Connoisseurs of country music will find much to like in this area’s newest ensemble, the Honky Tonk Healers. Serving up songs to delight the most hard-core of purists, delivered with toe-tapping rhythm and peppered with engaging patter, this trio of seasoned veterans shows all the promise of becoming local favorites in a very short time.
Combo of compadres
The Healers are the sum of three prodigious parts: Charlie Roth on acoustic guitar and vocals, Kurt Rodman on electric guitar, and Darin Essery on fiddle and vocals. Though their current professional manifestation is just in a fledgling stage, the three have been friends – on stage and off – for decades.
Roth, a longtime fixture on the Minnesota music scene, is known for a unique story-telling style that combines distinctive vocals with acoustic guitar, harmonica, and foot percussion. With his own personal blend of folk, blues and country, he both writes and interprets a singular brand of music he aptly describes as ‘medicinal.’ He’s released five albums, the most recent of which is entitled "Broken Ground."
Sioux Falls native Kurt Rodman, a 30-year veteran of the national touring circuit, has a well-earned reputation for speed and accuracy, yet is modest enough to leave the bragging to his band mates.
"Kurt’s probably the best country player I know," said Roth. "There’s no guitar player I’ve ever heard in almost 30 years who can play such great licks. That’s why I had to start calling him Kurt ‘Lightning’ Rodman."
"I didn’t do anything to perpetuate that nickname," Rodman said, "but overplay."
Darin Essery, the son of Nashville singer and recording artist Art Essery, began performing at age 17 and went on to become a founding member of the Killer Hayseeds.
In 1981, a simple twist of fate shot Rodman into Essery’s orbit when a mutual friend recommended the 21-year-old axe man as a last-minute substitute for Art’s traveling band.
"I was playing with my dad on the road, and our bass player missed the bus" Essery said. "We were in Sioux Falls, and Kurt was living there."
"It was my first road gig," Rodman recalled. "I just went and met them at the truck stop."
Roth and Essery’s is also a longstanding friendship, dating back 25 years or more.
"I went to St. Cloud State on the GI bill," Roth said, "but I never did get a job. I had a band. Darin was working with his dad, and we both did a lot of hanging out at Four Winds Music in St. Cloud."
Medicinal music
Recovering from brain trauma incurred after falling from a rooftop in September of 2009, Essery today shows no sign of impairment, wielding his fiddle bow as masterfully as ever, if not more so. It is Essery’s brother, Danny, who gave the band its moniker.
"It goes back to the healing aspects of music: medicinal music," Roth said. "There’s no other therapy for brains better than music."And while Essery prefers looking forward to looking back, one bit of unfinished business still weighs on his heart.
"I’d just like to say how much I appreciate all the fans and all the friends I made in 30 years with the Hayseeds," he said. "I’d just like to say ‘thank you.’"
He and Roth struck up a duo last May, playing Thursday nights at the Sauk Rapids VFW club, and when Rodman sat in one night, the trio seemed a natural fit to all of them.
"Kurt comes in and we all said, ‘Wow, that sounds good,’ " Roth said.
Roth described their music as "classical country, leaning toward the outlaws, with some original music thrown in."
In his early days as a performer, Roth recalls, audiences tended to prefer blues or rock ‘n roll, and as a journeyman player, those styles were the mainstays of his living. While country music has always been his first love, he noted, the genre of torch and twang has not always received the universal acceptance it enjoys today.
"Now it’s so much more popular," he said. "Johnny Cash really opened the door for that. All of a sudden, guys that look like they fell face-first into a tackle box are hollerin’ out for more country songs. They like to hear the rebels – Johnny Cash, Hank Williams Jr., Merle Haggard, Johnny Paycheck and Willie Nelson, that kind of thing," Roth said.
And that kind of request, whatever the source, is music to a country player’s ears.
But for all the pleasure their song list might bring to the band, it is the audience that the Healers aim to please first.
"We don’t want to take it that seriously," Roth said. "For us, it’s just about having fun and making people enjoy themselves."
Essery agreed.
"We can’t forget why we’re here, and that’s to entertain," he said. "That’s our dominant theme. We’ve got nothing to prove; we’re all seasoned players. There could be one guy out there with his head on the table, we’re still having fun, and that’s key with us."
"It’s a really good thing we’re doing," Roth said. "It’s exciting. It’s something we all want to do."
The Honky Tonk Healers plan to be making a regular house call to Russell’s Bar and Grill through the end of this year, Sundays, 3 to 7 p.m. Whatever might be ailing you, these Healers and their music could be just the tonic to ease that pain.