Wayne Hancock Tulsa

Tulsa—Wayne's third full length for us—is a testament to the version of America he loves; one decorated with lonesome desert highways, cheap hotels, dance halls, and lost loves along the way. Wayne Hancock personifies the two great American inventions of jazz and country and creates his own style of uncompromising western swing; as much Gershwin as Hank; equal parts Art Blakley and Bob Wills.

In typical Wayne fashion, Tulsa was put to tape in 2 days, capturing the band at their livest and loosest. Recorded by longtime producer and ally, Lloyd Maines (Wilco, Joe Ely, Richard Buckner, Uncle Tupelo), Tulsa is spurred on Wayne’s signature "call-outs" to his stellar cast– Eddie Biebel, Dave Biller, Paul Skelton (lead guitar), Chris Darrell (doghouse bass), Eddie Rivers (steel guitar), Bob Stafford (trombone), and John Doyle (clarinet).

Tulsa adds to Wayne’s stellar canon of musical documentation of an America, not spliced into red and blue states, but one where in any town, on any given night, with the right soundtrack, you can still take a real top shelf girl out for a spin and knock back a couple of cold ones.

"Tulsa is yet another beautifully crafted collection of stunning originals that finds him walking in the footsteps of giants; in fact, it might just be his best yet. While there are plenty of tunes here that call upon the swinging spirits of everyone from Cab Calloway to Gatemouth Brown to a thousand Western Swing kings whose names have been lost to the sands of time, Hancock’s way with a ballad is nearly unequaled." —Offbeat

"Is August too early to start talking 'album of the year?' You can imagine Wills himself would give a hearty 'Haw!' shout-out to Hancock, to which we can only add 'Boy Howdy!'" —Creem

"Hancock is no mere imitator of a dead style; his country history is a living, breathing entity and the concerns of his down and out song subjects are contemporary yet as timeless as love and loss." —Amplifier

"With songs about drinking, the road, heartbreak, Texas, and the joys of music and song, Hancock revives the honky tonk aesthetics of Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb and dips into the western swing well of Bob Wills making those old styles seem utterly contemporary." —Montreal Gazette