With their 1989 debut album, Pickin' On Nashville, the Kentucky Head-hunters bucked the fashion of slick, homo-genized, country pop and laid down a loose and rowdy, working class Southern rock that won fans around the world. On the 20th anniversary of Pickin' On Nashville, the band is releasing a brand new CD called The Kentucky Headhunters Live at the Agora (Mercury/UMe), to be released on September 22, 2009. Singer and rhythm guitarist Richard Young says, "People have been waiting 20 years for us to put out a live record. This is one of our favorite nights early on; we were definitely hitting on all eight cylinders."Not only did Pickin' On Nashville reach #2 and remain on the Country charts for 147 weeks (nearly 3 years), go double platinum and spin off four Top 40 Country hits--a cover of Bill Monroe's "Walk Softly On This Heart of Mine," "Dumas Walker," "Rock 'n' Roll Angel" and a Top 10 cover of Don Gibson's "Oh Lonesome Me"--but the band earned a Grammy for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, the Best New Vocal Group award from the Academy of Country Music, and both the Album of the Year, Vocal Group of the Year and Producer of the Year awards from the Country Music Association. Not bad for a demo tape recorded with a borrowed $4,500 and originally intended to be sold at the live shows of a band with its Kentucky roots in a '60s group called Itchy Brother that enjoyed regional success in the '70s and morphed into the Kentucky Headhunters in the '80s.
Today, the Kentucky Headhunters, with four of the five original members who perform, are still on stage and still rockin'. See them perform “Dumas Walker” below on the Marty Stuart Show.
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