Wayne Hancock

The only other guy who has more Hank Williams in him than me is Wayne ‘The Train’ Hancock...Very few people can be real purists, but Wayne is a purist all the way.

A rare breed of traditionalist, one who imbues his retro obsessions with such high energy and passions that his songs never feel like the museum pieces he's trying desperately to preserve.

The country music scene could do with a lot more characters like Wayne, who push the music’s limits while staying truer to its roots than any well-known names associated with the genre today.

Hancock, who tosses out a roots mix of old country, roadhouse blues, western dance swing, boogie bop, and straight-up rockabilly, takes what was once old and makes it seem like it's always been and always will be.

Artists like Wayne “The Train” Hancock aren’t just singing those songs—they’re living them just like many of us.

What we have here is a classic artist. I can say, without feeling a cold shiver of guilty tension, that Wayne Hancock is the Hank Williams of these times.

There's two reasons you won't hear him on so-called country stations: he's too good and too uncompromising. In an earlier era, Hancock would have been a top honky-tonk star.

One of the most shiver-inducing singers on the planet, who gets his nickname by virtue of the unstoppable power of his vocal chords, Hancock embodies the spirits of Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb and Bob Wills in his ferociously swinging honky-tonk—outlaw country to the max.