JAMES HAND: Magic Where the Shadows Were

"The Real Deal," who passed in 2020, is the subject of a tribute concert next month at the Continental

James Hand photo by John Carrico

When you go to see a record store appearance, you’re not expecting musical magic or spontaneity, but a sampler set on the way to the autograph booth. The acoustics are not great, the sun’s still out and half the folks are there for the free beer.

But country singer James Hand’s March 1, 2006 set celebrating the release of his Rounder Records debut, The Truth Will Set You Free, just seemed to mean more. With the packed store in full support, he turned Waterloo Records into a moving, stirring, thrilling box full of memories. Remember the ’50s and ’60s heyday of country music? Hand was not a throwback, but a continuation.

“We’ve got time for one more,” the native son of Last Picture Show Texas said introducing the uptempo “Little Bitty Slip.” But when that number was over, Hand and band played another one and then another, pulling out a Hank Williams song Hand rarely sings anymore because he’s become weary of comparisons to the tragic country legend. The crowd, which ranged from couples that could’ve met at the old Skyline to tattooed hipsters, hung on every vocal swoop and moan, cheering Hand on like a marathoner at the 20-mile mark. The lovefest ended with Hand singing an a capella gospel tune, accompanied only by the tears streaking down his cheeks.

James Hand had done a lot of living, a lot of losing to get to this point, the release of his first nationally-distributed CD at age 53. Nobody from Waterloo even considered making the “wrap it up” sign until this last of the true blue honky tonk originals had stepped off the bandstand.

A day earlier, Hand sat in a beer joint disguised as the “Willis Country Store,” near his home in Tokio, about 10 miles north of Waco. He was exceedingly polite, answering questions with “yes sir” and “no sir” and calling everyone Mister or Miz. But he often slid into gutters of gloom. He bore little resemblance to a man on the verge of national attention 40 years after he started playing country dancehalls in Central Texas.

“I don’t know if I’ve been more blessed or cursed,” Hand said, looking back at the hard life he sings so beautifully about. ”But I been diversified.” He’s one of those guys who taps your forearm when he throws out a good line. In the blessed column you’ve got the gift for honest, direct songwriting and the voice to match. Hand was raised by a loving family, embraced by neighbors who look after him. He’s got the backroads and woods of northern McLennan County as getaways for his soul. He’s got Willie Nelson in his corner.

On the cursed side, Hand will tell you – tap, tap- is everything else.

Superfan at the Broken Spoke circa 2018.

“I just want to feel worthy,” he said, staring down at an accumulation of Coor’s Light bottles. “Right now, my life ain’t worth a damn.” That his music was finally going to be heard around the world, did not lighten his cloud, nor slow the deadly thirst.

His happiest years, he said, were from 1990 to 1993, when he lived with a schoolteacher and drove a gas truck from 4 a.m. to 1 p.m. for $270 a week. “The straight life suited me just fine,” he said. “If they didn’t sell the company, I’d still be working there.”

Just as at his concerts, when he spells the moments of despair with jitterbug numbers and an oddball sense of downhome humor, Hand swings the full emotional pendulum when he’s just hanging out. Ol’ Slim, as he’s known, is a constant jokester who recently bought the boys at Willis’ a round by announcing, “Country music’s been very good to me: I made $15 last weekend.” When the barflies chuckled, Hand said, “If you think $15 ain’t much money, try to borrow it.” He’s got a quick quip for everything. Asked if he’s Internet savvy, he said he’s had a laptop since he was 8 years old. Pause. “It was the Etch-a-Sketch model.”

Moments later, the singer’s eyes welled up as he pointed out the farm house his parents built on 14 acres of land they bought in 1959. His mother passed on in 2002, his father in 2005, both from lung cancer. Hand lived with them at that house for most of his life. His loneliness thickens the air around him.

“I guess I’ve just been a haunted bastard my whole life,” Hand said. He first knew he was different in the first grade. “They made us put our heads down on a towel and take a nap,” he said. “Then they’d play a lullabye and I’d just start sobbing. Nobody could tell me why.”

Hand in early 2020, his last gig at the Little Longhorn before he passed. Photo Benny Guardell.

His father, a horse trainer, took a turn for the worse in early 2005, just as Hand had finished the basic tracks of The Truth Will Set You Free, which features several re-recordings of songs from Hand’s previous obscurities Shadows Where the Magic Was (1997) and Evil Things (1999). With the elder Hand given just a few more weeks to live, James headed back to Tokio, with the album 90% done, the studio booked, and producers Ray Benson and Lloyd Maines on standby.

“I sat at Daddy’s bed for 60 days in a row,” Hand said, then thought about something. “Well, I done told a lie there. There was one Sunday afternoon I came down to Austin to redo a couple vocals. I hired a policeman friend from Cleburne to drive me down because he could drive as fast as he wanted and not get a ticket.”

Hand signed to Rounder after KUT deejay Tom Pittman put his farm noir sound in the hands of label head Ken Irwin, who caught an especially frisky set at the Saxon and offered a deal.

“Ken asked me, ‘How’s his business sense?’” Pittman recalled, “And I told him, ‘It’s the worst you’ve ever seen.’ James is even uncomfortable selling you a CD after a show. He thinks that if you give him $15, he should come over and mow your lawn.”

But Hand’s “aw shucks” humility is one of the reasons he was probably the most beloved figure on the local country scene since National Guard retiree Don Walser.

Like Walser, Hand wore his authenticity like cologne. He was as backwoods as moonshine, able to name more rodeo clowns than former U.S. Presidents. “I used to drive to West High with a shotgun in my truck and nobody thought nothing ’bout it back then,” Hand said.

James Hand on graduation day at West High School.

Hand is so country he can introduce a song as “one of the bestest I ever wrote” without a tinge of affectation. Who else can look and sound so much like Hank Williams (“you even walk like him” Ray Price told Hand a few years back) and not come off as a wannabe? When Hand sings that he’s “Just an Old Man with an Old Song,” you forget that he was just five months old when Hank Sr. died on the first day of 1953.  

Like Williams, whose passing was the result of drug and alcohol abuse, Hand tried to negotiate his partying ways with God-fearing beliefs. “I pray every night,” Hand said, “but I also like to drink just ’bout every night.”

Unlike most real-life honky tonk outlaws, Hand doesn’t swagger, he shuffles. Other hard-life models parlay a week in the pokey into “doin’ time,” but when Hand was asked about his scrapes with the law, he deferred. “Now, when I put on my hat and sing, that’s the public’s business,” he said. “But when a door closes behind me, that’s my business.” Records show, however, that Hand was convicted of possession of methamphetamine in 1988 and sent to prison, where he served nine months. To not put that marketing bonanza out there, is kinda like a gangsta rapper trying to pass off bullet wounds as birthmarks.

Rounder is not shy about promoting that Hand has a big fan in Willie Nelson, whose proclamation of “the real deal” is on the back cover of every CD. The two met in 1980 when Hand was a bouncer at Wolf’s in West and Nelson was showing his Honeysuckle Rose co-star Amy Irving around his old stomping grounds. “It was Halloween and when they came up to the door I said, ‘Well, if you ain’t him, you sure look like him,” Hand said, “and Mr. Nelson said, ‘I’m him.’” The two talked music for a while, then Hand went home and got his guitar. After he played Nelson a few originals, Willie grabbed a napkin and scribbled on it, “James Hand can record for free.” Several months later, Hand made it to Nelson’s Pedernales studio to lay down some demos for a few hours. Sheepishly asking how much he owed, the engineer held up the napkin Hand had presented and said, “Paid in full.” Willie has also taken Hand out on tour with him several times as the opening act.

Willie’s stage manager Poodie Locke tried his best to further Hand’s career, but his client’s erratic behavior had him declare “James Hand is unmanageable!” Slim’s longtime bassist B.B. Morse tired of Hand’s unreliability and quit in 2005, putting out a brutal fake ad for his replacement that laid out all the inconveniences they could expect.

The Truth Will Set You Free received unanimous raves, but didn’t sell that great, so Hand went back to the beer joints, where it could be anyone playing in the corner. On such nights, when his guitar struggled to be heard over the chatter, he sometimes introduced classics as originals, just to see if anyone’s paying attention. “Here’s another one that done real good for us,” he said, then went into “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” His son Tracer, a former bullriding champion, laughed, but everyone else just kept on yapping.

When an audience is truly listening, Hand’s songs can be spellbinding. Every one of them is about something that happened to him, every lyric means something, which is why he often cries when he’s singing.

“I don’t believe that crap about how you have to make yourself happy before you can make other people happy,” he said at Wolf’s, nibbling on orange crackers from the vending machine. “Until I can make people happy first, then I can’t even think about feeling better about myself.”

Admitted to the hospital with heart problems, James Hand passed away June 8, 2020 a month before he turned 68. That’s just about right if you knew him.

Baby James in the hands of Lefty Frizzell 1953

With that voice and those songs, James “Slim” Hand should’ve been a big star. Then, when you met him and saw he was so genuine, so humble, you wanted to do everything in your power to help him get there. But he had more in common with Hank Williams than music.

First time I interviewed him, at the Ross Country Store in 2006, he pulled imaginary works from his boot and showed me how he could shoot up in the men’s room in the time it took to take a leak. He didn’t tell me that was off the record- I told myself. James was drunk and sad-eyed and had no real excitement about his first album on Rounder, one of the best country records of any year. I filed the darker anecdotes for after he got sober.

James finally went to rehab in 2014 and after he got back to Tokio, I drove up there to interview him for his story of redemption. “Oh, no,” I thought, when he came outside that afternoon to greet my car. You could tell he was drunk from 30 yards away. Just a “little bitty slip” a month outta rehab! “Hey, man, listen to this new song I wrote,” he said, like he’d been up all night writing it. We went inside and he played and sang beautifully for at least 30 minutes- all new songs. He was only drunk when he talked. I didn’t do the interview.

He pushed through the door, hypnotized by the sound/ Just then teardrops overcame him and his heart began to drown/ The man from Waco- Bruce Robison / Charley Crockett / Kullen Fuchs / Taylor Grace

Before he died, Hand attracted a protege in Charley Crockett, who saw him at the Saxon Pub one night, and at the same time saw his future. James Hand was born too late, but Charlie C. was right on time, when Texas country music was looking for a hero who looked right in a cowboy hat and starched jeans. "I didn't know George Jones or Hank Williams or ever touch hands with any of those greats, but I did know James Hand,” Crockett told People magazine. “And ultimately, he has become a big part of who I am.”

Crockett promised Hand that he’d record an album of his songs, but unfortunately 10 for Slim: Charley Crockett Sings James Hand was released posthumously, in Feb. ‘21. The name of Crockett’s 2022 breakout album The Man from Waco was inspired by Hand, but the title track’s about another haunted bastard, a jealous man who meant to shoot his wife’s lover, but killed her instead.

Charlie Crockett made the cover of Texas Monthly just a few years after he was following James Hand around like a puppy dog. He’s become the star Slim Hand always wanted to be but was never ready for, while he was alive, at least. The cult of Hand keeps growing. He’s the last real country singer-songwriter many of us will ever know, so he’s being honored as part of the Ameripolitan Music Awards next month in Austin. The musicians will try to come as close as they can.

Here’s a song written about James Hand by one of the acts performing at the tribute concert.