From Hank to Waylon

show w/ G.Thomas & Hawk Christensen w/ band

For the past 10 years, we've been celebrating the ups and downs and evolution of country music. The music has mainly been based in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. It's also home to the legendary THE GRAND OL` OPRY, which has harvested many an up-and-coming artist. They have their staff of regular legendary artists on stage every night. Known and loved. The music they perform is often traditional country music that is referred to as the Nashville sound.
Some of the artists who came to Nashville early on were related to the music city of Austin, Texas.
Including Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Billy Joe Shaver, Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle and more.
A group of artists in the 1970s wanted to develop country music in their own direction and put their own stamp on it and did not want to be controlled by producers chosen by the record company.
They didn't want to follow the Nashville Sound, but wanted to bring back a bit of "Honky Tonk sting" to the sound. At the forefront of this was the late Waylon Jennings.
They wanted to record their own music, the way they "felt" about it. They wanted to break out of the traditional Nashville sound, which was often built on the same material, the same studio musicians and many of the same arrangements in the songs. Essentially controlled by the record companies and their producers at the time. Nothing wrong with the Nashville sound, but musical freedom is the key word here.
This breakaway group was called outlaws (not in the criminal sense) and the music later became Outlaw Country. And the term "The Outlaw Movement" was born. At the forefront of this was first and foremost Waylon Jennings. But also Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Tom Paul Glaser and others.
As it turned out, people really appreciated their music. One of the groups that emerged in the 1970s was The Outlaws, featuring Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Tom Paul Glaser and Jessie Colter. This group was the first to sell 1 million discs of their album Wanted by releasing it on their own label.
More and more people wanted to follow in their footsteps and the Outlaw Movement gradually became a major concept in the USA and elsewhere in the country music world.
Country music has been evolving and alive for many years. Both in the USA, Norway and Europe in general. The everyday things that are written about have been put more and more on the agenda and the style of music has been accepted at a high cultural level.
Artists G.Thomas (www.gthomas.no) and Hawk Christensen (https://www.facebook.com/hawkchristensen/) want to tell the Outlaw Country story in their own show/concert project: ¨FROM HANK TO WAYLON¨.
In this connection, original songs adapted for the project are recorded with several single releases during the spring of 2020 and a CD release later.