Johnny Dilks & His Visitacion Valley Boys – Acres Of Heartache

At several points on this debut disc, I had to look over to make sure it was on the CD player and not the turntable. Johnny Dilks, a San Francisco-based yodeling honky-tonker, has a voice that possesses a distinctive retro analog crackle, making him sound as if he’s crooning from old-fashioned vinyl instead of high-tech plastic.

It helps that his eleven original tunes (there are four covers as well) sound as if they’ve been written by a guy who never upgraded his home stereo from a 78-rpm player and turned off his country music radio during the Eisenhower Administration. Dilks, who found his roots by working his way through punk and rockabilly, wears his country and western swing influences as comfortably as he does his vintage cowboy shirts, from Hank Williams (the drawl on the death-blues number “One Foot In The Grave”) to Bob and Billy Jack Wills (the prevalent fiddle of Brian Godchaux) to the Louvin Brothers (Charlie had the band back him on a tour) to Dixieland (“Jelly Roll”), and even the Saddlemen-era yodeling Bill Haley.

Billy Wilson’s tasteful steel guitar lays a wavy layer of melody for Godchaux (who also plays electric and acoustic mandolin), standup bassist Brendan Ryan, Paul Wooton (on “take-off guitar”), and either Pat Campbell or Ken Owens on drums. Dilks’ expressive vocals, which have that clenched-throat quality shared by others of the genre (most notably Wayne Hancock), generally lead up to a convincing yodel break when the band doesn’t play a solo before the bridge. And you gotta like a singer who writes a tune called “Yodel Till I Turn Blue”.