CME Session - Colter Wall's American Epic: "Wild Bill Hickok"
All the way from Saskatchewan by way of the Old West, singer-songwriter Colter Wall seems to have fallen out of a stagecoach somewhere between Nashville and Dodge City, and landed in the 21st century squarely on his Lucchese-clad feet. He sat down with us in our Lincoln Ave. studio to perform “Wild Bill Hickok,” a Cowboy story-song from his new record, Songs of the Plains, about Western folk hero and legendary lawman and rounder James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok.


Songs of the Plains is rich with North American truisms and vivid tales of the frontier experience in the 19th century, a nostalgic travelogue of a lost America written with a thirst for detail and a cinematic flair, not surprising considering Wall’s songs have appeared in a host of successful Hollywood fare like Hell or High Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
Penning and picking largely about rural America, his native Canada, and their sometimes-shared histories, Wall’s songs highlight the evergreen of a world gone by, dusty tintypes depicting outlaws, love on the plains, long nights with no fire and longer nights with more than any roper can handle, backed by a Maybelle Carter-like scratch on vintage Gibsons, Martins, and other authentic relics of the early American folk experience.
As it happens, Colter is also a regular at Chicago Music Exchange, stopping by often to share new material and hand-selecting many of his incredible pre-war guitars straight off the walls in our Chicago, Illinois showroom. If a vintage acoustic like Colter’s is in your crosshairs, take a look at just some of the authentic hardware you could ride off with. Choose wisely but make haste, before Colter beats you to the draw and gets his dead man’s hands on it. We reckon they won’t last long.

SHOP VINTAGE MARTIN ACOUSTICS
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