We caught up with Warner E. Hodges, the Nashville-born former guitarist with Jason & The Scorchers, Dan Baird & Homemade Sin and The Bluefields as he prepares to play 16 British shows with his immodestly named backing group the International All Stars, in promotion of new album Absolutely.
Let’s run through the All Stars one by one. Mauro Magellan, formerly of The Georgia Satellites and also a member of Dan Baird’s group Homemade Sin, is on drums.
Mauro is a freight train. I’ve wanted him in my solo band for decades but couldn’t afford him. However, the last couple of years have been good, and Mauro really wanted to do it, so I couldn’t be happier.
Conny Bloom, guitarist with the Electric Boys, Hanoi Rocks and Silver Ginger 5 needs very little introduction.
None at all. Conny is an amazing player. When we went out with his band, by the tour’s end he was on stage with me for half of the show. I’ve really lucked out having him in my band.
Pontus Snibb played drums with you in Jason & The Scorchers but is a guitarist in his own band Bonafide.
Pontus is an amazing frontman with Bonafide, but with us he’s our utility midfielder. On our first UK tour in May he’s the drummer, and when he sits behind those drums he sounds like John Bonham, but he’s also an ungodly guitar player and singer.
And last but not least you’ve got Keith Voegele on bass.
Keith Voegele. Good Lord. He played with The Bottle Rockets. Last year I knew I wanted to change the band around, and Keith was all for jumping on board.
You have a new album, Absolutely, that features many of those names, plus your partner in crime, former Georgia Satellite Dan Baird.
Yeah. Dan is on four or five of the songs, but if you asked him he’d tell you he is retired, so he turned up some days and on others he didn’t. He can kind of do what he likes because he’s Dan Baird. That man has forgotten more about rock‘n’roll than most people have learned.
He was diagnosed with a blood condition in 2017. How is his health is these days?
Oh, Dan is totally fine. He’s been cancer-free for four or five years. But the thing about Dan is that he loved playing shows and hated the other twenty-two hours of the day.
The album is good-time, pretension-free rock’n’roll. No real surprise there.
I’m not an idiot. I know it ain’t gonna sell four million copies. But I try to make music that I love in the hope that others will too.
Here Comes My Baby has real swing. Presumably that’ll be in the set for the shows?
Oh yeah. Now that’s what I would call country rock. We’ll definitely play it. We’ll lean heavily on the new album, but with Mauro in the band we can hone in on Homemade Sin. We’ll also play some Jason & The Scorchers and lots of my solo stuff.
Stacie Collins, the Nashville-based singer who Classic Rock once called "Shania Twain with balls", is your special guest.
Stacie had walked away from music after the sad death of her husband, but I invited her to get her feet back under the table and I’m so glad that she accepted.
The International All Stars' European tour begins this week in Sweden and arrives in the UK on May 28, before returning in September. For full dates and tickets, visit the Warner E. Hodges website.
