Bill Kirchen

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #132 (October/November 2007).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Bill Kirchen

Hot Licks

by Michael Parrish

Guitar slinger Bill Kirchen's Telecaster and the hot licks he coaxes out of it have been country icons since his days in Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Throughout his career, Kirchen has been known for his twangy, fluid electric guitar licks. He is, however, eager to point out that his musical roots are in folk music.

"Thank God for the whole concept of folk music in this country, because that's what led me in the door. I wasn't too interested in pop music in the 60s -- I kind of liked the Beatles. I discovered folk music, and I went to the Newport Folk Festivals in '64 and '65, and that changed my life, because I saw stuff there that was gone in 10 years. It was over. And I believe that I saw musicians that came out of local indigenous styles in rural areas. I saw Delta blues guys like Son House, Skip James, and John Hurt. Gospel groups like the Georgia Sea Islanders. And then old-timey guys that were just tremendous. I got to see the Butterfield Blues Band there, saw Dylan go electric. It was just a really exciting time.

"The way I got into this whole fretted instrument racket was through Pete Seeger's How to Play the Five String Banjo, the little 12-inch book with the red 10-inch Folkways instructional LP, and I was off and running. The 'Goofing Off Suite' by Pete Seeger and all that stuff, and then from there on to the New Lost City Ramblers. Next thing I knew, I got that first John Hurt record on the Piedmont label; I learned all the songs on that one. Then after I'd been in that world for a few years, and I had my own kind of folk-rock band, the Seventh Seal. Then and only then did I meet the Commander Cody guys and get turned on to Western swing and what then was contemporary country. Ann Arbor was a great folk town. I saw the Kentucky Colonels with Clarence White when he still had short hair and they wore red sport coats. I saw the Stanley Brothers before Carter died. Bill Monroe came through. Mike Bloomfield came through before Newport, with Nick Gravenites and maybe Barry Goldberg. It was just an amazing music scene."

Kirchen's onstage axe, a battered and hot-rodded Fender Telecaster, has served him well throughout his career, and graces the cover of his recent Proper American Records CD, Hammer of the Honky Tonk Gods, the title tune of which is an ode to the virtues of Leo Fender's twangy solid-body creation.

[cover #132]