A world traveling troubadour with a long string of recorded songs and albums, Butch Hancock has been called “one of the finest songwriters of our time” & is acknowledged by his peers and critics alike as one of the premiere singer-songwriters Texas has ever produced.
His tunes evoke mystical visions of wind-swept dry plains & his lyrics are profoundly imaginative, often displaying for his listeners the miracles that occur in the ordinary through creative irony & metaphors. His lyrical style has often been compared to that of Bob Dylan & Woody Guthrie, & his songs have been covered by the likes of Emmylou Harris.
Hancock is also a member of the renowned country rock super group, The Flatlanders, along with his lifelong friends, Joe Ely & Jimmie Dale Gilmore, a band they formed in 1972.
During his acclaimed career, Hancock has written & recorded several landmark albums, some of them sparse & simple, others as big as the West Texas sky. After moving to the progressive country hotbed of Austin in the mid-70s, he started his own label (Rainlight) & released the quintessential West Texas Waltzes and Dust Blown Tractor Tunes in 1978. In the years that followed he continued to release albums steeped in meaning & memory, a foundation that cemented his worldwide reputation as a master wordsmith. In 1990, Hancock and more than two dozen musician friends staged a Guinness Book of World Records-worthy event entitled No Two Alike and played six straight nights of live performances in Austin’s famed Cactus Café, recording 140 of his original songs without repeating a single song. He released the staggering output later in the year as the No Two Alike Tape of the Month Club.
A multifaceted artist, Hancock has also received critical acclaim for his ballpoint pen drawings and photographs. Award winning artist and songwriter Terry Allen says of Butch, “He’s made his life completely about the making of amazing things… photographs, film, video, outlandish architectural propositions, elaborate ballpoint drawings, handmade journals filled with writings, sketches, and scrawls… and always, the songs.”
