So Lonesome He Could Cry

By: Maggie Large
Date: June 27, 2005
From: http://blogs.macon.com/amped/2005/06/so_lonesome_he_.html

 
  It took a little while, but Columbus's Joey Allcorn and the Hillbilly Band really grew on me at The Hummingbird Saturday night.

  At first I thought, who is this guy? What is he doing, dressed like a 1950s Music Row refugee and singing with a nasal twang eerily similar to the late Hank Williams Sr.?

  I wondered if young Joey (he's 24) was camping it up, like the Red Hot Poker Dots did earlier in the week. But it turns out the former punk is as serious as they come.

  Allcorn and his band easily handled material from Nashville's boozy pillhound past like covers of Johnny Cash, and Williams Sr. He also played my favorite Jimmie Rogers song, "Blue Yodel," better known as "T for Texas," and Jerry Lee Lewis's "Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee."

  He introduced these and other covers by telling a little bit about the song, like when it first charted and who later had a hit with it. Allcorn is something of a music historian/performer: he brings back the late 1940s/early 1950s musical era by playing those songs straight.

  Allcorn has written some of his own cheatin' and drinkin' songs in the hard-edged honky-tonk style. One of them, "I Just Don't Know," is out on an Americana compilation called The United State of Americana, Vol. 2 on Atlanta label Shuteye Records.

  One of my tablemates at the show kept telling me how "weird" he thought Joey and his band was. I wouldn't call them weird; when I lived in Texas, there were at least a handful of people like Jesse Dayton and BR-549 doing the 1950's country thing.

  In fact, they seemed quite at home on the newly-revamped Hummingbird stage. I'd been to the club before it officially opened for a Georgia Music Magazine party. I was happy to see that the a/c had been fixed. The decor inside gives the feel of an old-time icehouse or juke joint with its rusted corrugated tin over the stage and bar.

  I much prefer the new setup, with the stage at the back of the house, to the old Trio with the stage on the same side as the bar. There's plenty of room to sit, whether at tables or at the bar, and there's a place to dance if that's your fancy.

  Back to Allcorn. He's been working on putting out an album, tentatively titled 50 Years Too Late, for a while now. The title is apt; the Black Flag and Misfits-loving Allcorn seems to be of the same spirit as his heroes.