Hayseed Dixie
The hills are alive: For those about to rock, yeeeee-haawwwwww!!!! Welcome to Deer Lick Holler, a fertile valley hidden deep in the Appalachian mountains, completely cut off from the modern world and populated entirely by hard- drinkin' hillbillies who spend their days making moonshine and their nights performing unnatural acts upon city slickers who lose their way in these backwoods. It may be the back end of nowhere, but it's home to Hayseed Dixie, a bunch of good ol' boys who play a unique hybrid of bluegrass and hair metal which they call "rockgrass". Hayseed Dixie don't bother with the usual jimmy-crack- corn stuff - their mission is to interpret the music of AC/DC, using banjos, fiddles, jugs and jew's harp. Hell, it's all there on their 2001 album, A Hillbilly Tribute to AC/DC, which features such classic tracks as Highway to Hell, You Shook Me All Night Long and Back In Black. Dirty deeds done Dixie style? Yer darn tootin'.
Southern hospitality: Hayseed Dixie didn't just come down from the mountain with a bunch of covers. In fact, they'd never even heard of AC/DC, being cooped up in their mountain hideaway, happily playing the traditional music learned from their moms and pops, oblivious to such new-fangled things as cellphones, Interwebs and flushing toilets. Then, one fateful day, a stranger was driving through Deer Lick Holler (very fast, with the doors locked), when he crashed into a tree at Devil's Elbow Curve and expired. The boys left their still to investigate and, searching the wreckage, came across some old vinyl records, their sleeves featuring a strange little guy in a schoolboy outfit playing an electric guitar. The boys brought the records home, played them on their old 78 rpm Edison Victrola, and declared that it was mighty fine music, if a little loud.
Straight outta Hicksville: When Hayseed Dixie ventured out of their valley and began playing gigs, they were delighted with the response to their interpretations of classic AC/DC songs. They toured the world and discovered the delights of jacuzzis, DVDs and girls who weren't related to them. The real AC/DC even invited them to play at a tour-wrap party. Emboldened, the band turned their attention to another rock colossus: the legendary Kiss. The result was Kiss My Grass - A Hillbilly Tribute to Kiss. Soon Hayseed Dixie were sprinkling their own brand of swamp dust on such songs as Queen's Fat Bottomed Girls, Motorhead's Ace of Spades and The Darkness's I Believe in a Thing Called Love. Hayseed Dixie will roll into Ireland at the end of this month, playing the Roisin Dubh in Galway on the 30th, An Cruiscin Lan in Cork on the 31st, and Whelan's in Dublin on November 1st. While here, they'll hold their own version of the Pepsi challenge, pitting their home-made mountain moonshine against our poitin.
