What Atlanta Based band toured the world last year, hitting 32 countries and 28 states?

Content taken from the JB Walker MySpace Page

What Atlanta Based band toured the world last year, hitting 32 countries and 28 states? Who played to hundreds of thousands of people, released a new CD on a German label, performs to thousands at Stock Car Races and spent New Year's Eve rocking service men and women in Bosnia? Guess. The Black Crowes? Widespread Panic? Nope and nope. Try JB Walker and his Cheap Whiskey Band, who for the last six years have worn the crown of the world's greatest biker band. That's right, biker band. "Our music is for and about the American biker," says JB Walker, the day before the band's annual trek to Daytona Beach, Florida for Bike Week, where each year they play for bazillions of fans/friends. Every subculture, from punk to hip-hop to folk, develops its own language and traditions and creates its own heroes: Bikers and Stock Car Fans are no exception.

Walker says he was just another frustrated blue-collar worker with a day job when he decided to form the band in 1985. Far from the crowds of 78,000 he draws today in places like Berlin, Germany, the guitarist's early gigs were in local Holiday Inn lounges where he played his own material to...well, people who regularly hang out in hotel lounges. It was after a show at a bar that an ornery patron dared Walker to quit his job and do music full time. No ordinary beer guzzler, this was the grand poobah of honky tonk David Allan Coe. "He told me, 'You're real good, you'll probably make it,'" says Walker laughingly. "Then he goes, 'If you had any balls, you'd quit your job.'" JB quit that night, calling Coe's cajone bluff. The turning point came when the JB Walker and His Cheap Whiskey Band played at a biker charity event at a stock car race. "It was the coolest thing ever," recalls Walker. "These were real people. We decided then and there to specialize in MotorMusik." So what is MotorMusik? Well, like the music of any culture, it's defined more by attitude than a particular sound. "It ain't country. It ain't rock. It ain't blues. It's pure American music." Walker Company's Southern-fried, bluesy-rockin', shit-kickin' music has been their ticket around the world and their claim to international fame, although "fame" is one four-letter word that JB Walker does not use loosely. Though the band plays to hundreds of thousands of people every year, Walker refers to their audience as friends, not fans, who share a common vision and dream. "You see, with bikers, there is a code of honor. I've never, ever been done over by another biker," says Walker in a friendly, confident tone. "

Bikers are expressing individuality and personal freedom and these things seem to get smaller every year. Bikers keep them alive." Honor. America. Freedom. Individuality. In the wrong hands, those words can make for some pretty pompous, cheesy tunes. But a certain honesty rings through songs like "Brothers" and "Everybody Dies" from the JB Walker band's fifth and latest album, Iron Horses and Wild Women (on Germany's Kick Start label). Musically, they hang at the same crossroads where Skynyrd, Z.Z. Top, David Alan Coe and Bruce Springsteen meet for beers. With themes like Southern living, riding hard and living free, they certainly talk the talk. But they also take their mission seriously enough to strap on the leather boots and walk the walk. The group donates four weeks every year to the U.S. military, playing for troops around the world, earning only enough money to cover expenses. This has led them to some fairly non-traditional venues, to say the least. "We've played for troops in every major conflict starting with the Gulf War," JB states proudly. "Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia...we've been to all of 'em. There's a guy at the Pentagon who's a biker and likes our music, so he asked us to do it. Plus two of my brothers are soldiers, drill instructors, and they had been trying to get me to do something like that for a while." Playing around the world for troops also gave them a chance to play for large European and South American audiences who have embraced American Motor culture. "It's huge over there, man! There are some cool bands and we get huge crowds and they all dress like The Wild Bunch. They learned from the movies!"

Traveling with a band for weeks on end makes Atlanta or wherever you call home seem like heaven on earth. "We all have a choice in America," he says matter of factly. "You haven't lived until you've been strip-searched in Saudi Arabia. These guys holding machine guns took me into this room and said [slipping into his best Arab accent] 'Take off your clothes.' I could hear the rest of the band and crew outside the door rolling on the floor, laughing. When stuff like that happens," says JB, home is definitely where you want to be. During the first week of March, home will be Daytona, Florida. More specifically, Bike Week, where JB Walker and His Cheap Whiskey Band play daily shows at the legendary Iron Horse Saloon and have a chance to hang out with friends from all over the country. "The thing a lot of people don't realize about bikers and Bike Week is that you get all types of people -- rich, poor, middle class, blue-collar, white-collar, doctors, mechanics...everything! So, when you're the world's Greatest anything, where do you go from there? "I wouldn't mind being on a big label and doing different things," Walker says. While the band is happy to have the new album out on Kick Start, being on a German label has obvious limitations. The problem is, every time a bigger label or manager approaches the band, they try to treat them like a regular band, and these rebel rockers don't buy it. "Every time we start to talk to these guys it's like, 'You can't do this charity event,' or 'This show isn't big enough,'" JB says. "I usually ending up telling them to kiss my ass." Like all fiercely independent artists from Fugazi to Zappa, these guys aren't interested in doing it any way but their own and judging by the way things have gone, there's no need to change. "You always want to do good, but I never expected it would get this big," Walker ponders. "We play more, travel more and sell more than any other biker band and we're happy to keep on doing this for a long time-- as long as Bikers, Stock Car Fans and American Troops will have us." by Howard Petruziello

Visit JB Walker on his website www.cheapwhiskeyband.com or on his MySpace Page