Hayseed Dixie
Jeff Taylor
„I do believe that AC/DC’s Highway to Hell and Hank Williams’s The Lost Higway are the same road,” said John Wheeler/Barley Scotch, leader of the group Hayseed Dixie.
As I mentioned in the previous entry, they are a bluegrass country band and play covers of AC/DC songs as well as songs by Aerosmith, KISS, Queen (Fat-Bottom Girls) and Motorhead (Ace of Spades).
No ripping guitar solos, no monsterous drum solo; bluegrass music is played on the fiddle, five-string, banjo, guitar, mandolin and upright bass. The songs were about the wild life, always on the road, drinking, hard times, love gone…and I’m not talking about AC/DC songs but about Hank Williams’s. Just like AC/DC’s first vocalist Bon Scott, Hank also died young msotly due to alcohol. It’s the same music, just different instruments.
As I said, Hayseed Dixie’s Tribute to AC/DC is a great record but not all the songs work well as accoustic country songs. For example, TNT almost sounds like a joke. However, the first song Highway to Hell has the opposite effect. After listening to Hayseed’s version several, you can’t imagine it being played differently. Hell, they do it much faster than AC/DC with a killer solo, banjo and not electric guitar but who cares?! In a way, it’s fitting that song about the road to hell for sinful deeds should be played by a southern possibly Baptist band than an Australian band.
The biggest suprise on this record is „Back in Black”, a song with the most awesome riff ever. Let’s go on a tangent with this song. It’s more than the killer riff (the first thing I learned on guitar) and snarling vocals and chorus but also the anticipation built up at the beginning. Before Angus Young starts that gorgeous but simple riff, you hear him strumming the mutes strings of his guitar a cuple times. That signals what song is about to start, but also you never sure if it will start. This seems to be a ridiculous thought because of course in second Back In Black will come blasting through the speakers. Yet, each time I hear that simple introduction, I can’t tell the exact moment when, or even if, the band comes in. I experience Black Sabbath’s Iron Man in the same way – first there is the slow steady beating a bass drum and I wait in delicious agony for Tony Iommi’s droning guitar to rumble, not even a riff just a growl of a guitar. Finally, Ozzy Osbourne sings „I am Iron Man” and a tidal wave of Black Sabbath slaps you in the face. The ultimate kind of song that a band can create is in which the listener feels that they will kill themsleves if the song doesn’t start soon. (In a later blog entry we can explore more such songs.)
The final song for this blog entry is Hayseed Dixie’s take on AC/DC’s most famous song „You Shook Me All Night Long”. Initially, I considered not choosing this song, it’s almost a cliche. However, the song just works so well as bluegrass song. In fact, it’s better than the original. All my readers, who are cool, have to admit that it’s not AC/DC’s best song, a bit poppy. Not as bad as Metallica’s „Nothing Else Matters”, not as good as Guns-n-Roses „Sweet Child o’ Mine”. Back to Hayseed Dixie, the other AC/DC songs on the record e.g. „Big Balls”, „TNT”, „Money Talks”, are good – „Highway to Hell” is awesome, but „You Shook Me…” was almost made to be a country songs with some fiddle playing. I won’t say anything else and force you to listen to the version yourself.
