All Photos by Alan Mercer
A stark traditionalist, Jake Penrod is as close to Country as Country gets. He describes his singing style as sounding like “Hank Williams’ and Kitty Wells’ love child,” and if you’ve ever heard him sing, you’ll whole-heartedly agree.
Although he names Hank Williams Sr. as his all-time greatest influence, take a listen to his album, “Closer To Me,” and you’ll hear everything from the Honky Tonk stylings of Lefty Frizzell, Hank Thompson, and Ray Price to heart-breaking ballads that would make Conway Twitty proud. Jake says it was his dad, Jack Penrod who “put the music in me” and a TV ad for a Hank Williams gospel album that “started the whole thing.” Jake praises his parents for their support of his musical efforts. “Mom hauled me all over creation to gigs and Dad bought and taught me to play my first guitar.”
Penrod joined the Gladewater Texas Opry cast in 2005 and played in various other opry venues in Texas. His trademark, of course, was his uncanny resemblance to the King of Country Music. When he took part in memorial activities in Montgomery Alabama at the Hank Williams Museum, he began getting recognition outside his home of Brownsboro in East Texas. The New Year’s Eve Celebration that marked the anniversary of Hank’s death was held at the museum. It was there that he met David Church, a well-known tribute artist. In 2007, he received word from Church that a theatre in Buffalo, NY was producing Hank Williams: Lost Highway and they needed someone to be “Hank”. After submitting a CD and some photos, Penrod got a call the next day hiring him (sight-unseen, mind you) as the new “Hank” for a production 1600 miles from home.
Since then, Jake has performed as Hank Williams on numerous legends tribute shows at the Gladewater Opry, Texas Star Opry, and the Louisiana Jamboree in Shreveport, LA. He has also traveled to larger concert venues outside of Texas to present his tribute to Country Music’s first superstar. Audience members have often shared their enthusiasm for Jake’s tribute after performances; some even come away a little emotional. Jake said his favorite was a man who said that his performance gave him “duck knots,” which he explained were “bigger than goose bumps and take longer to go away.”
In 2009, after extensively researching five biographies and countless documentaries, Jake wrote Hank Williams Remembered, a tribute to Hank in which he narrates and sings 22 classic Hank Williams songs. He is currently touring the country performing the show with his “Honky Tonk Cowboys” comprised of former members of Hank Thompson’s Brazos Valley Boys and Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys. Jake says, “It’s truly an honor to perform with these gentlemen, some of whom have been playing this music since it was created.”
Aside from his ability to eerily recreate a Hank Williams performance, Jake Penrod is quite an entertainer in his own right. He occasionally surprises audiences with a near-operatic vocal range and enjoys covering the hits of artists like Ray Price, Johnny Bush, and Faron Young, as well as a number of original songs. He is a prolific songwriter and composer and has written more than 100 country songs, several instrumentals for steel guitar, and two military marches (a passion he acquired from playing in high school and college band). He plays a total of fourteen instruments (piano, organ, trumpet, guitar, harmonica, fiddle, mandolin, lap steel, pedal steel, ukulele, accordion, banjo, bagpipes (yes, bagpipes) and bass) and takes pride in being musically obsessed, with a collection of several hundred records including many obscure titles from singers, both famous and forgotten.
Jake has opened shows and appeared alongside many great entertainers such as Ray Price, Tony Douglas, Narvel Felts, Moe Bandy, Little David Wilkins, Tony Booth, Jody Nix, Leona Williams, Jake Hooker, Bobby Flores, Heather Myles, Johnny Bush, George Hamilton IV, Frankie Miller, Miss Norma Jean, Darrell McCall, and Curtis Potter. He has been featured on such television programs as RFDTV’s TruCountry, Texas County Line and currently appears weekly on RuralTV’s Texas Pickin’ Party as a vocalist and steel guitar player for the band.
Alan Mercer: Jake, how does a young guy like yourself end up singing all these old classic Country music songs?
Jake Penrod: Well, it started when I was a kid. I saw a TV advertisement for a Hank Williams album when I was eight years old and it struck me as a sound I’d never heard before.
AM: You never forgot those songs.
JP: It made a big impression on me. I started pursuing more music like that.
AM: And you were only eight years old?
JP: Before that when I was four or five, I remember my dad played Sons of the Pioneer and Johnny Cash for me. I really grew up listening to it. Dallas used to have a radio station that had a Country music format and they had a Saturday night all night request show. Most of the requests would be for this old Forties, Fifties and Sixties Country music. I was always interested in that music.
AM: Do you consider yourself to be knowledgeable about that genre of music?
JP: I like to think so. If you play me a song I can tell you what era it’s from and if it’s recorded in Nashville, West coast or Texas.
AM: Are you on the road all the time now?
JP: Off and on. We might have three dates in a row or we might work every other night for a while and then we might have two weeks off.
AM: You are a great songwriter! When did you first start writing?
JP: I wrote my first song when I was twelve. It wasn’t a good song, but it was a start. I think I got better at songwriting when I was fifteen or sixteen.
AM: Is there a song you wrote when you were a teenager that you recorded and still perform today?
JP: Yes, I wrote a song called ‘I Can’t Get Drunk Enough’ when I was sixteen. I had never had anything to drink in my life, but I thought it was a good title.
AM: I know that song! It’s great!
JP: I wrote it when I was sixteen, sixteen years ago.
AM: You seem to write in a retro Country style very naturally.
JP: My education is the music I grew up on, so any writer will write the way they learn in school. Listening to music was school for me. I tried to write what I heard. For a long time, early on I was obsessed with Hank Williams and I tried to do everything just like him.
AM: He didn't live very long.
JP: He died when he was 29 years old, so I’ve already outlived him. I tried to write in his style, but he had a way of writing that was so simple in style and structure, but complex at the same time. He could get a thought across in three words.
AM: That is quite a talent!
JP: I couldn’t do that, so I turned to writers that were a little more “wordy” I guess, like Roger Miller. The songwriters really started emerging in the mid Sixties. I like to use lots of chords. I’m not married to the three chords and the truth. I like to pull chords out of places you don’t really expect them.
AM: I love everything I’ve heard. Your sound is retro, yet completely contemporary.
JP: Right, when I listen to my songs they don’t really fit into today’s music, but they don’t fit into yesterday’s music either.
AM: Do you get a chance to perform your original work more often than you do Hank Williams?
JP: Yes, most of the time I am singing my original material, but I do Hank Williams shows when I can. Most of the time we do 4-hour dances.
AM: What songs do you perform at these 4-hour dances?
JD: Usually almost half is my original songs and the other half is just old favorite songs I like to sing. Songs by Ray Price, Johnny Bush and Ernest Tubb.
AM: I am so glad you pay tribute to these great artists.
JP: Somebody needs to do it. There’s a lot of stuff out there that people would like if they knew about it. People know what they like but they also like what they know. If they can get exposed to some new music, chances are they would like it.
AM: I agree!
JP: I like to get people’s curiosity going and they ask me who originally did that song? So, I can tell them it was Lefty Frizzell. That starts a whole conversation about Lefty and they might go out and listen to his music. I get a big kick out of introducing more people to new “old” artists.
