Bill Kirchen has become widely known for the trademark big-rig guitar riffs that powered the Commander Cody hit “Hot Rod Lincoln” into the Top 10 in 1972. Since 1993, he has recorded seven critically acclaimed albums of his own that have made him one of the musical elder statesmen of today’s Americana music.

On his most recent album Hammer of the Honky-Tonk Gods, the man known as “The King of Dieselbilly” and “A Titan of the Telecaster” visits most every sonic landmark along the proverbial Route 66 of American music that he’s traveled for decades now as a player, songwriter and singer, and serves up a blue-plate special of such tasty and nourishing stylistic flavors as rock ‘n’ roll, honky-tonk, soul, rockabilly, Western swing, country, blues, boogie-woogie and more. The set captures the essence of Kirchen as “a devastating culmination of the elegant and funky,” as he’s described by his longtime friend and compatriot Nick Lowe, one of the noted musicians who plays on Hammer of the Honky-Tonk Gods.

Kirchen has appeared on record and stage with a who’s who of musical talents that includes Lowe, Doug Sahm, Ralph Stanley, Gene Vincent, Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Bruce Hornsby, Hoyt Axton and fellow six-string heroes Link Wray and Danny Gatton. At the recent Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco, Bill played guitar with Elvis Costello, who named his band for the event the Hammer of the Honky-Tonk Gods after Bill’s upcoming release, and featured Bill singing the title song. Kirchen was nominated for a 2001 Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance for his song “Poultry in Motion” and inducted the next year into the Washington (D.C.) Area Music Association Hall of Fame alongside John Phillip Sousa and Dave Grohl of Nirvana and the Foo Fighters. He has lectured at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Smithsonian Institution and the 1998 International Conference on Elvis Presley in Memphis, and is featured in the TNN special Yesterday and Today: Honky-Tonk & Western Swing.