Much like Santa Claus, or the lyrics by Geoff Mack, in terms of musical settings Bill Kirchen has been everywhere man. The guitarist, christened by Guitar Magazine as “The titan of the telecaster” will bring his Honky Tonk Holiday Show to the Mucky Duck on Tuesday, December 23.
Kirchen has been playing this holiday show around the country for longer than he can remember but this year, he had to cancel a majority of the tour after suffering a medical emergency.
In November, while chatting on the phone with a friend and laughing, Kirchen suffered a spontaneous pneumothorax, a collapse of the lung. “It was pretty exciting. I immediately knew that something was really weird and within 10 or 15 seconds, I knew I needed an ambulance.”
Luckily, Kirchen’s wife called 911 and he recalls how quickly he received medical attention saying, “Bingo, just like that I was well taken care of.” It was a lucky break indeed and Kirchen is happy and grateful to be back on the road and in front of fans this holiday season.
“I describe it as holiday songs you may not be familiar with, some of them of questionable taste, but I don’t think they’re of questionable taste,” says Kirchen listing songs like “Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin’” originally done by Albert King, “Reindeer Boogie” and of course the Haggard classic “If We Make It Through December.”
Obviously, becoming the telecaster master didn’t happen overnight and Kirchen’s path to being the “Dieselbilly king”, though not obvious, captures a natural progression in music. He began as a kid playing the trombone in the school band.
After seeing his camp counselor play acoustic guitar and sing folk songs Kirchen, like many kids his age at the time, began really getting into the folk movement. He played banjo and from there moved to the acoustic guitar.
He describes being “captivated” by folk music as he delved into Peter, Paul and Mary, The New Lost City Ramblers and of course, Pete Seeger. He says that to this day he considers himself a folk singer as left to his own devices he would play mostly Dylan and Haggard tunes.
At 16 years old, Kirchen hitchhiked to Newport for a chance to see Bob Dylan and Skip James, his sweet youthful face can be seen in the crowd on the LP cover.
The following year Kirchen returned and saw Dylan’s famous performance where he went electric. Kirchen himself still doesn’t get what the big shock was, Dylan had already released “Subterranean Homesick Blues” giving a good glimpse into the direction he would be going in.
He argues the popular image of people booing and throwing things at Dylan stating that folkies would never throw things but instead maybe were booing his short, three song performance.
“From the folk thing and with Dylan going electric, it was a great, great impetus for me to start a band.” Kirchen headed to San Francisco after high school and there he ran into some buddies where together they decided to hop trains back to Ann Arbor and start their band.
His train hopping not only resulted in a broken toe that caused about 25 years of discoloration when his foot got run over during his journey, but also led to Kirchen becoming part of the one and only Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen, a band that would take Kirchen front and center to the cosmic country and hippie movement of the Bay Area.
“When I hooked up with Commander Cody I really did not know about electric country music to speak of. I knew about old-timey, folk and bluegrass but interestingly enough the folk scene that I was part of they were like prejudiced,” says Kirchen describing how some of the old-timey players considered bluegrass to be too loud and too fast, almost like it was heavy metal.
“That whole telecaster noise, I loved it,” says Kirchen with youthful fervor. “I’m looking around and I’m seeing that all these guys played a telecaster. Not only Buck Owens and Donn Rich but also Merle Haggard, Roy Nichols and James Burton. At one point I was like, I gotta get a telecaster.”
Kirchen’s musical brain went from train songs of folks and blues to truck driving songs as he gravitated more and more to that kind of sound. “A lot of that stuff had low guitar lines and I discovered that the low notes on the trombone are the exact same notes as the low E on a guitar so I think that my ear was tuned to that part of the spectrum.”
The band had a major hit with their cover of the 1955 song “Hot Rod Lincoln” showcasing Kirchen’s fast fingers, a skill he gained from flatpicking like Doc Watson. “I still couldn’t have gotten through a whole Chuck Berry rhythm part without panting and that allowed me to play the lead.”
After the dissolution of Commander Cody, Kirchen formed his “swing orchestra” band The Moonlighters leading to a lasting friendship and partnership with”The Jesus Of Cool,” Nick Lowe.
Their friendship continues and the two reunited this year to pay tribute to their old friend and collaborator Austin de Lone, who Kirchen calls his biggest influence on him and one of the greatest musicians he has ever known, at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. “He was my main guy and my best friend.”
From The Moonlighters, Kirchen moved to the D.C. area and became a big part of the roots music resurgence of the late ‘80s forming the band Too Much Fun and integrating into the guitarist community there.
“I’ve never been good at branding myself or sticking to one kind of music, which might have been better financially, but I don’t regret that because I’ve been able to make a living and I’ve always just enjoyed playing all different kinds of music.”
Kirchen, who has been living in Texas since 2011, is still making new music and plans on releasing an album next year. He is also working on collecting his many colorful stories into a book.
When discussing his good fortune of gliding through and being part of some of music history’s most important and influential periods and artists, Kirchen is aware of his good fortune.
“I think I’m extraordinarily lucky in that department because I got into the game kind of as a fan in the mid ‘60s. When I think about it, I saw a whole generation of things that were gone by the ‘70s. I’ve just been doing this for so long. I always say my main career move is failure to go away. We were also really eclectic and we touched a lot of different types of music with Commander Cody and so I’ve just had the opportunity to meet and interact with a whole wide range of people so I’m lucky in that way, I’m really lucky.”
As time takes away more musical legends every day, Kirchen remains optimistic that the love and magic of music will carry on as the language of music is a primitive and deep-rooted desire to express. “I think it’s a different part of the brain and so that gives me hope that this will survive,” he says.
“I’m at the age now where I’ve lost a bunch of people lately. That’s just what happens. I’m glad I’m not one of them and I’m glad I remember the ones that are gone. Try to cherish the living if we’re going to mourn the dead, that’s my mantra.”
Bill Kirchen will perform7 p.m. on Tuesday, December 23 at Mc Gonigel’s Mucky Duck, 2425 Norfolk. For more information visit mcgonigels.com. $49.
This article appears in Mucky Duck, BIll Kirchen, houston music, and Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.