James hand Article from Austin American-Statesman

'The Truth' may set Hand free, but will it make him happy?By Michael Corcoran
AMERICAN-STATESMAN MUSIC WRITER
Saturday, March 11, 2006

When you go to see an act at a record store, you're not expecting musical magic or spontaneity, but a sampler set on the way to the autograph booth. The acoustics are not great, the sun's still out and half the folks are there for the free beer.
But country singer James Hand's March 1 set celebrating the release of "The Truth Will Set You Free," the 53-year-old's first nationally distributed album, just seemed to mean more. With the packed store in full support, he turned Waterloo Records into a moving, stirring, thrilling box full of memories. Remember the '50s and '60s heyday of country music? The mournful-voiced Hand is not a throwback, but a continuation.

"We've got time for one more," the native son of "Last Picture Show" Texas said in introducing the up-tempo "Little Bitty Slip" from the new Rounder release. But when that number was over, Hand and band played another one and then another, pulling out a Hank Williams song that Hand rarely sings anymore because he's become weary of comparisons to the tragic country legend. The crowd, which ranged from couples who could've met at the old Skyline roadhouse on North Lamar to tattooed hipsters, hung on every vocal swoop and moan, cheering Hand on like a marathoner at the 20-mile mark. The lovefest ended with Hand singing an a capella yowler, accompanied only by the tears escaping from his dark, deep-set eyes.
James Hand had done a lot of living, a lot of losing to get to this point. Nobody from Waterloo even considered making the "wrap it up" sign; this true-blue honky tonk original could play as long as he wanted.

A day earlier, Hand sat in a beer joint disguised as the Willis Country Store, near his home in Tokio, about 10 miles north of Waco. Exceedingly polite, answering questions with "yes, sir" and "no, sir" and calling everyone "Mister" or "Miz," Hand often slid from jovial into gutters of gloom during a three-hour interview. Hand bore little resemblance to a 40-year veteran of country dives and dancehalls, who's on the verge of national attention for the first time.
"I don't know if I've been more blessed or cursed," Hand said, looking back at the hard life he sings so beautifully about. "But I've been diversified." He's one of those guys who taps your forearm when he throws out a good line.

In the blessed column he's got the gift for honest, direct songwriting and the voice to match. Hand was raised by a loving family, embraced by neighbors who look after him. He's got the backroads and woods of northern McLennan County as getaways for his soul. He's got Willie Nelson in his corner.

On the cursed side, Hand will tell you — tap, tap — is everything else.

"I just want to feel worthy," he said, staring down at a trio of Coors Light bottles sent over by fellow customers. "Right now, my life ain't worth a damn."

His happiest years, he said, were from 1990 to 1993, when he lived with a schoolteacher and drove a gas truck from 4 a.m. to 1 p.m. for $270 a week. "The straight life suited me just fine," he said. "If they didn't sell the company, I'd still be working there."

Just as at his concerts, when he balances the moments of despair with galloping swing numbers, Hand swings the full emotional pendulum when he's just hanging out. Ol' Slim, as he's known back home, is a constant jokester who recently bought the boys at the Willis Country Store a round by announcing, "Country music's been very good to me: I made $15 last weekend." When the barflies chuckled, Hand said, "If you think $15 ain't much money, try to borrow it."
En route to Wolf's Bar in West, a favorite hangout, Hand's eyes welled up when he pointed out the farmhouse his parents built on 14 acres of land they bought in 1959. His mother passed on in 2002, his father in 2005, both from lung cancer. Hand lived with them at that house for most of his life. His loneliness thickens the air around him.

His father, a horse trainer, took a turn for the worse in early 2005, just as Hand had finished the basic tracks of "The Truth Will Set You Free," which features several re-recordings of songs from Hand's three previous, locally released albums. With the elder Hand given just a few more weeks to live, Hand headed back to Tokio, with the album 90 percent done and a block of studio time put on hold.

"I sat at Daddy's bed for 60 days in a row," Hand said, then he thought about something. "Well, I done told a lie there. There was one Sunday afternoon I came down to Austin to redo a couple vocals. I hired a policeman friend from Cleburne to drive me down because he could drive as fast as he wanted and not get a ticket."

Before he signed his deal with prominent roots music label Rounder in 2004, Hand wasn't sure he'd ever make another record. But Hand had his champions, such as KUT DJ Tom Pittman, who craved another minor masterpiece like the 1996 debut "Shadows Where the Magic Was." Pittman put Hand's farm-noir sound in the hands of Rounder label head Ken Irwin, who caught an especially frisky Thursday night set at the Saxon Pub and offered a deal.

"Ken asked me, 'How's his business sense?' " Pittman recalled, "And I told him, 'It's the worst you've ever seen.' James is even uncomfortable selling you a CD after a show. He thinks that if you give him $15, he should come over and mow your lawn."

But Hand's "aw shucks" humility is one of the reasons he's probably the most beloved figure on the local country scene since National Guard retiree Don Walser started singing at the short-lived country paradise Henry's on Burnet Road about 15 years ago.

Like Walser, Hand wears his authenticity like cologne. He's as backwoods as moonshine, able to name more rodeo clowns than former U.S. presidents. "I used to drive to West High with a shotgun in my truck and nobody thought nothing 'bout it back then," Hand said. These days that would draw a SWAT team.

Hand is so country he can introduce a song as "one of the bestest I ever wrote" without a tinge of affectation. Who else can look and sound so much like Hank Williams ("You even walk like him," Ray Price told Hand a few years back) and not come off as a wannabe? When Hand sings "Just an Old Man with an Old Song" it sounds as if he was born with that tune in 1952, the same year Hank Williams died. There's such a depth of expression in Hand's "If I Live Long Enough To Heal" and "When You Stopped Loving Me, So Did I" that this music is truly his own.
"I've gotta believe that the same forces that moved Hank, also move James," Pittman said of the Hank-like way Hand's shoulders jump to the rhythm.

"I guess I've just been a haunted bastard my whole life," Hand said. He said he knew he was different in the first grade. "They made us put our heads down on a towel and take a nap," he said. "Then they'd play a lullaby and I'd just start sobbing. Nobody could tell me why."
Like Williams, who died at age 29 from drug and alcohol abuse, Hand has tried to negotiate his partying ways with God-fearing beliefs. "I pray every night," Hand said, "but I also like to drink just 'bout every night."

Other true-life honky tonk outlaws might parlay a weekend in the pokey into "doin' time," but when Hand was asked about his rumored scrapes with the law, he deferred. "Now, when I put on my hat and sing, that's the public's business," he said. "But when a door closes behind me, that's my business."

Records show, however, that Hand was convicted of possession of amphetamines in 1988 and sent to prison, where he served nine months. To not put that marketing bonanza out there is kind of like a gangsta rapper trying to pass off bullet wounds as birthmarks.

Rounder's promotional effort makes good use of Willie Nelson, whose proclamation of Hand as "the real deal" is on the back cover of every Hand CD. The two met in 1980 when a 27-year-old Hand was a bouncer at Wolf's and Nelson was showing his "Honeysuckle Rose" co-star Amy Irving around his old stomping grounds. "It was Halloween and when they came up to the door I said, 'Well, if you ain't him, you sure look like him,' " Hand said, "and Mr. Nelson said, 'I'm him.' "
The two talked music for a while, then Hand went home and got his guitar. After he played Nelson a few originals, Willie grabbed a napkin and scribbled on it, "James Hand can record for free."

Several months later, Hand redeemed the napkin at Nelson's Pedernales studio, where he laid down demos for a couple hours. Nelson has also taken Hand out on tour with him several times as the opening act.

Much more often, though, Hand plays beer joints back home, where it could be anyone playing in the corner. On such nights, when Hand's guitar struggles to be heard over the chatter, the singer sometimes introduces classics as originals, just to see if anyone's paying attention. "Here's another one that done real good for us," he said recently, then went into "Your Cheatin' Heart." His son Tracer, a former bull riding champion, fell out of his chair laughing, but everyone else just kept on yapping.

But when the crowd is enrapt in Hand's performance, such as the Waterloo appearance, the songs can be spellbinding. Every one of Hand's songs is about something that happened to him, every lyric means something, which is why he often cries when he's singing.
"I don't believe that crap about how you have to make yourself happy before you can make other people happy," he said at Wolf's, nibbling on orange crackers from the vending machine. "Until I can make people happy first, then I can't even think about feeling better about myself."

mcorcoran@statesman.com; 445-3652