Hillbilly Idol is More Than Just a Clever Name

Country Rockers Thrill a Woefully Empty 'Sco

If a great band plays at the 'Sco and nobody comes to hear them, does that mean Oberlin is full of closed-minded, hipper-than-thou snobs who wouldn't know good, original music if it bit them on their postmodern asses? Yes.

Hillbilly Idol played at the 'Sco Wednesday night, and for the 3000 or so on this campus who didn't attend - they rocked. With a crowd starting in the low teens and ranging all the way up to perhaps two dozen, Hillbilly Idol delivered a wide variety of musical stylings, from good ol' fashioned country swing to twangy rock to honky-tonk to bluegrass and everything in between.

They describe themselves as "root-influenced Americana and alt-Country music." The description is pretty much accurate. Hillbilly borrows from the early traditions of country music and even earlier folk traditions, and their set list reflects the fact - among the covers, they included tunes by Hank Williams and Dave Dudley. Yet their music retains a fresh, new feel to it, vital in a way that over-produced Nashville pop-country acts like Shania Twain and Garth Brooks never are. Hillbilly Idol is doubly out of the mainstream in that sense-out of both the pop music and country music mainstreams.

But perhaps that isn't such a bad thing. Unlike nearly all big country acts (Mary Chapin Carpenter being a notable exception), Hillbilly Idol write their own music, save for the old-time classics that they cover several times a show. They haven't sacrificed their integrity to either the big mainstream record labels or the Nashville music machine, and the result is swingin', toe-tappin' good-times music.

Hillbilly opened the night with an up-tempo acoustic number, and followed that with "Better off Believing," another up-tempo piece. The second song featured some nice harmony from lead singer and acoustic guitarist Paul Kovac and lead guitarist Dave Huddleston, who provided twangy riffs all night off his Telecaster electric guitar. Even sweeter harmonies followed on "By Now," a song Kovac said was inspired by the Everly Brothers.

Double-bassist Bill Watson shone on the swingy "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back," as did drummer Scott Flowers, who in the late '70s toured with the Star Spangled Washboard Band. Then in a rather creative twist Hillbilly played "Hillbilly Polka," which sounded as much like a hillbilly polka as one could imagine thanks to the talents of pedal steel guitarist Al Moss.

The boys from Cleveland followed with a slow, velvety cover of the Patsy Cline classic "Walking After Midnight, " and bounced right back with the dancehall-worthy "Hurt, Heartbroke." Hillbilly then played "Six Days on the Road," the Dudley classic and wrapped up their first set.

After mingling with the audience and asking for requests, lead singer Kovac got philosophical at the opening of the second set. After thanking a list of people who comprised a large part of the audience, he remarked that if others helped who he hadn't mentioned, "They know who they are and if they don't that should be the purpose of their lives henceforth."

Among the requests Hillbilly opened their second set with was a superb country cover of the Beatles' "She Said So." They also put in "Mind to Change," a tight cut off their latest Egg Records Release, Town & Country (also a nice description of their musical style). Somewhere around there, Kovac switched over from acoustic guitar to electric mandolin, and Moss picked up an acoustic and dropped the steel pedal. "Stony Creek" included a furious bit of mandolin-strummin', and some nice work on the guitar as well.

Starting to wrap up their set, Hillbilly put in one of their more traditional-country-sounding tunes, "When it Rains, I Get Wet." They wrapped up for the night with another great swingin' country ditty, "Tiger by the Tail."

So chalk up another in a long series of under-attended shows at Oberlin, this one particularly unjustly so. But for those not there, fear not-the Cleveland-based group is playing dates in Berea, Cleveland and elsewhere in Northern Ohio in the near future.

Rockin' the Cradle of Love: Hillbilly Idol played a rollicking set of vital country rock at the 'Sco last Wednesday. (photo by Andrea Kamins)