JOHN Wheeler, charismatic frontman of those orginators of rockgrass Hayseed Dixie is enjoying a rare day off.

“Days off cost money man, that’s why I we just keep on touring when we’re on the road,” he said.

John and his band of folk punksters are currently in the middle of a 41-date European tour which comes to Blackburn on Tuesday.

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“When we’re on the road we’re working,” said John. “The reason I own a house is because we don’t have that many days off when we tour, it’s all a matter of economics.”

For the uninitiated, Hayseed Dixie play hard driving rock songs in a bluegrass style. Banjos, mandolin and fiddle are very much to the fore but the high-energy live show is normally what you’d expect from some of the finest exponents of heavy metal rather than country.

The band’s new album, Hair Down to My Grass, features Tcovers of songs as diverse as Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb to the Glee anthem Don’t Stop Believing, all done in the distinctive Hayseed Dixie style.

“We do get people ask us if we’d like to be taken seriously, but I honestly don’t know what that means.” said John, who founded the band in his native East Tennessee 14 years ago. “You take Angus Young of AC/DC - he’s still prancing around stage dressed as a schoolboy in his sixties but that doesn’t make him any lesser a guitarist does it?

“As far as I am concerned, I want to put on a show - I don’t want to get on stage and stare at my shoes all night and I’m pretty sure that’s not what the audience wants either.”

As anyone who went along to Darwen Live in 2010 when Hayseed Dixie headlined the open air event knows, their live shows are always entertaining.

“I really think one of the greatest things about Northern European culture is that a sense of irony and satire is so strong,” said John. “That’s probably why we get such reactions when we play as the fans really get us and what we do.

“We do what we do and we have made the style our own and that’s what people appreciate. As an artist that’s all you can ever do - believe in your work and put on a show.

“We have a good time doing it and the audience also clearly has a good time watching us do it.

“For us the fact that people turn out on a night and appreciate what we do is what keeps us touring.”

  • Hayseed Dixie, King George’s Hall, Blackburn, Tuesday, February 3. Details from the box office on 0844 847 1664.