Honky Tonk Happy Hour w. James Hand
Country audiences don’t tend to be quite as youth-obsessed as the pop crowd, but even by country standards, putting out your debut national release at the age of 53 is pushing it a bit.
That’s exactly what Waco native - and veteran horse trainer - James Hand did with his 2006 CD, The Truth Will Set You Free, a honky-tonk hayride of an album praised by the likes of Willie Nelson and football coaching legend Darrell Royal.
Hand is comparable to Mississippi bluesmen such as Junior Kimbrough and T-Model Ford, who toiled in obscurity for decades and finally earned appreciation late in life, when most of the great blues titans were gone and authenticity was becoming a rare commodity.
Hand is loaded with authenticity, the kind of authenticity that no amount of earnest, alt-country study can replicate. “Banks of the Brazos” is Western swing in the Bob Wills mode, with a touch of Sun Records rockabilly just to remind you he’s no slavish purist. “I’ve Got a Lot of Hiding Left to Do” is a melancholy, Hank Williams-style weeper on which Hand nearly passes for Hank himself.
Beyond his firm grasp of a fading tradition, what’s most appealing about Hand is that his classicism doesn’t feel like schtick or a political statement, it’s just the most handy musical expression of his weary soul. As he sings on his debut album, Hand is “Just An Old Man With An Old Song.” But that’s not such a bad thing. Free, 5pm Fri, Sam’s Burger Joint, 330 E. Grayson, (210) 223-2830, samsburgerjoint.com.
— Gilbert Garcia, San Antonio Current, January 16, 2008
Music: James Hand
Past the rusted out, abandoned tour bus and the antiquated oil pump in the parking lot, into the restaurant serving legendary chicken-fried steak, and through the hall of fame featuring pictures of all the actors, musicians and politicians who have stopped at this country music oasis, you'll find the heart of the Broken Spoke, a dance floor that's starting to fill as James "Slim" Hand is just heating up.
Friday night, Hand's Western swing and classic country sound was enough to pull the crowd's Wranglers from the seats and fill the dance floor with cowboy hats twirling and boots shuffling. From his very first song, the two-stepper "Baby, Baby, Don't Tell Me That," Hand started strumming his acoustic guitar high up on his chest like he was aiming a shotgun and the bass pumped out no frills, enduring lines. He squeezed in a well-adapted cover or two, such as "There's a Kind of Hush" popularized by Herman's Hermits, and during his set break he made time to greet fans, removing his hat when he met a lady.
He was especially kind to couples with the slower tracks tailored for them like, "In The Corner." The slow whine of the steel guitar, the drummer's brushes rattling on the drum heads and the crawling twang of the guitar solos created a great catalyst for closeness. Throughout the night the dance floor remained full. Hand's cronies immortalized in the hall-of-fame photographs, the likes of Randy Travis, Lyle Lovett, Dolly Parton and Kris Kristofferson would be proud.
— William Mills, writing in the August 27, 2007 Austin American-Statesman
SLIM LENDS A HAND
Slim Hand is ready to expand his Texas roots.
By Mary Huhn, New York Post
August 3, 2007 -- Willie Nelson is already a fan and so is Dale Watson, but it took decades for honky-tonk singer James "Slim" Hand to release an album on a countrywide scale. Last year, however, he stepped up to the big leagues with the release of "The Truth Will Set You Free," his fourth album - this one on Rounder Records.
The 55-year-old Waco-born Texan, who works as a horse trainer, began performing songs at age 13 - when he played for $15 a person and free beer. "I'm still playing for $15 a person and free beer," the former rodeo rider jokes.
There will be no cover at all when Hand, whose music and vocals are steeped in the authentic country tradition of Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, plays at Hill Country BBQ (30 W. 26th St.; [212] 255-4544; hillcountryny.com) tonight and tomorrow.
The Throwback
James Hand's simple songs about hard times have a dusty authenticity
By Jonathan Perry, Globe Correspondent | July 20, 2007
Boston.com Arts & Entertainment
Texas singer-songwriter James Hand doesn't go looking for trouble or misery. But if the songs on his latest album, "The Truth Will Set You Free," are autobiographical -- as he claims more than a few of them are -- misery and troubled times have always had a way of finding him. "I've been like this my entire life," says Hand, 55, whose first nationally released album for the Rounder Records label (he's also issued three discs on his own) features a handful of tear-in-your-beer weepers with titles such as "I've Got a Lot of Hiding Left to Do," "When You Stopped Loving Me, So Did I" and "Just an Old Man With an Old Song."
"People ask me why I write such sad songs, but I'm a happy guy -- really, I am. I don't search for a dark cloud, and when it don't rain on Sunday, I don't say, 'Well, it's gonna rain next Sunday.' But that's a good question and I've often wondered about it myself."
Hand hits the area for a spate of shows next week, including Johnny D's in Somerville Wednesday , the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton Thursday, and the Lowell Folk Festival next Saturday and Sunday . Although his repertoire includes slyly funny slice-of-life sketches such as the disc's title track, even those are about breakups, crack-ups, and slip-ups.
As Hand admits over the phone, he's always been drawn to "the dark side of things. Sometimes I think I've been living it since before I was born."
The old-fashioned songs Hand writes and sings -- about heartache, hard luck, and hard-won redemption -- certainly sound as if they were written before he was born. They're all his, but you'd swear you can hear Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, and George Jones knocking around the lonely barrooms and locked back doors inside Hand's mournful music. And it costs. "Every time I get up there to sing, part of me doesn't come back," he says. "If you don't do that, you're nothing but a charade."
"It's a voice for the ages," says Rounder co-founder Ken Irwin, who first heard Hand's self-released music through friends and was immediately floored. "I've always loved that period of '50s country and that's obviously where he was coming from. I thought, how can this still be happening? Here's someone who is doing it now and is not a pretender. This is who he is and how he grew up and what he's learned."
Indeed, with a reedy drawl that sounds tailor-made for a roadhouse jukebox, an exceedingly gracious and humble manner, and the nickname "Slim" to boot, Hand is a soft-spoken throwback to a bygone age. "The Truth Will Set You Free" evokes an era when cowboy singers in fringe shook off the dust of the dirt road, held their guitars high against their chests, and brought a measure of comfort, humor, and escape to workaday folks at the bar.
One slab of honky tonk autobiography, "Here Lies a Good Old Boy," offers a self-deprecating yet unflinching assessment of Hand's own vices and virtues. It resonates because, just like those folks he sings for and about, Hand's personality isn't a professional pose.
Hand was born in a town called West, Texas, a few miles north of Waco, and says he started hearing music in his head when he was about 10 years old. He'd be playing in the woods alone when the sounds would come through the trees loud and clear, as if transmitted from an invisible radio station, and they would frighten him. When "Slim" got older, the music stopped scaring him, and he started playing what he heard, performing in smoky bars and dives in and around his hometown.
Hand eventually got his big break decades later when Irwin made a point of catching one of those shows while attending the annual South By Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas. Hand -- unsigned and unknown to all but the bar regulars -- was not playing a prestigious festival showcase, just another local gig.
When the time came to record "The Truth Will Set You Free" with high profile co-producers Ray Benson (co-founder of Asleep At The Wheel) and Lloyd Maines (Dixie Chicks producer and Dixie Chick Natalie's dad), bad luck struck and then got worse.
"My mama was ill when we started and she passed away," recalls Hand. "And then daddy became ill at the end [of recording] and he passed away." Hand postponed the recording sessions indefinitely to be by his father's side. "It was a tough time, but the label gave me all the latitude I needed. They were very kind."
"When you have an artist who's so emotive and so close to his feelings, you just have to wait until he's in a place where he can do his best," Irwin says. "We figured, if he could wait after 53 years, then we could certainly wait a few more months."
Since those dark days, life has brightened for Hand. He's getting ready to make another album and plans are underway for a European tour next year. There's even a documentary about his life in the works. But despite the higher profile that comes with critical acclaim and a growing international audience, Hand insists he's never far from his roots or his modest beginnings as a long - distance trucker, bouncer, horse trainer, you name it.
"I've done every conceivable thing you can imagine to put on the back of a country album, and some stuff that you don't want on the back of a country album," Hand says with a chuckle. "I'd say 90 percent of what I write about was suffered first hand. If somebody said to me that we're going to write a song about bungee jumping off the Empire State Building, then I'm going to be pretty helpless because, first, I've never done it. And secondly, I'm not going to."
Festivals offer up a wide world of sounds
Lowell features folk performers from the Congo to Cape Breton
By Sarah Rodman, Globe Staff | July 20, 2007
If you're running low on cash but are hungry to hear some music in the great outdoors before the summer is over, you're in luck. For the price of a Charlie card or the somewhat higher price of a tank of gas , you have several terrific options over the next two weekends.
Tonight the eighth annual GospelFest returns to City Hall Plaza. On Sunday from 5-8 p.m., sweet R&B can be had on the UMass - Boston campus. And next weekend the 21st annual Lowell Folk Festival offers a smorgasbord of musical and culinary treats, crafts demonstrations , and a variety of activities for the kids.
The Lowell event is the largest free folk festival in the country. And it's not just your garden variety coffeehouse confessors that are featured on the festival's six stages. Instead, two dozen acts -- from Congolese drummers to familiar honky-tonk artists -- take folk back to its dictionary origins and play the distinct regional music of their homelands handed down through the generations.
Here are a few to work into your schedule in Lowell (with performance locations in parentheses):
SUNDAY
James Hand and the Magic Band (Dance Pavilion)
A regional legend in Texas, Hand and his band make a rare foray east to play the plain - spoken honky tonk that has made fans of such fellow Lone Star Staters Willie Nelson and Ray Price. If you get up the temerity, request "In the Corner, At the Table, By the Jukebox."
Country to the Bone
James Hand sings it straight
The best country singers always come from tiny, one-horse towns, whether it's Mount Olive, Alabama (Hank Williams), Kingsland, Arkansas (Johnny Cash), Ferriday, Louisiana (Jerry Lee Lewis), or Abbott, Texas (Willie Nelson). If you haven't already, add Tokio, Texas, resident James Hand to that illustrious list. After releasing his first nationally distributed album - The Truth Will Set You Free - last year at the ripe young age of 53, Hand has continued to build on the legend he's created over years of playing Central Texas honky-tonks (longtime fans include Nelson, Asleep at the Wheel's Ray Benson and revered UT football coach Darrell K. Royal). See what all the fuss is about when Hand performs his tragically beautiful country tunes solo and acoustic 8 p.m. Thursday at the All Good Cafe.
Noah W. Bailey, Dallas Observer,
July 19 2007
The Truth Will Set You Free
Music to Set You Free, Los Angeles City Beat
"The Year's Best Albums"
by Chris Morris
"5. James Hand, The Truth Will Set You Free (Rounder). This veteran of Texas’s small-town beer joints rode in on a time machine this year: His debut, produced by Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel and Natalie Maines’s pappy Lloyd, is a glorious honky-tonk throwback reminiscent all at once of Hank Senior, George Jones, and Ray Price."
Notable Music of 2006
CD Reviews by Ken Tucker, NPR - Fresh Air from WHYY
"James Hand, The Truth Will Set You Free (Rounder) -- Hand has got that old-fashioned/new-fangled country music dichotomy down in a way that few performers can imagine, let alone execute so smoothly."
Underground sensation James Hand makes his Opry debut
By Ron Wynn, Nashville City Paper October 27, 2006
"Things are changing daily and dramatically for traditional country vocalist and songwriter James Hand, whose deep, poignant voice and simple, dramatic stories have made him a regional favorite in his native state of Texas and throughout the Southwest for many years.
But now Hand’s getting major national exposure thanks to his exceptional Rounder debut The Truth Will Set You Free. He’s making his first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry Saturday night, and following that up with a slot on the Midnite Jamboree, and Hand confesses rare nervousness about the impending gigs."
Read more...
James Hand Prepares for Stardom at Age 53
Acclaimed Texas Singer-Songwriter Often Compared to Hank Williams
By: Edward Morris Check out www.cmt.com for the article and photo.
With the release of The Truth Will Set You Free, his first nationally-distributed album, singer-songwriter James Hand seems poised to cross the borders of his native Texas into the larger musical world. And it's about time, too. He's 53 years old.
Already, Hand has been spotlighted on National Public Radio's influential Fresh Air show, and he just played Willie Nelson's Fourth of July Picnic for a third year. A film crew headed by some of the same folks who created the 2004 version of The Alamo has been following him around since January as they shoot a documentary on his musical journey.
Many critics hear in Hand's woeful ballads and mournful vocal style a latter-day Hank Williams, a comparison the cover photo on his new album encourages. It shows a skinny guy, most of his face obscured by shadows, standing alone at a microphone, wearing a white hat and '50s-style country finery. He cradles his guitar high on his chest, just as Williams did, and leans slightly forward, as if he might be favoring a bad back.
But the Williams' similarities, while real, are also gratuitous. Hand's music stands up quite well on its own. Sometimes it's bouncy and danceable (as in "Baby, Baby, Don't Tell Me That") or morose and self-pitying (as in "Here Lies a Good Old Boy" and "Just an Old Man With an Old Song"). Whatever the tempo and message, Hand couches it in an intense, hard-driving, vibrato-laced voice that sounds like it could break into a yodel at any moment.
Hand speaks to CMT.com from his home in West, Texas, which, he explains, is a community located near Tokio and just a few miles from Waco. He has a dry sense of humor, and some of his responses have the polished succinctness of having been given before. He is deferentially courteous.
When he wasn't making music, Hand made his living training horses and driving trucks.
"I guess I used music as a crutch, it seems like," he says. "But I discovered I could adopt a highway and walk up and down it and pick up cans and stuff and supplement my income. So I decided I'd go ahead and give music a full shot."
Besides a lifetime of playing clubs and bars, Hand put out three albums independently between 1996 and 2003 -- Shadows Where the Magic Was, Evil Things and Live at Saxon Pub, Austin, TX. Then Ken Irwin, Rounder Records' co-founder and chief talent scout, heard Hand sing during a South by Southwest entertainment conference in Austin.
According to Hand, Irwin was at first skeptical that he had actually written the songs he was performing. "I told him that I did," Hand relates. "He said, 'I don't think so.' I said, 'Well, I was there when I did it.' Whenever I agreed to give [Rounder] 50 percent of my publishing, I believe they all decided it was a good thing."
Without being asked, Hand volunteers that there are skeletons in his closet that have inspired his songs. "I don't think anybody that's real happy has been a very successful songwriter," he reflects. "But, on the other hand, I don't look around for funerals to go to either."
To get Hand's album rolling, Irwin hired veteran Texas musicians Ray Benson and Lloyd Maines to serve as producers. Benson is best known, of course, for his band, Asleep at the Wheel, while Maines has been in the spotlight for his production work on projects by Pat Green, James McMurtry, Charlie Robison and many others. He also co-produced Home, the 2002 album by his daughter's band, the Dixie Chicks.
Hand's mother died in 2002, and he was nursing his father through his final illness when it came time to record the album. "Everybody at the record label was very, very patient with me," he reports. "The last 60 days of Daddy's life, I just told them, 'I ain't leaving [him].' And I didn't. And they never said a word, except, 'Don't you worry about it.'" His father died in May 2005.
The roots of country music run deep in Hand. "Lefty Frizzell used to come by the house when I was a child," he says. "I think I was, like, 6 months old. I got a picture of me sitting on his lap."
Hand met Willie Nelson in 1980 when Nelson was shooting the movie Honeysuckle Rose. At the time, Hand was working as a bouncer at a bar Nelson had dropped into with co-star Amy Irving.
"I said, 'If you're not Willie Nelson, you've certainly won our Halloween contest,'" Hand notes. "He said, 'Well, it's me.' So he hung out there at the beer joint. I didn't live very far from there. So I came out to the house, got a guitar, and we sang and played. He pulled a napkin out, and he said, 'Look. This is good for any show I've got anywhere, and it's good to come down to my studio in Pedernales and cut some demos. I can't promise anything but that.'"
Nelson tapped Hand and his band to open a series of shows for him in Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri last September. "He really took an interest last year," says Hand. "As busy as he is, I believe he's trying to help me." According to Hand's publicity material -- and the cover of his album -- Nelson has labeled the late-bloomer "the real deal."
While Hand is unclear about the details of the documentary being shot on him, he does have it in focus as a source of humor. "I don't mean to come off as a smart aleck," he says, "but I told [the producers] that they ought to let me do something to be documented first. ... I've had people follow me around with a video camera before, but not anything like this. You know, they've got them little robots that follow you around and all that kind of thing. But it's interesting. They're doing the best they can with what they've got to work with. They've even got me looking a little bit better."
If fame and demand should catapult Hand out of Texas, he says he would welcome the change.
"I got no problem with that. Matter of fact, I can't wait to leave. The house -- there ain't nobody but me here now. One of my brothers lives in Fairfield, and my other brother lives down in Waco. I'm a haunted man in a haunted house. I'm ready to go."
MUSIC REVIEW
Folk & Roots Festival a treat
Diverse crowd of all ages turns out for 2-day lineup
By Aaron Cohen
Special to the Chicago Tribune
Published July 11, 2006
The ninth annual Old Town School of Folk Music's Folk and Roots Festival in a packed Welles Park over the weekend reaffirmed the event's significance. With a determination to make families feel comfortable, grandparents and toddlers danced alongside fans who usually don't attend concerts in the daylight. The thousands who filled the park saw musicians who rarely visit Chicago, including some who experienced all sorts of travails before arriving here.
Saturday's headliner, legendary R&B singer Irma Thomas, made only a passing mention of the New Orleans home she lost in Hurricane Katrina. Her feelings were expressed primarily through her defiant delivery of "Stone Survivor" and sadness on "In the Middle of It All."
Most of Thomas' set transcended recent events. Fronting a crack seven-piece band, The Professionals, her pauses and held notes were impeccably timed. She also amiably took requests for such 1960s hits as "Ruler of My Heart" and "It's Raining" after cracking jokes about menopause.
On Sunday, the Refugee All Stars of Sierra Leone made only a brief spoken account of the civil war that devastated the band's country. Most of the set featured the group's take on vintage reggae with leader Reuben Koroma giving Rastafarian shout-outs. But the musical high point was when the group exchanged electric guitars for acoustic strings and gourds for the West African palm wine song, "Gbutivengay." The title means "waist dance" and the band was only too happy to demonstrate it.
Kekele, who also performed on Sunday, gently lifted the crowd with the vocal harmonies of acoustic Congolese rumba. Yet the group itself was not merely relaxed as singers Nyboma and Wuta Mayi seamlessly shifted lead roles. Nor was the diverse audience thrown off when Kekele's tempos quickened as the set closed.
Since the Old Town School is proud of its educational mission, a block of Saturday afternoon's sets turned into a crash course in the history of country music.
Singer James Hand has been performing in Texas for decades and, surprisingly, his festival appearance was his Chicago debut. His band recreated the Western swing template of Bob Wills as Hand's voice wavered alongside slide guitarist Carco Clave. Original hard-luck tales, like "I Need a Floor To Crawl and a Wall To Climb," shaped the set alongside heartfelt tributes to Hank Williams Sr.
Amid so many accomplished visitors, the festival also reminded Chicagoans of this city's musical depth. Steve Dawson and Emily Hurd presented their impeccably crafted pop songs Sunday afternoon, and the fest's closer, The 911 Mambo Orchestra, filled the park with classic salsa, from back when the music embraced improvisation.
NASHVILLE SKYLINE
A
column by CMT/CMT.com Editorial Director Chet Flippo.
I've been listening to some Texas music recently, and I had forgotten just how some good, honest, freewheeling, homegrown music can function as a
musical antioxidant. It flushes all the crap right out of your brain.
By and large, I've found over the years, Texas artists are in it mainly for the music. It's just a different way of life and a different way of looking at music, compared to Nashville. Things may have changed since I was last down there, but I have never heard an artist in Austin talking about a songwriting appointment he or she has. They just write the damned songs. No appointment necessary. Amazing.
One of the most unexpected -- and genuinely good -- recent releases I have heard is James Hand's CD, The Truth Will Set You Free. He's now 53, and this is his first major album release. It was co-produced by the Texas music veterans Ray Benson and Lloyd Maines. The native of the small town of Tokio, Texas, has knocked around for years, supporting his musical habit mainly by working as a horse trainer. Hand is an intense songwriter and singer whose influences and whose own sound harken back to Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell. He delves into the mystical side of misery songs, as Hank did, with such incisive originals as "I've Got a Lot of Hiding Left to Do," "If I Live Long Enough to Heal," "Just an Old Man With an Old Song," and "Shadows Where the Magic Was."
This is some heavy-duty music, so be prepared for a wrenching emotional experience. At the same time, Hand's songs supply the serious meat-and-potatoes substance that so many country songs are lacking these days.
— Chet Flippo for CMT.com
Buddy Magazine, June 2006
The Original Texas Music Magazine
Americana Tales
As sure as the sun will rise in the morning, some astute record label executive will recognize the growing demand for genuine country music, and will turn James Hand into an "overnight" success quicker than dew dies on the grass.
Hand's cowboy hat, boots, jeans, fringed-buckskin jacket, and weathered face come from central casting. But it's his plaintive, high-lonesome warble and his original songs - showcased on a hard-to-find, independently released CD - that mark him as an unmistakable talent. He deals in pure heartache and sentimentality, with just enough corn in a few songs to take the edge off. His lyrics are simple and sharp: "More and more, you love me less and less, and the love you begged me for is gone, I guess," he sings on "Not Worth the Trouble Anymore."
I wrote the two preceding paragraphs in a feature article for BUDDY in April 1998. And it's nice to get that eight-year itch off my back. It seems the world finally is beginning to discover James Hand through his first nationally released album, The Truth Will Set You Free.
Around 2000 or so, I asked a publicist for one of those medium-sized, independent labels if he could influence which artists the label might sign. Warily - fearing he might have to listen to another bad recording by another wannabe - he said he could recommend any artist he liked, although he might or might not have any influence.
I mailed him a copy of Hand's first, locally released CD, Shadows Where the Magic Was, on the East Coast. The publicist put the CD in his player when he got it, then overnighted it to the label on the West Coast.
Within a week, Hand had a contract offer.
The offer wasn't very good. I urged Hand to use it as a starting point to negotiate something better; insulted at the offer, he didn't. He remained in obscurity in Tokio, Texas, near West, which is near Waco.
Back in April 1998, the only place in Dallas to buy Shadows Where the Magic Was was at Borders Books and Music at Preston and Royal. Hand had done an in-store performance at the bookstore, which his buddies called "the library." The next closest place to buy it was the Exxon station operated by a family friend on Interstate 25 near West.
Today, the new, nationally released CD arrived in the mail from another independent label, Rounder. It probably comes with a better contract, although I don't usually hear about those sorts of things.
It also comes with a packet full of positive reviews from places including The Washington Post, The Boston Glove, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, and national music rags including No Depression, Mojo, Country Music News, and Nashville's Music Row as well as the usual Texas suspects.
The Truth Will Set You Free! is a mix of old and newer heartache songs - among the hundreds he's written - that fit right into the traditional honky-tonk genre without sliding into its cliches. Hand's stage performances have always conjured images of one of his influences, Hank Williams; he's never been a Williams clone, though, and his songs are uniquely his. (Three or four Texas-based critics have consistently praised the 54-year-old Hand's work over the years. In the liner notes, Joe Nick Patoski invokes Williams, Lefty Frizzell, Ernest Tubb and hints at the hard times that forged Hand.)
The songs are mostly autobiographical.
"I ain't Shakespeare," Hand said. "I can't write about something that hasn't happened to me."
Texas legend Lloyd Maines produced with Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel. Maines added acoustic guitar, pedal steel, and dobro, Redd Volkaert added electric guitar, and Jason Roberts added fiddle; otherwise, Hand used his road band.
"James Hand music uses no smoke or mirrors, " Maines said. "There is definitely no flossing over of any aspect of this CD.
"James writes lyrics that haven't been written before and I suspect that he's lived every word in these songs."
Hand began kickin' around Central Texas honky-tonks when he was 13. I wrote in 1998 that he's just insecure enough to believe that might be his fate, and just enough of a dreamer to want to be remembered after he's gone.
As the liner notes to the new CD confirm, just about anything people say about James Hand is true; he's tried to live some of that down as he's matured.
Now that some astute record label executive has recognized the growing demand for genuine country music and James Hand finally has a nationally released album, what are the publications saying?
The Philadelphia Inquirer: "Hand is an almost too-good-to-be-true honky-tonker cut from classic cloth."
No Depression: "... a songwriter whose lyrics seem less composed than torn loose from some inner scar tissue."
The Boston Globe: "He sings the songs as if he has lived every minute of them, and his voice expresses a depth and intensity of emotion that is simply breathtaking..."
Music Row: "... stunning, hard-country singer-songwriter..."
And from The Buffalo(New York) News: "... it might resuscitate country's rapidly stiffening carcass all on its own."
— Tom Geddie for Buddie Magazine
Dallas Morning News
GuideLive Profile
James Hand is a tour guide. When he sings, the Texas native takes his listeners back to a bygone era of hard-core honky-tonk the way Lefty Frizzell, Roy Acuff and Hank Williams used to do it. On his new CD, The Truth Will Set You Free, which was recorded in Austin and produced by fellow Texans Ray Benson and Lloyd Maines, Mr. Hand croons with a country quaver in his voice, making it all sound even more authentic. He writes all his songs, from the jovial "Banks of the Brazos" to the mournful "When You Stopped Loving Me, So Did I." It's been a long road to national recognition for this 53-year-old native of the town of Tokio, near Waco. Truth is his first nationally distributed disc, released on successful independent imprint Rounder.
– MARIO TARRADELL / Staff Writer for the Dallas Morning News
Austin Music Magazine, Issue 3, May/June
Featured Review
Never before has so many people collectively muttered at once, "well it's about time." After nearly four decades filling Central Texas honky tonks with uncompromisingly country country music, James Hand finally landed a record deal and has just released his first nationally distributed album.
Mr. Hand can't escape comparisons to Hank Willians, Sr. and Lefty Frizzell. While it's easy to hear why, it's even easier to feel why. But it's important to note James Hand isn't copying anyone. He's not recreating music from the past. He just can't help the fact that the spirits of Hank, Lefty, and Ernest Tubb feel so at home tagging along wherever he goes.
The Truth Will Set Your Free equally showcases Hand's impossibly perfect vocal phrasing and songwriting. A dozen originals carry us through playful dance numbers to brutally honest introspection.
Co-producers Lloyd Maines and Ray Benson succeeded in tracking powerfully rich recordings that live up to the source. The only mistake in thei whole venture was not to press the recording to wax. The chance to listen to "Back of the Brazons," "Shodows Where the Magic Was," or "Here Lies a Good Old Boy" on clean vinyl would put this reviewer in a state of musical nirvana some onlookers might confuse with a coma.
— dante dominick for Austin Music Magazine
Country Music News, May 29, 2006
Album of the Month
Anyone who listens to country music (even today’s ‘new’ country fans) has been exposed to the music of the immortal Hank Williams. Even if country radio today doesn’t play his recordings, they often play his songs, willingly or otherwise, since most every country recording artist has cut a Hank Williams song at some time during their career. Many of us however can only relate to the original Hank Williams (he passed away January 1, 1953) through his recordings, his off-spring (Hank Jr. and Hank III) and the occasional glimpse of Hank Sr. on a TV historical program… that however will no longer be a problem. There has been a ‘second coming’ of Hank Williams. Say hello to James Hand....
Read the rest of the article on the Country Music News site.
SamHouston
RAM Radio
May 6, 2006
I saw the James Hand show at Blanco's last night...and it was incredible.
James is the real deal. I've read a lot about the man, and I've listened to his music, but I was still not prpared for what I heard last night. The songs made me feel that I was back in those honky tonks that I remember from 35 years ago, when country music was still more hardcore than not, and when singers really connected with their audiences.
James did all of his own wonderful songs, and he mixed in some country classics too, but it was downright spooky to hear him do Hank Williams songs. His versions of "Love Sick Blues" and "Honky Tonk Blues" were just so dead on that it was like watching James BECOME Hank Williams. Close your eyes and listen, and you would swear that it really was Hank himself standing up there and giving it his all.
The man is simply an incredible songwriter. His songs are not pretentious, or wordy, or filled with "arty" references to "paint" pictures. A James Hand song uses simple words that cut to the chase. They take the listener deep into the soul of the man who wrote them; we feel his pain, and we feel his losses and his triumphs. We understand the man who wrote the songs because James holds nothing back. He shares his pain with all of us.
That's the best kind of country music songwriting, and only a few of the real masters manage to achieve that level. I ran into Leslie (of Miss Leslie & Her Juke-Jointers fame) during one of the breaks last night, and she mentioned how much in awe of James' songwriting skills that she is. I think we all felt that way last night, because I knew exactly what she meant.
I was very impressed with the way that James connects with his audience on a personal basis...the man expressed his appreciation for the folks who came out to see him and gave so many hugs to his friends, old ones and new ones alike, that there is no doubt in my mind that James Hand deserves the recent attention, and that he is enjoying the ride.
Please don't miss this man if he comes anywhere at all near you. You have to see him to believe just how good he really is. It's one of those things you have to see with your own eyes and hear with your own ears to really understand why James Hand is finally getting some of the success that he so much deserves.
— Sam Houston of RAM Radio on the Real Country Music Forums
No Depression
May/June 2006, #63 p.130
There are country performers who take pains to maintain an ironic detachment from their material; no matter how emotionally riven a song's character may be, he's still an actor fretting on the stage of the singer's imagination. "Hey," the musician seems to be acknowledging with a wink between verses, "It's only a song."
James Hand ain't one of those guys.
A 54-year-old "overnight" sensation in the bars and dancehalls around Austin, Hand hooked up with the unusual tag-team pairing of Asleep At The Wheel's Ray Benson and steel guitarist Lloyd Maines to produce his first album for a large label. Both of those guys know their way around a hardwood dancefloor, and in Hand they have found not only a singer who harkens back to the '50s-era honky-tonk glory days of Ray Price, Lefty Frizzell, Ernest Tubb and, yep, Hank Williams, but a songwriter whose lyrics seem less composed than torn loose from some inner scar tissue.
"I guess I've just been a haunted bastard my whole life," Hand told an Austin reporter, and when you hear him sing a mournful tale such as "I've Got A Lot Of Hiding Left To Do", "If I Live Long Enough To Heal" or the self-explainatory "Leave The Lonely Alone", your're inclined to believe it.
Like Willie Nelson (with whom he shares roots in Central Texas' blackland prairie country), Hand conveys an intimacy and believability that makes even lighthearted two-step trifles such as "Baby, Baby, Don't Tell Me That" and "Little Bitty Slip" seem like secrets whispered in confessional. But the most remarkable track here is "Shadows Where The Magic Was", the tale of a bereft husband and father who burns down his ex's house around him. The song's images - a cap to a whiskey bottle spinning across the room, the flames licking up around him as he stares into the devil's eyes - are almost intolerably vivid.
Ironic detachment, whatever its merits, doesn't render music like that. Hand gets to the heart of his songs the old fashioned way - by living them - and we the audience are the richer for it.
— John T. Davis for No Depression
MOJO (Europe)
May 2006
[4 Stars] If you love country and western, look no further.
James 'Slim' Hand has lived all his life in Tokio, Texas, a place so small it's not on most maps. A sometime rodeo rider, horse trainer and truck driver, he's also been a honky-tonk singer for four decades. "When I was 13, we'd play for $15 a person and free beer. I'm 53 and I'm still playing for $15 a person and free beer." With luck, his excellent new album will change all that. Sounding like a combination of the great Hanks of country (Snow, Thompson and, above all, Williams), he has an easy-going juke-joint style and a nice line in wry songwriting. Tunes like Here Lies A Good Old Boy have a timeless quality, while best of all is the rueful, self-mocking Just An Old Man With An Old Song. Twelve self-penned tracks, all of them good - an unexpected treat.
— Max Déchamé
Uncut Review (Europe)
May 2006
[4 Stars] Metaphysical honky tonk from an obscure Texas roadhouse veteran.
It's happened before: late-blooming singer-songwriters - from Jimmie Dale Gilmore to Don Walser - spinning into public consiousness from lonely rural Texas outposts. James Hand is another, a 53-year-old latterday Hank Williams who's been kicking around the state for decades with a sound as stone counry as Ernest Tubb's nasal baritone. On his Rounder debut, Hand manoeuvres from crisp westen swing ("Banks Of The Brazos") to steel-drenched paranoiac ballads ("I've Got A Lot Of Hiding Left To Do"), all rendered with a guilt-wracked quality devastating in its blunt acceptance of his thorny life.
— Luke Torn
The Boston Globe CD Report
April 28, 2006
James Hand's music is as hard-core and old school as the honky-tonk variety of country gets. Hand is wont to say that he doesn't write his songs; life writes them, and he just tries to remember the words. Judging by the songs (all from his pen) and the way he sings them on his collection, he's got a vivid memory. Surrounded by the classic, unadorned sound of fiddle and (most of all) pedal steel, he runs through a series of ballads, slow moaners, hard shuffles, and the occasional change-of-pace hillbilly romp. Their mood is captured perfectly by the photo accompanying the liner notes -- Hand sitting at a table with a drink before him and a jukebox behind, head bowed, looking so lonesome he could cry. He sings the songs as if he has lived every minute of them, and his voice expresses a depth and intensity of emotion that is simply breathtaking; with its edge-of-sobbing quaver, there hasn't been as distinctive a vocal instrument in country music since Gary Stewart's careening vibrato. With a release on a national label at the age of 53, after years of playing the bars and roadhouses of his native Texas, the rest of the nation has the chance to find out what aficionados already know: James Hand is a one-of-a-kind purveyor of timeless country music. ESSENTIAL TRACK: ''Baby, Baby, Don't Tell Me That."
— Stuart Munro for The Boston Globe
Texas Music Magazine
Spring 2006, Issue 26
Like some stray radio signal from the Grand Ole Opry of a half-century ago beaming back from the cosmos, James Hand's latest is the epitome of gutbucket, heartworn country music. On The Truth Will Set You Free, he bows deeply to the holy trinity of Hank, Lefty and Ernest, singing in a lonely howl of a voice burnished with the tears 'n' beers of life as seen from the bandstand of a honky-tonk at closing time. The liberating truths he reveals are the strong whiskey shots of such elemental stuff as mortality ("Here Lies a Good Old Boy") and loss ("When You Stopped Loving Me, So Did I") that formed the heart and spine of country music before it went uptown, with arrangements carved from the wood of the eternal dance floor. He may be "Just An Old Man with an Old Song," but Hand makes the vintage styles sound as fine as ever here in the new century.
— Rob Patterson for Texas Music Magazine
Philadelphia Enquirer
Country/Roots Reviews
He's no secret down in his native Texas, but, at age 54, James Hand is just now making his national debut. And boy, is he ready.
Hand is an almost too-good-to-be-true honky-tonker cut from classic cloth. Several of the songs on The Truth Will Set You Free first turned up on a live album a couple of years ago, but here, coproducers Ray Benson and Lloyd Maines give them and the rest of the set sterling studio treatments with the help of ace guitarist Redd Volkaert, who lends a touch of jazzy sophistication.
While Hand sings with a Hank Williams quaver, it's clear that all of the heartache and regret that pour out of these tunes, as well as the flashes of humor, are his own. And it's also clear that, in vibrant contrast to what he claims at one point, he's not "Just an Old Man With an Old Song."
- Nick Cristiano (***1/2) for the Philadelphia Enquirer
Austin Chronicle
April 7, 2006
It's impossible not to root for James Hand. The 53-year-old hard-luck crooner and horse trainer has been toiling in Central Texas honky-tonks since his teens, accruing a lifetime of heartbreak and perseverance that pays off handsomely on this "debut." ... Read the full review by Christopher Gray
Washington Post
Sunday, March 19
In 1997, horse trainer James Hand took the stage at Dallas's fabled Sons of Hermann Hall with Texas honky-tonk mainstay Tommy Alverson's band supporting him. Tall and slight and dressed in a subdued Western suit and white cowboy hat, the 47-year-old Hand tentatively strummed his acoustic guitar and started to sing.
When he did, a thrill shot through the transfixed crowd of hardened hardcore honky-tonk fans; in that instant they knew they were in the presence of the Real Deal.
A few of Hand's early songs -- "In the Corner, at the Table, by the Jukebox" and "Banks of the Brazos" among them -- have been re-recorded for "The Truth Will Set You Free," his first Rounder Records release. Even better, they're embellished by stellar playing by Redd Volkaert (Merle Haggard's guitarist), Asleep at the Wheel fiddler Jason Roberts and Lloyd Maines's pedal steel. New ones, including "Just an Old Man With an Old Song" and "Leave the Lonely Alone," are also given polished presentations.
Hand, who wrote all the songs, quit listening to Hank Williams for fear of sounding even more like him, which he does, alarmingly so. But that early date was all Hand, pure and simple, and the similarities were completely natural.
Hand's lyrics can be dark despite the bright melodies; the title tune is shattering in its deception. "When You Stopped Loving Me, So Did I" and "If I Live Long Enough to Heal" say it all -- but it's not all tears in your beer. "Little Bitty Slip" and "Baby, Baby, Don't Tell Me That" are as comical as they are danceable.
— Buzz McClain for the Washington Post
Texas Monthly
March 2006
Besides working as a horse trainer, James Hand, from the tiny town of Tokio near Waco, has been haunting honky-tonks with his hard-won tales for more than thirty years. Suddenly, at 53, his on-and-off music career is decidedly on. The Truth Will Set You Free (Rounder), his first national release, is also his best. There’s some Lefty and George Jones in his music, but Hand is really a Hank devotee: He sings a bit like him, and his songs pack a similar emotional wallop. Wrenching, honest fare like “I’ve Got a Lot of Hiding Left to Do” and “If I Live Long Enough to Heal” will bury Hand’s days as an unknown—if enough people still crave the real deal. Hand himself sums up his anachronistic status when he claims that “they’ll run out of typewriter ribbon before I run out of songs.” Um, James …
— Jeff McCord in the March 2006, Texas Monthly
Jumpin' Hot Club
SXSW Reviews
James Hand @ Opal Divines. The real deal…. The best Honky Tonk singer in Texas.Great song writing & an extraordinary voice made for quite a unique experience up on the hilltop. Highly recommended.
All Music Guide
James Hand sounds like the kind of guy who was playing hard honky tonk music in beer bars and roadhouses long before "Young Country" reared its ugly head and made his music unfashionable, and there's a good reason why -- he's been doing just that in a career that has spanned four decades. After all that time, Rounder Records finally took a chance on him and released Hand's first nationally distributed album, The Truth Will Set You Free, in 2006. While one can clearly hear hints of Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, Hank Thompson, and Johnny Horton in Hand's strong, lonesome voice and songs of broken hearts and hard living, he doesn't sound like he's trying to copy anyone so much as he's writing and performing in the style of these creative contemporaries, and at its best The Truth Will Set You Free plays like a country record that could have been made 40 years ago without suggesting this man is playing at being "retro." (He still has his day job as a horse trainer, which tells you plenty about his attitude towards the current state of Nashville.) "In the Corner, At the Table, By the Jukebox" is a brilliant evocation of the solace of a night at the bar, "If I Live Long Enough to Heal" suggests Hand clearly remembers his last broken heart, and "Little Bitty Slip" is a rollicking tale of the hard work of keeping a happy home. While the production by multi-instrumentalist Lloyd Maines and Ray Benson (of Asleep at the Wheel) is sometimes a shade too clean for the material, the performances are spot-on, and Hand truly delivers the goods on all 12 cuts -- it's stretching the truth to say he's the last of the great honky tonk men, but The Truth Will Set You Free shows there are still some real country singers and songwriters out there playing it raw and real and waiting to be heard, and Hand's soulful, heartfelt music is a joy to hear.
— Mark Deming for All Music Guide
Music Row
March 16, 2006
My second roots-music column this week has all the evidence you need to prove, "Country music is alive and well and living in Americana."
In Diana Jones and James Hand we have two authentic hillbilly song poets with the voices of dusty angels. Believe me when I tell you that their CDs, My Remembrance of You and The Truth Will Set You Free, respectively, are worth every penny you pay for them. If you love classic Loretta and Lefty, you'll swoon.
JAMES HAND/If I Live Long Enough To Heal
Writer: James Hand; Producer: Ray Benson/Lloyd Maines ; Publisher: Slim Hand/Happy Valley, BMI; Rounder (track)
At the age of 53, this stunning, hard-country singer-songwriter is releasing his first nationally distributed album. Titled The Truth Will Set You Free, it is collection of deeply soulful performances. On this ballad, his individuality as a vocal stylist shines. His tremolo, lonesome wail and pleading tone mark him as a honky-tonk master throughout an amazing set. If you love real country music, seek this Texan out at once.
— Robert Oermann
'The Truth' may set Hand free, but will it make him happy?
By Michael Corcoran
AMERICAN-STATESMAN MUSIC WRITER
Saturday, March 11, 2006
View on-line with photos
When you go to see an act at a record store, you're not expecting musical magic or spontaneity, but a sampler set on the way to the autograph booth. The acoustics are not great, the sun's still out and half the folks are there for the free beer.
But country singer James Hand's March 1 set celebrating the release of "The Truth Will Set You Free," the 53-year-old's first nationally distributed album, just seemed to mean more. With the packed store in full support, he turned Waterloo Records into a moving, stirring, thrilling box full of memories. Remember the '50s and '60s heyday of country music? The mournful-voiced Hand is not a throwback, but a continuation.
Texas country singer James Hand performs at Waterloo Records on 6th St. and Lamar. Band members Will Indian, guitar, (left) and Gene Kurtz, bass, (right) join him on stage. Hand's first nationally distributed album 'The Truth Will Set You Free' came out February 28, 2006.
"We've got time for one more," the native son of "Last Picture Show" Texas said in introducing the up-tempo "Little Bitty Slip" from the new Rounder release. But when that number was over, Hand and band played another one and then another, pulling out a Hank Williams song that Hand rarely sings anymore because he's become weary of comparisons to the tragic country legend. The crowd, which ranged from couples who could've met at the old Skyline roadhouse on North Lamar to tattooed hipsters, hung on every vocal swoop and moan, cheering Hand on like a marathoner at the 20-mile mark. The lovefest ended with Hand singing an a capella yowler, accompanied only by the tears escaping from his dark, deep-set eyes.
James Hand had done a lot of living, a lot of losing to get to this point. Nobody from Waterloo even considered making the "wrap it up" sign; this true-blue honky tonk original could play as long as he wanted.
A day earlier, Hand sat in a beer joint disguised as the Willis Country Store, near his home in Tokio, about 10 miles north of Waco. Exceedingly polite, answering questions with "yes, sir" and "no, sir" and calling everyone "Mister" or "Miz," Hand often slid from jovial into gutters of gloom during a three-hour interview. Hand bore little resemblance to a 40-year veteran of country dives and dancehalls, who's on the verge of national attention for the first time.
"I don't know if I've been more blessed or cursed," Hand said, looking back at the hard life he sings so beautifully about. "But I've been diversified." He's one of those guys who taps your forearm when he throws out a good line.
In the blessed column he's got the gift for honest, direct songwriting and the voice to match. Hand was raised by a loving family, embraced by neighbors who look after him. He's got the backroads and woods of northern McLennan County as getaways for his soul. He's got Willie Nelson in his corner.
On the cursed side, Hand will tell you — tap, tap — is everything else.
"I just want to feel worthy," he said, staring down at a trio of Coors Light bottles sent over by fellow customers. "Right now, my life ain't worth a damn."
His happiest years, he said, were from 1990 to 1993, when he lived with a schoolteacher and drove a gas truck from 4 a.m. to 1 p.m. for $270 a week. "The straight life suited me just fine," he said. "If they didn't sell the company, I'd still be working there."
Just as at his concerts, when he balances the moments of despair with galloping swing numbers, Hand swings the full emotional pendulum when he's just hanging out. Ol' Slim, as he's known back home, is a constant jokester who recently bought the boys at the Willis Country Store a round by announcing, "Country music's been very good to me: I made $15 last weekend." When the barflies chuckled, Hand said, "If you think $15 ain't much money, try to borrow it."
En route to Wolf's Bar in West, a favorite hangout, Hand's eyes welled up when he pointed out the farmhouse his parents built on 14 acres of land they bought in 1959. His mother passed on in 2002, his father in 2005, both from lung cancer. Hand lived with them at that house for most of his life. His loneliness thickens the air around him.
His father, a horse trainer, took a turn for the worse in early 2005, just as Hand had finished the basic tracks of "The Truth Will Set You Free," which features several re-recordings of songs from Hand's three previous, locally released albums. With the elder Hand given just a few more weeks to live, Hand headed back to Tokio, with the album 90 percent done and a block of studio time put on hold.
"I sat at Daddy's bed for 60 days in a row," Hand said, then he thought about something. "Well, I done told a lie there. There was one Sunday afternoon I came down to Austin to redo a couple vocals. I hired a policeman friend from Cleburne to drive me down because he could drive as fast as he wanted and not get a ticket."
Before he signed his deal with prominent roots music label Rounder in 2004, Hand wasn't sure he'd ever make another record. But Hand had his champions, such as KUT DJ Tom Pittman, who craved another minor masterpiece like the 1996 debut "Shadows Where the Magic Was." Pittman put Hand's farm-noir sound in the hands of Rounder label head Ken Irwin, who caught an especially frisky Thursday night set at the Saxon Pub and offered a deal.
"Ken asked me, 'How's his business sense?' " Pittman recalled, "And I told him, 'It's the worst you've ever seen.' James is even uncomfortable selling you a CD after a show. He thinks that if you give him $15, he should come over and mow your lawn."
But Hand's "aw shucks" humility is one of the reasons he's probably the most beloved figure on the local country scene since National Guard retiree Don Walser started singing at the short-lived country paradise Henry's on Burnet Road about 15 years ago.
Like Walser, Hand wears his authenticity like cologne. He's as backwoods as moonshine, able to name more rodeo clowns than former U.S. presidents. "I used to drive to West High with a shotgun in my truck and nobody thought nothing 'bout it back then," Hand said. These days that would draw a SWAT team.
Hand is so country he can introduce a song as "one of the bestest I ever wrote" without a tinge of affectation. Who else can look and sound so much like Hank Williams ("You even walk like him," Ray Price told Hand a few years back) and not come off as a wannabe? When Hand sings "Just an Old Man with an Old Song" it sounds as if he was born with that tune in 1952, the same year Hank Williams died. There's such a depth of expression in Hand's "If I Live Long Enough To Heal" and "When You Stopped Loving Me, So Did I" that this music is truly his own.
"I've gotta believe that the same forces that moved Hank, also move James," Pittman said of the Hank-like way Hand's shoulders jump to the rhythm.
"I guess I've just been a haunted bastard my whole life," Hand said. He said he knew he was different in the first grade. "They made us put our heads down on a towel and take a nap," he said. "Then they'd play a lullaby and I'd just start sobbing. Nobody could tell me why."
Like Williams, who died at age 29 from drug and alcohol abuse, Hand has tried to negotiate his partying ways with God-fearing beliefs. "I pray every night," Hand said, "but I also like to drink just 'bout every night."
Other true-life honky tonk outlaws might parlay a weekend in the pokey into "doin' time," but when Hand was asked about his rumored scrapes with the law, he deferred. "Now, when I put on my hat and sing, that's the public's business," he said. "But when a door closes behind me, that's my business."
Records show, however, that Hand was convicted of possession of amphetamines in 1988 and sent to prison, where he served nine months. To not put that marketing bonanza out there is kind of like a gangsta rapper trying to pass off bullet wounds as birthmarks.
Rounder's promotional effort makes good use of Willie Nelson, whose proclamation of Hand as "the real deal" is on the back cover of every Hand CD. The two met in 1980 when a 27-year-old Hand was a bouncer at Wolf's and Nelson was showing his "Honeysuckle Rose" co-star Amy Irving around his old stomping grounds. "It was Halloween and when they came up to the door I said, 'Well, if you ain't him, you sure look like him,' " Hand said, "and Mr. Nelson said, 'I'm him.' "
The two talked music for a while, then Hand went home and got his guitar. After he played Nelson a few originals, Willie grabbed a napkin and scribbled on it, "James Hand can record for free."
Several months later, Hand redeemed the napkin at Nelson's Pedernales studio, where he laid down demos for a couple hours. Nelson has also taken Hand out on tour with him several times as the opening act.
Much more often, though, Hand plays beer joints back home, where it could be anyone playing in the corner. On such nights, when Hand's guitar struggles to be heard over the chatter, the singer sometimes introduces classics as originals, just to see if anyone's paying attention. "Here's another one that done real good for us," he said recently, then went into "Your Cheatin' Heart." His son Tracer, a former bull riding champion, fell out of his chair laughing, but everyone else just kept on yapping.
But when the crowd is enrapt in Hand's performance, such as the Waterloo appearance, the songs can be spellbinding. Every one of Hand's songs is about something that happened to him, every lyric means something, which is why he often cries when he's singing.
"I don't believe that crap about how you have to make yourself happy before you can make other people happy," he said at Wolf's, nibbling on orange crackers from the vending machine. "Until I can make people happy first, then I can't even think about feeling better about myself."
Toronto Star
Making his mainstream recording debut at age 54, Texas singer-songwriter Hand is a honky-tonk hero for his affection and style of long-gone legends Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell and Ernest Tubb. In many ways, Hand resembles Williams almost too keenly. His white Stetson and suit, his simple chord changes and heartbreaking melodies and lyrics, the no-nonsense bass-drums-guitar-and-fiddle backing, the very timbre of his voice are at first distracting. But two or three tracks in, it's clear this weathered artist is the real thing: a road-hardened folk poet of the first order in line with his peers Lyle Lovett, Townes Van Zandt and Canadian roots music star Fred Eaglesmith. [4 Stars]
— GQ for the Toronto Star
