Now hear this y’all:
Legend has it the original Wilbury brothers from Nashville, Tennessee, were plying their trade as a good ol’ Country band one night in Tootsie’s Bar, when who should walk in but George Harrison from The Beatles and his old pal Jeff Lynne outta the ELO. After a few beers, George and Jeff decided they loved the Wilbury boys and called up some of their friends, inviting them downtown to hear for themselves. Those friends turned out to be Roy Orbison, that Tom Petty out of the Heartbreakers, and Bobby Dylan himself.
The story goes that, after the show, the famous five wanted to hang out with the shy and retiring Unravelling Wilburys. They all got pretty drunk, and it seemed like the Wilbury brothers had got their big break when Tom Petty allegedly said they should all work together.
Six months went by and the Wilburys heard nothing. Then one day they was passing a record store and heard one of their own songs playing on the hi- fi. “Who’s this playing our song?” they said to the guy behind the counter. “Why, it’s a new supergroup,” the guy replied. “They call themselves The Traveling Wilburys.”
Yes folks, it seems the Traveling Wilburys became a tribute band to our home-spun originals.
Well, a few years and more passed and finally the Unravelling Wilburys decided to ‘reclaim’ those songs, putting together a set of all the hits and the best stuff Dylan, Petty, Orbison, Lynne and Harrison could muster between ’em. Then they headed for the UK. The folks there ain’t got much of a clue about Country music and took to ’em straight away.
Pretty soon they was travelling all over the country, from the Orkney Islands to the Isle of Wight; from Penzance to Perth; from Southwold to South Wales; packing out theatres along the way in towns whose names they’d never heard of and couldn’t pronounce.
The show features the best of the Wilbury albums (“Handle with Care”; “The End of the Line”; “The Devil’s Been Busy”; “Tweeter & The Monkey Man” etc.) and some of their supposedly thievin’ counterparts’ numbers like “Only the Lonely”; Won’t Back Down”; “While my Guitar Gently Weeps”; “Like a Rollin’ Stone” and “Mr. Blue Sky”. The act even contains the kind of comedy only a band spending too many nights in Travelodge hotels could dream up.
The Unravelling Wilburys are now so popular they even got to be a question on that TV show “The Chase”. Now that’s fame…even if it ain’t fortune.
So- Ladies and Gentlemen, turn oD your hearing aid, put your Zimmer frame to one side and prepare for a musical journey with Walter, Blind Melon, Sticky Willy, Thumper and the Reverend Honky Tonk Wilbury. It’s a journey you ain’t gonna forget in a hurry.
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