EMAIL HIM

His Philosophy

show reviews
1. Immortal Lee County Killers, All Night, The Loners
Supersuckers Country Western Extravaganza, with Jessie Dayton

Hasil Adkins is a one man band. He speaks drunken mountain English. He plays that West Virginia voodoo blues. Authentic Americana. He’s deep in the woods and you go in there and moonshine and cheap wine and you come back into the world and you got something to tell all your big city modern world friends about. And he brings it to ya on those rare occasions when he comes out and plays a show outside of West Virginia. He was having a good old time that night. You can learn all the historical stuff about Hasil including how to pronounce his name elsewhere on the internet.

Well the one thing about him is that when he was a little boy he listened to the radio and a Hank Williams song would come on and the DJ would say “That was Hank Williams” and Hasil figured it was one guy making all those sounds – not only the singing and the guitar - but the bass, the slide guitar, and the fiddle as well. So Hasil naturally decided to do a one-man band.

That night at the 506 he did an encore and his assistant said, “He don’t do encores.” So it was a special night. Hasil was a good beer drunk. Not too vodka wild or anything – just enough to bring that weird mountain voodoo and keep time with the feet on the kick drum and high hats. The show was much better than I expected, and much better than anything I’d heard from Hasil on record. His strings were just out of tune enough and it becomes mind-bending and you think you’re walkin sideways and seeing elves out of the sides of your eyes the whole show. That’s what voodoo’s all about. Hasil puts the whammy on ya. It’s really good old American magic and authenticity that you just don’t see anymore. Hasil Adkins is living history. A piece of living American historical voodoo up their in Weird and Wonderful West Virginia mountains. He was having a good ole time. In the middle of one of his songs he said, “I seen nat ole Say-damn Hassain and he say ‘Ookalakkahammalabliillstankalakka’.” Damn that hurt my sides from laughing.

And he told stories but you could barely understand him. But the one was an old story and I was the only one to laugh because I heard the story many times before:

A traveling flim-flammer rolls into a small town and puts up big posters saying “IT’S COMING” in big red letters. All the townspeople wonder what the hell IT is and the next day he puts up posters that say “IT’S COMING”, but this time it gives directions to a place out in the woods on the edge of town with a date and time and all the townspeople show up and there’s a tent there. And a man is standing collecting money and the people cram in there, standing room only, all wondering what IT is and they sit down and there’s some curtains and the curtains open up and there’s nothing on the stage but a sign on an easel with a little light bulb above it that says “IT’S GONE”. That’s a damn good story.