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  Based in Tucson, AZ, singer / songwriter Hank Topless has shared stages with and / or provided support for: Les Paul, Junior Brown, Kinky Friedman, Joe Ely, The Outlaws, Pete Anderson, Al Perry, Skip Heller, Robbie Fulks, Jim Goad, Tom Walbank, Jim Bachmann, Scott Biram, Jesse Dayton, Split Livers, Al Foul, Gary Stockdale, Whitney Rose, Kevin Daly, Reverend Payton’s Big Damn Band, Calexico, and many more. Finalist in multiple iterations of yearly “Best Of Tucson,” in the country music category.

Growing up on a ranch in central Arizona, there was a lot of country music on the radio. This took awhile to sink in. After quite a few years banging around with obscenely ridiculous and fun underground extreme rock ‘n roll/noise, Topless “went country” around 1990. He masterminded the essentially invisible  “all-star” Tucson underground-country group Topless Opry (2000-2004);  their never-to-be-remembered album, “No Phoenix Blues” (2002), achieved minimal notoriety/radio play, based on the merits of its bold, honkytonk-style cover of Lou Reed’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties.” Solo albums “It’s So December” (2011) and “Big Black Heart” (2017) have each received two or three shots of critical acclaim.

New studio set  “Songs I Hate To Sing” (co-produced by Jim Waters, and featuring a crack team of studio players),  and “Hank Me Crank Me I’m Dead” (live solo 2018) were digitally released in October, 2019. Complete discography available for digital download/ streaming. Links below. 

WHAT?: Sad songs, bad songs, death songs, love songs, get-lost songs, come-back songs, weird songs. 

In addition to 4 albums’ worth of original material, lots of covers: old honkytonk and hard country (Ernest Tubb, George Jones, Hank Thompson, Ray Price, Conway Twitty), old country blues (Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton), 60’s / ’70’s pop songs (Leon Russell, Fleetwood Mac, Doors, Beatles, Dylan),and outlaw country (Waylon Jennings, Jerry Lee Lewis, Willie Nelson)- a sort of mashup of these styles, with something broken thrown in.

WHERE /WHEN? Solo show will play whenever and wherever there’s fair pay. 

Band books out four months in advance.

Email for event rates.

HANK TOPLESS & THE DEAD HORSEMEN: full-service hardcore electric honkytonk countryblues featuring either J. Claymore Koweek (Loveland, Kevin Pakulis) Damon Barnaby (Rich Hopkins, Amy Munoz,Mark Insley, Loveland), Loren Dircks (Gila Bend, Eric Schaffer, Van Christian, Texas Trash) on guitar. Current rhythm section is R. Swelling on electric bass and Dani “Junk” Ponce on drums.