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Art of the Song
Art of the Song is a one-hour, independently-produced radio show with music and interviews exploring inspiration and creativity through songwriting and other art forms. The program is heard on over 160 stations worldwide. Learn why songwriters and artists create, how they become inspired, and how you can tap into that creative source in every aspect of your life.
This week on Art of the Song, the featured guest is country/folk artist Butch Hancock, member of The Flatlanders along with Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore.
About the artist:
Butch Hancock is a country/folk music recording artist and song writer. He was born July 12, 1945 in Lubbock, Texas. Hancock is a member of The Flatlanders along with Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, but he has principally performed a solo career.
Butch Hancock has been called “one of the finest songwriters of our time” and is acknowledged by his peers as one of the premier Texas singer-songwriters. His lyrics are ingenious, excelling in metaphor and irony and displaying a world-weary trait, just as he is a master of seeing the miracle in the ordinary. His lyric style has often been compared with that of Bob Dylan, and his songs have been sung by the likes of Emmylou Harris.
In addition to the more traditional sounds Butch Hancock infused eclectic styles in his earlier recordings with artists Alex Coke, Austin Klezmorim’s Bill Averbach, Spyder Johnson, John Hagan, the Squeezetones’ Ponty Bone, and pianist Marcia Ball. For his fans his tunes evoke mystical visions of wind-swept, dry-plains and prairies.
Hancock has deliberately avoided satisfying the cravings of the markets, preferring to see his music as an end in itself, recording and releasing much of his music on his own and spending his energies on other things than a musical career. He is a talented photographer, with a gallery named “Lubbock or Leave it” in the 1980s and 1990s, and currently (Fall 2009) showing his photographs and drawings at Bluebird Gallery in Wimberley, Texas.
Interviews with Butch Hancock, Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore along with many others of the so-called Lubbock Mafia appear in the film: Lubbock Lights which was released in 2005.
