Wink Keziah
Austin, Texas, United States | INDIE
Music
Press
This band truly Rocks! Wink has written a bunch of great tunes about drinkin' and heartache and such, and this Honky Tonk band delivers them with the edge you want to hear. These guys are simply great and are worth coming out for a great time!!
Dan Johnston, Owner of The Town Pump
- The Town Pump
"100 proof honky tonk and heartache from the man who walks it like he talks it, and sings it like he's lived it...."cause he has!" - Mark Stuart of The Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash
What Keziah and his band are all about, is the dancehall music coming from all over Texas and Bakersfield, Calif., tinged with a touch of blues, rock and bluegrass.
Keziah has taken his honky tonk game to a new level.
David Brewer – music columnist
High Country News
- High Country News
Wink’s Southern rock-brewed honky-tonk sound fits like a new Sunday suit. Bridging the Alternative and Americana genres, the band’s high-energy sound has attracted attention from industry types and fans alike.
Woody Mitchell – A&E columnist
Austin.com
- Austin.com
As if things weren’t stirred up enough, Wink Keziah & Deluxe Motel slipped into the middle of a hard-rock show with a country-rock sound that encompassed both top of the charts sounding compositions and impressive guitar riffs. These guys took the momentum of the night to the next level with a crisp, soulful and spunky set.
Erasmus van Maastricht – columnist
E-Magazine
- E-Magazine
On his latest release, North Carolina's Wink Keziah, with support from his band Delux Motel, proves not only that he has mastered a variety of musical styles, but also that he understands everyday life in rural America. Produced by Mark Stuart from the Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash, the album reflects the influence of everything from honky-tonk to contemporary blues to bluegrass to the Bakersfield sound. Throughout, Keziah captures the highs and lows of the human experience with his poignant and perceptive tales of love and life -- tales that never stray too far from rich country soil in which they were cultivated. - No Depression
Since the early ’80s Tarheel twanger Wink Keziah has been barnstorming through the region in a succession of colorfully-named combos – Adam’s House Cat, the Hoodauls, the Rolling Tumbleweeds, and most recently, Delux Motel. Ten songs’ worth of honky tonkin’ that Waylon, Willie and Tompall would give their outlaw country stamps of approval to, Working Songs for the Drinking Class is the purest example of truth-in-titling you’re likely to encounter all year. Every track here clicks, from the bleary beer-goggles twang of “I Can’t Stop” and the garagey, pedal-steel powered truckers’ anthem “A Hot Woman and a Cold Beer” to the desperado-on-the-run desert-rock of “Laredo” and the luminous ballad “As Long As It Ain’t Here.” The latter in particular is worth singling out: it’s as vivid a blue-collar lament as a Springsteen epic, and a moving elegy for the passing of small town life, too.
Throughout, Keziah spins his yarns from the voice of experience – he’s clearly done some hard living and even harder loving, and there are strong hints of murder, mayhem and moonshine in his songs – and in the voice of a seasoned honky tonker that’ll bring to mind a less affected Dwight Yoakam. Want more comparisons? Picture the Drive-By Truckers, the V-Roys and the Backsliders all piling into an RV and moving to Bakersfield and you just about got it. Fun Fact: a veritable Renaissance Man, Keziah’s also a licensed cosmetologist, and as he owns several hair salons he can cook up one mother!@#$%^ of a pompadour for ya. Oh, and in case anyone’s wondering about that errant “e” that should be at the end of “Delux”: it fell off the sign. No need to replace it, though. Why fix something if it really ain’t broke?
- Stomp & Stammer Magazine
Wink Keziah & Delux Motel’s “A Hot Woman and a Cold Beer” is an instant classic, all bass rumbles and mutant, Chuck Berry licks with Faces-style rock-‘n’-roll piano played in the upper registers. “I just rolled into Austin/On my way back from San Antone /Headin’ on back to Dallas,” Keziah sings in his nasal, slightly drunk voice and later brags about eating at I-Hop and bathing at the truck stop. Like the rest of Working Songs for the Drinking Class, it’s a masterful piece of mannerist honky-tonk, complete with slightly off-kilter mini-explosions of ‘70s riffage that frame the song perfectly.
From Charlotte, N.C., Keziah knocked around in bands such as the Rollin’ Tumbleweeds and Adam’s House Cat, and appears to have an inexhaustible supply of great songs he wrote during off hours on his other gig, as a cosmetologist. (His press kit says he owns, or has owned, his own chain of hair salons.) “I Can’t Stop” ingeniously uses a hammering riff to drive home lyrics about the women who importune Wink when all he wants to do is get home to his wife. “The offers come so sleight-of-hand/All they’re really looking for’s a one-night stand,” he complains. “’Till I Pick Up the Telephone” ends with Wink drinking himself to sleep because he’s not man enough to dial that number. “I know your mama’s house is just right down the street/But to me it seems like a 1,000 miles,” he moans.
“That Ain’t Me” cleverly rewrites Buck Owens’ “Act Naturally,” while “You’re Talkin’ ‘Bout Me” recalls the early-‘60s work of Roger Miller. His band rework timeworn Bakersfield-style licks into a deadpan density that stylizes Keziah’s songs just enough. Producer Mark Stuart deftly folds in restrained pedal steel decorations and touches of harmonica and electric piano. Working Songs rocks, swings and never falls over, and Keziah’s songs are strong indeed. It’s not all fun and games and frozen waffles at the truck stop, however — the desolate, weary “As Long as It Ain’t Here” features a town Wink has outgrown, if not simply outlived.
- The Knoxville Voice
Like Blue Ribbon and Texas Red, some is best enjoyed in the neon blue of a honky-tonk. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always travel well beyond the barroom. That’s not the case for Wink Keziah & Delux Motel on Working Songs for the Drinking Class.
A self-described “urban hillbilly” from what he calls Charlotte, North Carolina’s “redneck ghetto,” Keziah’s life story contains enough Southern Gothic weirdness to give Flannery O’Connor the vapors. That’s not telling tales. Wink makes no secret of the bumps on the road that led him to become a singing, songwriting son of a gun. If by the fact of his chosen profession he didn’t keep to the straight and narrow, he at least avoided following in some of his family’s muddier footsteps.
No Telecaster-slinging honky-tonker would be worth their salt if they didn’t acknowledge Buck Owens. Wink proudly does just that with his affectionate, spot-on vocal tweak of Buck in the declarative opener “I Can’t Stop.” Delux Motel brings so much fun that when they get to serious matters and mellower tempos in “As Long As It Ain’t Here” and “When Your World Comes Tumbling Down” – two of Working Songs’ highlights – everyone in earshot is ready and willing to pay attention.
Wink and Mark Stuart of the Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash produced this all-original collection and engineer Mark Williams gets credit for a superbly balanced, ear pleasing mix. Dennis Davis’ all-Tele leads and guest Robin Rogers’ quicksilver harmonica snake around and through Keziah’s vocals at just the right distance with wide-awake support from drummer Phillip Barry and bass player Jim Bolt. This is his first release on Great South and it’s a great place to start catching up with Wink and band. And you don’t even have to wait for Saturday night.
- Vintage Guitar Magazine
Wink Keziah and Delux Motel has their own brand of scorching Honky Tonk that is a must see show! - The Charlotte Weekly
Discography
Wink Keziah "Delux Motel"
2005 Label; Winkmusic Indie
Wink Keziah & Delux Motel
"Working Songs For The Drinking Class"
2007 Label; GREAT SOUTH RECORDS
Wink Keziah "HARD TIMES" 2009 Label; GREAT SOUTH RECORDS
Streaming available @ isounds.com, airplaydirect.com,freshtracksmusic.com, radiosubmit.com & CDbaby. Wink Keziah & Delux Motel receives airplay on standard FM stations as well as XM OUTLAW COUNTRY Radio.
Wink Keziah & Delux Motel is a proud member of The Americana Music Association and The Roots Music Association.
Photos
Bio
Wink Keziah
“Sometimes in life you just need a new beginning,” says singer-songwriter Wink Keziah describing exactly where he is in both his life and his career right now. Hard Times marks a new direction for Keziah musically as well. It’s his first solo record without longtime band, Delux Motel, the first project recorded in Los Angeles and perhaps more significantly, Keziah’s exploration of wider avenues in his songwriting, with a conscious shift from a honky-tonk heavy vibe to one that is more balanced between the raucous and the spiritual.
“Even though I’m rough and tumble around the edges, I have a very firm foundation in my faith and what I believe,” he says. Keziah penned all 11 songs on Hard Times that range from the spirituality of “Sweet Jesus” and “The Hands of God” to the autobiographical “Chain Link Fence” to the rollicking ode to redneck romance “Honky-Tonk Rendezvous.”
The album’s mid-tempo opener “Sometimes You Win” is a testament to Keziah’s relentlessly positive outlook. It is a gentle reminder that while “things are tough sometimes, you’re gonna win sometimes, too.” Keziah’s decision to record "Hard Times" in Los Angeles proved to be professionally and creatively fulfilling with the contributions of a stellar list of musicians who have toured and recorded with Steve Earle, Dwight Yoakam, Lucinda Williams, Waylon Jennings, and the Rolling Stones. Keziah's strong Texas influence is apparent through the entire album, particularly on the track “San Antonio” with other Lone Star references interspersed throughout.
Mark Stuart of the Austin-based band, Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash, produced the CD and lends his vocals to the rough-edged, confessional duet “Sweet Jesus.” Keziah has found a musical soul mate in Stuart, calling his friend and producer “a visionary with an incredible set of ears. He has an uncanny way of hearing the bigger picture.”
The new album’s title, "Hard Times", refers partly to the economy and partly to the state of the music industry. But for Keziah, it’s an apt description of his life. He’s been permanently shaped by a turbulent, hardscrabble childhood. When he sings, “I met my Daddy through a chain link fence” on the song of the same name, he means it quite literally. In fact, the singer’s first memories of his father, “a bootlegger and a hustler,” are of visits to prison where the senior Keziah was doing time for shooting Wink’s maternal grandfather.
As a child Keziah found solace in music and picked up his first guitar at age five. He played in bands throughout his school years and earned a partial art scholarship for college. Unable to fund the rest of his education costs, Keziah enrolled in cosmetology school, hoping to eventually earn enough money in that field to attend art school. But his life soon took a different turn. He opened his own salon and became hugely successful in the cosmetology field. One salon became three, and Keziah found himself overseeing 49 employees, while still continuing to tour and make music.
After a second divorce and a decision to turn down a major-label record deal, he took five years off from playing music to try to live a “normal” life. But like the songs in his head, music just wouldn’t leave him alone. It was his current wife who pushed him to reconnect with his passion for music. “Hard times make changes. The good thing is they give you the strength or the momentum to get on with a new adventure in your life,” Keziah says. “I know it’s going to be tough for the next couple of years. It’s going to take a lot of hard work.”
But hard work has never concerned Keziah who has toured extensively for years. In 2009, he was on the road a total of 200 days and he will continue to tour behind "Hard Times" with his Austin, Texas based band and doing solo shows including a Texas Radio Tour in support of his single release of "Sometimes You Win". “People are probably going to identify with the honky-tonkers, because that’s what they’ve been most used to hearing from me,” Keziah says of the project. “But with this record, they’re going to get a taste of a different side of Wink. Hopefully it’ll be a side that they’ll embrace.”
Wink Keziah and Delux Motel are proud members of The Americana Music Association, The Roots Music Association and ASCAP.
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