The Hackensaw Boys At The Pocahontas Opera House Sept 20th
The Hackensaw Boys are a string band based in central Virginia that formed in 1999. I had a chance to speak with David Sickmen, one of the founding members of the band.
“We’ve been a band for twenty-five years, and there’s been a lot of different members,” said Sickmen. “We’re kind of a mashup of different styles of music.”
He says it’s hard to pin down their style of music.
“We have bluegrass instruments, [but] it’s not really bluegrass, it’s not old-time and it’s not rock and roll, and it’s not funk, and it’s not pop,” he says. “But it’s kind of all of those things, all of those elements are there. If you boiled it down to one thing, then yes, we would probably be an Americana band.”
He talks about how the band formed.
“We decided we wanted to get together and then we got together one day in Charlottesville, Virginia in the backstage of the Jefferson Theater on the downtown mall,” he said. “And we each threw out a song of our own, and then we also just learned some old-time songs kind of on the spot.”
“We did that for a couple of hours and then we were like let’s go out on the mall and play! Practiced for the first time, went out on the mall, opened a case [and] played the songs; I think we played them like three times each. And then we made a couple of bucks and thought oh my god, we could make money doing this! We didn’t stop and now we’re [here] twenty-five years later.”
Encouraged by the reception they received on the mall, they continued to play and build their repertoire. That lead to opening for such bands as Old Crow Medicine Show and the rock band Cake. Larger venues soon followed, as well as a tour of Europe in 2004. It’s the kind of trajectory that most bands only dream of.
“We’ve caught fire, we’ve extinguished it ourselves,” said Sickmen. “though bad decisions and people quitting and people getting fired, people dying. So we have been our greatest proponent and we have been our own worst enemy.”
The current lineup for The Hackensaw Boys is Sickmen on guitar and lead vocal, Caleb Powers on fiddle, Aaron Smith on bass, Bee Roberts on percussion, including an unusual instrument called a Charismo, and Spencer Young on banjo. They’ll bring their rowdy, energetic show to the Pocahontas Opera House Saturday, September 20th at 7pm. Tickets are $10.00 for those 18 and over. 17 and under are free.
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