“I’M NOT GONNA SIT HERE AND SAY,
‘I’m country and Luke Bryan isn’t,’” says twangy traditionalist Joshua Hedley, dressed to the nines in the sharp 1960s style of his heroes: grey-on-black suit, horn-rimmed glasses, and a crisp, black fedora cocked to one side. “Because what are the people who are buying Luke Bryan’s records if they’re not country people?” On April 20 Hedley will release Mr. Jukebox, his country-to-the-core debut album on Third Man Records. But even though it highlights just how much the genre has changed since it was referred to as country and western music—yesterday’s string sections and choral singers have been traded for bass drops and funky guitars—he’s not interested in posing as a culture warrior. He just likes what he likes. “There’s good shit in everything, and country music changes every ten years,” he goes on. “There’s differences in all the decades of country music, and there’s good and bad in all of it, so I choose to focus just on the good . . . That said, I’ll listen to Luke Bryan if Metro Boomin starts making beats for him.” A thirty-three-year-old Florida native, Hedley has been repping classic country since he arrived in Nashville in 2004 with a fiddle case and not much else, quickly establishing himself as a versatile sideman to proud outsiders like Jonny Fritz and Justin Townes Earle. He’s perhaps best known in
Music City as the Monday-night bandleader at Robert’s Western World, turning the clock back for boozing Broadway tourists with four hours of late-night cover tunes each week. With Mr. Jukebox, Hedley takes the Robert’s honk y-tonk vibe and gives it some much deserved modern attention. In doing so, he joins labelmate Margo Price in the g row ing vang uard of country’s openly purist faction. But interestingly, he never set out to become a solo artist. “I sort of had this plan of how my life was gonna go, which was to just tour with Jonny and then play at Robert’s when I was in town,” he says, settling in and looking oddly at home behind a trendy, i ndust r ia l-t hemed cowork i ng space’s conference table. He folds his tattoo-covered hands, one of which features a portrait of Hank Williams, his hat partially hidden under a Mickey Mouse wristwatch. “I had a comfortable life as a sideman, and there was little-to-no responsibility involved,” he goes on. “It was just jump in the van when it’s time to go, collect money at the end of the tour, then play 10 to 2 a.m. at Robert’s and go home. Plus, I was drinking a lot and participating in other not-so-good activities that kept me from wanting to pursue anything further. I was just coasting.” His stage presence was always obvious, though . . . and so was the air of authenticity in his bright
NATIVE NASHVILLE
51