You might know Josh Hedley as one of the young aces around town who's finely schooled in the old ways of playing country fiddle and guitar. You may also know him as a bandmate of Jonny Fritz (and co-producer with Jim James on Fritz's latest record Sweet Creep), one of the guys in the band during the brief Robert's Western World scene in Aziz Ansari's series Master of None or even the bystander who gets, um, slimed in Birdcloud's
"Snail Trail."But if you haven't been down to the Nashville Palace often (or one of a handful of other places Hedley's played out solo), you might not have seen his inspired turn as frontman. He hews to the time-honored traditions of honky-tonk on his debut EP, due on a date TBA in the spring.
Above, watch Hedley and a superb band of ringers play "This Time," a sorrowful goodbye tune that feels straight out of Bakersfield in the early ’60s, for Langhorne Slim's Pink House Sessions web series (the second vid we've seen from the PHS crew this week).
Hedley tells Rolling Stone Country (who premiered the vid today) that the call from the producers of Master of None, which led to his writing this song, helped haul him out of a songwriting slump.
"Well, I sent over a couple and they wrote me back and said they were looking for something different, something more upbeat," Hedley says. "I told them to wait and I'd send them something the next day. I think I had this song written, demoed and in [their] inbox five minutes after that. It just poured right out." The whole affair fits perfectly with his "if ain't broke, don't fix it" approach to music.
You've got a couple of chances to catch Hedley in person coming up after the new year. First, he's featured alongside James Wallace and others as part of Langhorne Slim's annual New Year's Day party at City Winery, but the next Saturday, Jan. 7, he'll headline at The Basement East.
