Come enjoy an evening with one of contemporary music's most entertaining raconteurs, when world traveling troubadour Butch Hancock takes the Freight stage. Butch, called, "a raspy-voiced West Texas mystic with an equal affinity for romantic border balladry and Zen paradox," by Rolling Stone Magazine, hails from the Lubbock, Texas music scene that gave the world Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, his equally eclectic colleagues in the Flatlanders.

With a lyrical style often compared to that of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, Butch writes tunes evoking mystical visions of wind-swept dry-plains and his imaginative lyrics remind listeners of the miracles that occur in the ordinary through creative irony and metaphors. During his acclaimed career, Butch has written and recorded several landmark albums, some of them sparse and simple, others as big as the West Texas sky. After moving to the progressive country hotbed of Austin in the mid 70s, he started his own label (Rainlight) and released the quintessential West Texas Waltzes and Dust-Blown Tractor Tunes in 1978. In the years that followed he cemented his world-wide reputation as a master wordsmith, with albums releases including Own and Own which contains his "If I Were a Bluebird" a song later covered by Emmylou Harris. His songs have also been recorded by Jerry Jeff Walker and the Texas Tornadoes.

An extraordinarily creative & prolific entertainer, in 1990, Butch and more than two dozen musician friends staged a Guinness Book of World Records worthy event entitled No Two Alike, playing six straight nights of live performances in Austin's famed Cactus Café. During the event which included recording 140 of his original songs without repeating a single song, Butch regaled the crowds with dozens upon dozens of "shaggy dog stories" strung together—one constructed out of palindromes and another sung in alphabetical order. He later released the staggering output as the No Two Alike Tape of the Month club. His most recent CD is War and Peace.  Butch toured nationally with The Flatlanders in 2009, the year of their most recent CD Hills and Valleys.

Musician is not the only hat Butch Hancock wears; he is an architect, a visual artist, and leads rafting and adventure tours in Big Bend National Park that feature nightly concerts.

Visit Butch's website

Listen to a track from Butch Hancock: