The Hoyle Brothers

The best thing about the holidays is that nobody wants to go anywhere. Bands don’t tour very much, you want to hang with family and it’s cold anyway.

This means that local rules.

This city is in possession of a treasure, one that you should feel guilty for not having indulged in (unless you already have): The Hoyle Brothers. It will be eight years that this quintet (not brothers, by the by) has been doing its honky-tonk thing at the Empty Bottle. And you know what? It’s still free. As in no money. As in you should be ashamed of yourself for not going — because it’s free.

But even if it weren’t free, you should be ashamed of yourself for not going, because one thing that a city needs to do is supports its local arts gems — like the Hoyle Brothers.

For the unfamiliar, honky-tonk is country music, but with an unassailable purity that the Hoyles have mastered. No pop stuff, no slick sport-utility vehicles, just twang. The group — Lance Helgeson, Steve Doyle, Brian Wilkie, Josh Piet, Trevor McSpadden — has a record that came out in 2009, “Don’t Leave Yet,” that is its best one yet. You get more of a taste of what the group is like in the live setting, the pace, drive and swing that make everyone who talks about this band use the same word: real.

Best of all, you have no excuses. It’s the holidays, you’re tapped out thanks to Christmas and booze, so you’re probably looking for something really cool to do. So fire up the computer, and get a little Hoyle sample, at myspace.com/thehoylebrothers. It will take care of your last excuse for not hearing this band’s beautifully played, butter-smooth country that goes down like one of those preternaturally tasty pedal steel licks from Wilkie.

We should warn you: If your idea of country is that pop stuff, leave those perceptions at home. Now go have fun. - Chicago Tribune

Though an open-ended weekly gig is good steady work, it makes it easy for audiences to take a band for granted. Chicago’s Hoyle Brothers have been slinging no-nonsense old-school honky-tonk 52 times a year (or close to it) since 2002—first at the Hideout and then at the Empty Bottle, where for a spell they played not just every Friday but every Sunday—but sometimes I wish it were harder to see them, if only so more people might treat them like something special. Last spring they put out their third self-released album, Don’t Leave Yet, a collection of sturdy original tunes (and a cover of Waylon Jennings’s “Anita, You’re Dreaming”) whose crisp, twangy grooves are embellished by liquid pedal steel and woozy Dobro. Their sound reminds me a bit of the early output of Nashville’s BR549, from before their headlong lunge at the mainstream, and though the Hoyles’ own material would be DOA in Music City, it does just fine as the soundtrack for a happy hour at the end of the work week.

- Peter Margasak - Chicago Reader