Bill Kirchen Band

americana · roots · electric blues

The Bill Kirchen Band is led by American guitarist and singer-songwriter Bill Kirchen, born June 29, 1948 in Bridgeport, Connecticut and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Kirchen co-founded Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen in 1967 and played in the band until the mid-1970s, driving its top-ten reading of Hot Rod Lincoln; the group's 1974 live album, cut at Austin's Armadillo World Headquarters, later landed on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 best albums. After Commander Cody wound down he began a decades-long association with British songwriter Nick Lowe, who produced his Moonlighters record and has toured and recorded with him periodically since. Guitar Player magazine gave Kirchen the nickname Titan of the Telecaster, and he coined dieselbilly himself for a mix of truck-driving country, Bakersfield twang, rockabilly, western swing, honky-tonk, jump blues and boogie-woogie. His solo catalogue includes Tombstone Every Mile in 1994, Have Love Will Travel in 1996 and Raise a Ruckus in 1999 for Hightone, followed by Hammer of the Honky-Tonk Gods, Word to the Wise and Seeds and Stems for Proper Records, later gathered as The Proper Years and the vinyl set Waxworks. Elvis Costello thought enough of the Hammer of the Honky-Tonk Gods album to name a festival band after it, and keyboardist Austin de Lone has been a recurring collaborator across three of his solo records. Kirchen has a Grammy nomination for Best Country Instrumental Performance, once played a benefit concert with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and has been based in Austin, Texas since 2011. The band's sets run heavily to instrumental Telecaster showpieces and trucker-country repertoire.

Subscribe to this calendar

Upcoming shows