositions in a style that is a unique fusion of bluegrass and rock music; they are acknowledged as the creators of the musical genre “Rockgrass”.
Hayseed Dixie have now released their latest album Free Your Mind And Your Grass Will Follow (they do love a bit of linguistic play). The 13-track album was out worldwide on 14 April.
Hayseed Dixie perform at Manchester Academy on 27 April 2017.
Hayseed Dixie – image courtesy Chuffmedia