Wheeler Walker Jr., alter ego of comedian Ben Hoffman, is more than a dirty joke
Are you ready for this country? "My goal was to make the best country album of the year and make it completely unplayable. So I achieved my goal," Wheeler Walker Jr. says. "It's a pretty dumb goal."
Are you ready for this country?
"My goal was to make the best country album of the year and make it completely unplayable. So I achieved my goal," Wheeler Walker Jr. says. "It's a pretty dumb goal."
Speaking from a van headed to New Orleans from Dallas, the singer, who plays the Foundry at the Fillmore Saturday, is discussing his deeply country - and outrageously filthy - debut album, Redneck S -. The album gets no radio play. You can't buy it at Walmart, and you won't see Walker on TV - nearly all the song titles are unprintable here. But despite his purported aims, he has still managed to generate a buzz.
"When they called and told us it debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard country charts, we started cracking up," Walker says. "We thought it was a joke."
(We'll pause here to note that Wheeler Walker Jr. is really the comedian Ben Hoffman, formerly of Comedy Central's The Ben Show.)
Redneck, financed by the artist himself but distributed by the well-established entertainment company Thirty Tigers, was produced by Dave Cobb, to whom Walker was introduced by friend and fellow Kentuckian Sturgill Simpson. Cobb has since gone on to become one of the hottest producers in Nashville.
For this album, Cobb and his small, killer combo of session musicians frame Walker with unvarnished, hard core country sounds that by themselves would have been enough to keep the music off country radio (although one number does feature nice Oak Ridge Boys-style harmonies).
While Walker gleefully pole-vaults past the bounds of good taste and political correctness with his graphic depictions - think backwoods variations on the old "Aristocrats" joke - he does occasionally tap into the kind of real emotions that have long fueled country songs.
He says both men and women have told him they can relate to the anger and frustration he vents in the album's one big ballad, in which he obscenely lashes out at the woman who dumped him.
To Walker, it's all meant to be an antidote to the vanilla homogeneity of country radio, which he calls "censored hip-hop for white people."
Naturally, not everyone is a fan. Back in Nashville, he says, "I'm shunned in some circles, and there's some big names - I wouldn't want to say here because I don't want to hurt their careers, but some of the biggest guys in country have stopped by or called and said how much they love it."
For now, the guitar-playing Walker is tearing it up on the road, replicating the sounds of the album with his own bunch of seasoned Nashville cats.
"It takes a real good band to make up for what I'm doing."
Wheeler Walker Jr., with Birdcloud, at 9 p.m. Saturday at the Foundry at the Fillmore, 29 E. Allen St., $15, thefillmorephilly.com/foundry.
215-854-4641 @nickcristiano