Bill Kirchen will appear at the Bedrock 66 Live Concert Series in Springfield, IL. Sept. 19.

Springfield, IL — The Titan of the Telecaster, Bill Kirchen will kick off the WUIS 91.9 FM Bedrock 66 Live fall concert series with a September 19 performance at the Hoogland Center for the Arts on the campus of the Univerity of Illinois at Springfield. Tickets are $16.50 and available by calling the Hoogland Center Box Office at 217-523-2787 or online at tickets.scfta.org/ Showtime for the Bill Kirchen concert is 8:00 p.m.

About Bill Kirchen

Bill Kirchen has become widely known for the trademark big-rig guitar riffs that powered the Commander Cody hit Hot Rod Lincoln into the Top 10 in 1972. Since 1993, he has recorded seven critically acclaimed albums of his own that have made him one of the musical elder statesmen of todays Americana music, which in truth was pioneered by acts like Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen back in the 70s.

For his new album, Hammer of the Honky-Tonk Gods on Proper Records, Kirchen puts the accent on songwriting, a talent that is sometimes overshadowed by his dazzling instrumental virtuosity. I felt it was time to write some songs that cut closer to the bone, he says. And on such moving numbers as Rocks Into Sand and One More Day, he succeeds admirably. All told, Hammer of the Honky-Tonk Gods is the culmination of one very rich American musical life.

On Hammer…, the man known as The King of Dieselbilly and A Titan of the Telecaster visits most every sonic landmark along the proverbial Route 66 of American music that hes traveled for decades now as a player, songwriter and singer, and serves up a blue-plate special of such tasty and nourishing stylistic flavors as rock n roll, honky-tonk, soul, rockabilly, Western swing, country, blues, boogie-woogie and more. The set captures the essence of Kirchen as a devastating culmination of the elegant and funky, as hes described by his longtime friend and compatriot Nick Lowe, one of the noted musicians who plays on Hammer of the Honky-Tonk Gods.

Kirchen has appeared on record and stage with a whos who of musical talents that includes Lowe, Doug Sahm, Ralph Stanley, Gene Vincent, Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Bruce Hornsby, Hoyt Axton and fellow six-string heroes Link Wray and Danny Gatton. At the recent Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco, Bill played guitar with Elvis Costello, who named his band for the event the Hammer of the Honky-Tonk Gods after Bills upcoming release, and featured Bill singing the title song. Kirchen was nominated for a 2001 Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance for his song Poultry in Motionand inducted the next year into the Washington (D.C.) Area Music Association Hall of Fame alongside John Phillip Sousa and Dave Grohl of Nirvana and the Foo Fighters. He has lectured at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Smithsonian Institution and the 1998 International Conference on Elvis Presley in Memphis, and is featured in the TNN special Yesterday and Today: Honky-Tonk & Western Swing.

The Dieselbilly king is especially known for exhilarating live performances at festivals and venues across North America and Europe. The tour de force of every Bill Kirchen show is his extended rendition of Hot Rod Lincoln on which like an impassioned preacher in a souped-up convertible, as Washington City Paper describes it, he cites the guitar styles of such six-string giants as Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Scotty Moore, Carl Perkins and Jimi Hendrix, while also referencing riffs by everyone from Merle Haggard to the Rolling Stones to Flatt & Scruggs to the Sex Pistols.

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