Hayseen Dixie's John Wheeler talks ahead of Wolverhampton show
When John Wheeler – aka Barley Scotch – decided to form a Hillbilly Tribute to AC/DC he was doing it just for fun.
He didn’t imagine he’d still be on the road 17 years later with his rockgrass parody.
And yet Hayseed’s remarkable run continues. They’re now 15 albums into a career that has included such classics as Sjt. Munchs Drikkeklubb Band, Killer Grass, Weapons of Grass Destruction, A Hot Piece of Grass, Let There Be Rockgrass and the brilliant Kiss My Grass: A Hillbilly Tribute to Kiss.
Nor, indeed, did he plan on playing the main stage at Glastonbury while also appearing at both Download and the Cambridge Folk Festival.
Along the way, Hayseed have racked up performances on Top of the Pops and Jools Holland’s New Year’s Eve Hootenanny.
The band began in 2000 when John and Mike Daly drank roughly enough whiskey to float a battleship from the Florida Coast over to Portugal and back and decided to play around in John’s studio.
“In retrospect, forming the band was one of the best ideas of my life. I didn’t think that at the time. I just thought the record would be interesting to play at parties. I didn’t expect it to be a career. It started with the AC/DC covers then we moved onto other bands. But the first album sold a lot of copies. I didn’t realise we’d be able to get the banjo on the radio as much as we did,” says John.
“But I grew up in Nashville and always liked hillbilly music. Country radio is a bunch of guys with cowboy hats – I think that stuff is McDonald’s music. We’re doing something very different.”
Hayseed are on the road again and play Wolverhampton’s Slade Rooms on Sunday. They are in support of their latest album, Free Your Mind and Your Grass Will Follow, which features versions of Buffalo Soldier, Oliver’s Army and Love Train, among others.
“All of our albums tend to be around certain themes. This one was an attempt to do something like the vibe of a late 60s, early 70s soul record. I wanted the spirit of those filtered through our hillbilly interpretation. I tried to think of things that had that vibe. I just wanted that 70s front vibe with a bands’s punk edge.
“It’s not a political record. I don’t want to tell you who to vote for. But it’s a record about the world we’re living in now. I’m not that disconnected that I don’t notice what’s going on.”
John famously rode his motorbike on all of the band’s early tours, clocking up 200,000 miles across Europe and the USA.
“The motorbike thing was 2007 and I rode every single mile of every show until 2012. And some of that was through snow and all kinds of other stuff. I did that on Triumphs – they’re not paying me, by the way. But I don’t feel the need to be a cowboy any more, though I take it out when there’s somewhere pretty to ride through.”
So if you see a dude on a bike scorching through the streets of the Black Country this weekend, you’ll know who it is.
