“This album is my pièce de resistance,” says Joshua Hedley of All Hat, his lively new collection of Western Swing tunes. “It’s all been building up to this moment. I feel like I’m making music I love more than any other style.” Produced by Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel—Hedley’s hero since childhood—the album brims with excitement, wit, and verve, as Hedley expertly navigates the tricky dance rhythms of this jazzy style of twang. It’s a sharp left turn in a career defined by sharp left turns, following close on the heels of his 2018 debut Mr. Jukebox, which explored ‘60s countrypolitan and established him as one of the finest old-school country crooners in all of Nashville. Released in 2022, Neon Blue jumped ahead a few decades as Hedley turned his attention to that much-maligned period in country music: the early ‘90s, when a new wave of singing cowboy took their twang into rock arenas. 

 A mainstay for years at the world-famous Robert’s Western World in Nashville, he’s become a master of so many different styles, so much so that he’s been dubbed “the singin’ professor of Country & Western.” But in truth he remains a devoted student of the genre: a player who’s always learning new techniques and always finding new perspectives on the music he loves. So when he addresses the notion of authenticity on the album’s title track, he’s poking a little fun at himself, too. “You load 16 tons and whaddya get?” he sings over an infectious two-step and some nimble pickin’ and fiddlin’. “I don’t know, I ain’t tried it yet.” You can almost hear the pedal steel laughing at him. “That song is a middle finger to those guys who think you better have 30 head of cattle if you’re going to sing country. In the lexicon of ‘famous country singers,’ hardly any of them were actual cowboys. Maybe a few. But by and large we’re all phonies. Always have been. True authenticity comes from how much you love it.” 

By that rubric, Hedley is as real as it gets. He’s been studying the form and its various mutations his entire life. When his parents bought him a violin and signed him up for lessons, the eight-year-old immediately grew impatient with the Suzuki Method and just wanted to play country fiddle. When other kids his age were playing the latest video games, Hedley spent hours in his room teaching himself old Bob Wills tunes. “I didn’t grow up playing in garage bands. I grew up at the goddamned VFW hall. I grew up playing with guys in their fifties and sixties. When I first heard Asleep at the Wheel and their Bob Wills tribute, it blew my mind that there was a band out there still playing this kind of music.” When he was 15, he recorded his own tribute to Wills, although it did not get a wide release. “I found a copy of it recently, and it’s not as bad as I expected. I’d only been singing in public for about two weeks, but I might’ve been a better fiddle player then than I am now.” 

That’s debatable, but he’s certainly good enough now to earn an invitation to join Asleep at the Wheel for a tour of America, Europe, and Australia. “Ray Benson and I have been friends for a while, ever since he started playing ‘Mr. Jukebox’ on his Sirius XM show, and he asked me to come out and play fiddle and sing some of my own songs with them.” When Benson suggested they work on a record together, Hedley jumped at the opportunity, even setting aside a nearly completed project and quickly penning some Western Swing tunes. Such is his facility with so many different styles and periods of country music that Hedley was able to change course fluidly and knowledgably. The new songs came quickly, yet “Stuck in Texas” (a duet with Benson) and the instrumental “Hedliner Polka” already sound like Western Swing classics. 

 Hedley made the drive from Nashville to Austin to record at Benson’s Bismeaux Studios. In fact, All Hat is the first record produced at the facility, where they were still perfecting the sound and installing the gear. “There were engineers working things out in the control room while we were making the record. It was cool to be a guinea pig for the new studio, and it was an honor to play some of the first sessions there.” Benson oversaw everything with a calm demeanor and an easy hand, suggesting some stylistic changes for a few songs but primarily letting the musicians just have fun together. “Obviously he was in the producer role and he did produce the shit out of this record, but a lot of it was him just letting us cut loose and see what happens. We’d work out a song and he'd step in with some suggestions. It was amazing to see how it’s done not only in real time, but from one of the greats. I don’t think he knows just how much he was teaching me.” 

Rather than his trusty touring band the Hedliners, Hedley worked with members of Asleep at the Wheel, including veteran fiddle player Jason Roberts. “When I was 12 years old, Jason was my guy. He could have walked on water playing his fiddle. To get to twin with him on songs that I wrote—it was crazy! I took a lot of takes because I was just losing my mind.” It wasn’t just a dream come true, but an affirmation that he could stand among the greats himself—as a fiddler, as a singer, and even as a songwriter. “Mean Mama Blues” sizzles with bluesy excitement, as Benson interjects some humorous commentary and Rory Hoffman provides a lowdown solo on clarinet (“that ol’ licorice stick,” Benson calls it). And their version of “Boogie Woogie, Tennessee,” a deep cut originated by Ricky Riddle & His Band, spotlights Asleep at the Wheel’s trusty rhythm section and vivid harmonies, giving Hedley a chance to daydream about a place where Western Swing is always in the air. 

From writing to arranging to recording, the whole process was an intense educational experience for the singin’ professor. With its bouncy momentum and crisp fiddle lines, “Fresh Hot Biscuits” sounds instantly fresh and hot, as Hedley announces with a wink: “I got a gal over the hill, she won’t do it but her sister will.” “That line’s been floating around the ether for a hundred years, but I had learned that it’s okay to borrow lines from other songs. It suits Western Swing so well because those older guys were doing it, too. It’s a tip of the cap to those who came before you.” That, along with the percolating energy Hedley and the band bring to the song, makes “Fresh Hot Biscuits” sound like they’ve been playing it together for ages. However, it existed only a few hours before they tracked it. “I wrote it the night before. I knew I needed another song, so I sat down and wrote it and thought it was pretty good. But when we recorded it the next day, it really came to life. I remember thinking: Oh shit, these are real songs!”

That’s the prime ingredient: what flour and milk are to fresh hot biscuits, energy and rhythm are to Western Swing. All Hat doesn’t try to update the style, because Hedley and the Wheel understand that it doesn’t need any kind of modernizing. It can sound as immediate and urgent and just plain fun now as it ever did. And he hopes folks will get up and dance. “At its core Western Swing is just dance music. Bob Wills didn’t play theatres; he played dance halls. The music is for dancing, and that’s what I wanted to come through on these songs. I just want to show people how big a genre country music is and how deep it goes. There’s such a diversity of sounds in country music. It’s not just one little box that everything fits into.”