Gig - Hank Wangford and Reg Meuross

In the mid eighties I was a rock journalist for the university magazine, and one evening I interviewed legendary spoof country-and-western star Hank Wangford, who was hot stuff at the time, part of the Red Wedge tour with the likes of Billy Bragg, Paul Weller and the Frank Chickens. It wasn’t a success. I was young, I was stoned, and I didn’t have a pen. It was a complete waste of his time. For a comedy artist, he looked mightily miffed by the time he decided to call it a wrap.
I was dying to get hold of him, then, before this gig, which he’s doing with his less-legendary sidekick Reg Meuross, if only to make amends. But I could only get hold of Reg’s number. I thought long and hard about asking Reg to put me in contact with Hank, but I didn’t have the heart. It’s a double act, after all. So I asked Reg about the gig instead.

He turns out to be a lovely bloke. “We put together this duo show for the Rural Arts Touring Scheme,” he says, “which was set up to help put high-quality acts into little parish halls. We thought we’d give it a try for a season, figuring we’d do 20 shows or so. Two years and 150 shows later we’re still doing it. It’s been a tremendous success.”
Called ‘No Hall Too Small,” the show is in three parts. “First up there’s Hank, doing his country-influenced songs. Then there’s me: I do more folky-roots songs. Then, for the last bit, we do duets taken from American groups of the 40’s and 50’s, like the Louvin Brothers, the Blue-sky Boys and the Delmore Brothers. They are all about divorce and cheating and dying. Hank says they are ‘songs you can dance and cry to at the same time’. They are all deeply infused with misery, though the music is upbeat and, like everything Hank does, they are heavily tinged with irony.”