As they wandered the hallways of Country Music Television’s Nashville headquarters, the Hoyle Brothers couldn’t help but think of that scene in Spinal Tap, the one where the band gets lost on its way to the stage. When they did eventually find a receptionist, they had to wait for her to finish a lengthy personal call on her cell phone. After she hung up, front man Jacque Judy stated the name of the band and explained they were there for the video shoot.
It was a wry moment for the band, which has spent its career casting itself as anti-Nashville. “The Hoyle Brothers are the real future of country music,” boast the liner notes of their 2004 debut album, Back to the Door (Loose Booty). “And if you think that mantle belongs to Kenny Chesney, Faith Hill, or Toby Keith, then you’ve obviously swallowed Nashville’s airbrushed, pretty-face, overproduced, tummy-pierced party line of pap.” Of course back then the band never figured on being asked to shoot promos for CMT in the belly of the beast.
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Growing up in DeKalb in the late 70s and early 80s, Judy got his schooling in country music from his father and WMAQ AM, which was then a country station. In the late 80s he began playing in Chicago country-rock bands like Slingshot and J-200. But he wanted to start a band whose sound was closer to that of his 50s and 60s idols, like George Jones and Merle Haggard. “Real country stuff is not afraid to be a little more blunt,” he says.
In October, following the release of Back to the Door, the band went on a ten-city tour of the south and midwest. With no label behind them and not much publicity in front of them, shows were sparsely attended, but one of the people who caught their gig at the 5 Spot in Nashville was Craig Shelburne, a content producer for Country Music Television’s Web site. He was there to see a friend perform but decided to stick around for the Hoyle Brothers after hearing their sound check. “I was caught completely off guard because it was a fully formed country band . . . they sounded perfect,” he says. “It’s hard to find new bands that sing straight-up honky-tonk.”
They’ve warmed up to the idea that their music makes rhetoric unnecessary. “Some of the loudest words you can speak are the ones you never say,” Judy says.
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