Bill Kirchen’s answer to the holiday season begins with “Daddy’s Drinkin’ Up Our Christmas,” and from there the set ranges freely across the territory the Nutcracker has never claimed. The Grammy-nominated guitarist and co-founder of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen brings his annual Honky Tonk Holiday Show to The Hangar on the Hudson in Troy on Saturday, November 28 — an evening built around what Kirchen calls “a sleigh-full of rarely heard holiday numbers from the blues, rock ‘n’ roll and honky tonk bags.”
About the Show
Kirchen’s path through American roots music has covered a lot of ground. He began his professional career in a jug band in Ann Arbor, attended the Newport Folk Festivals in 1964 and 1965 (where he witnessed Dylan’s electric turn and heard Mississippi John Hurt), and went on to co-found Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, the “hippie country band” credited with helping create the Americana format. The band’s “Hot Rod Lincoln” reached the top ten in 1972, and Kirchen earned a Grammy nomination for Best Country Instrumental Performance. He later coined the term “dieselbilly” to name the style he had been developing all along: a fusion of rockabilly, country, western swing, honky-tonk, jump blues, jazz, and boogie-woogie, driven by a 1950s Telecaster. AllMusic names him a forefather of both the twangcore movement and Americana as a radio format. His collaborators have included Emmylou Harris, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Bo Diddley, and Gene Vincent. His most recent album, “Cat out of the Bag” (May 2026), reached number one on the Alt Country Specialty chart.
The holiday show is, at this point, its own annual tradition. The set draws on titles including “Silent Surfin’ Night,” “Truckin’ Trees for Christmas,” “Santa Looked A Lot Like Daddy,” and “Daddy’s Drinkin’ Up Our Christmas,” with the dieselbilly standards threaded through to, as the event description puts it, “take the edge off the holiday fuss.” Joining Kirchen are The Silent Knights — Jack Saunders on bass and Rick Richards on drums.
Venue & Logistics
The Hangar on the Hudson sits on the Troy waterfront at 675 River Street, a covered event space on the capital-region circuit where this kind of intimate, specialist booking still finds its audience. A Grammy-nominated Americana pioneer playing a 300-capacity room is the whole argument for the evening: close enough to see where Kirchen’s hands go on that Telecaster. The show starts at 8 p.m.
Tickets
Tickets are $29. No refunds per the event listing. Buy tickets