The Whistle Pigs

Whistle Pigs Website

The Whistle Pigs were founded in early 2007 by singer/songwriter Banjo Joe McCamish (Banjo/lead vocals) and Randy "Bulldog" Hill (Bass fiddle/vocal harmonies) of Skinny Jim and the Number 9 Blacktops. Alex Pape (Accordion/Guitar/vocals) of Bourbon Knights joined shortly after. If you happened to be at The Cove on Halloween, you might have seen four guys — wearing bonnets, dresses that came down to their jeans or hairy legs, and steel-toed work boots — playing hillbilly music. The only thing missing were corncob pipes, but a few of them dangled cigarettes from their mouths as they performed. Whistle Pigs, a Carbondale, Ill.-based band, features banjo player, vocalist and songwriter Joe “Banjo Joe” McCamish, 30; stand-up bassist Randy Hill, 26; accordion player Alex Pape, 23; and washboard player Adam Hawk, 27. Hawk, a Memphis blacksmith, is a former Carbondale resident. The band, which recorded two CDs, Old Time Album and Original Album, plays once a month at The Cove at 2559 Broad. Their next gig will be Nov. 21. They wore the costumes, which they call “prairie dresses,” to celebrate Halloween, but they’ve worn them on stage before. “It was my idea, and I’m sorry I even mentioned it ’cause Al went and got them,” McCamish said. “We used to wear those union suits,” Hawk said. They wore red long underwear with their work boots. “We had little booze bottles with ‘XXX’ on them,” Hill said. “It just adds to the show.” McCamish became a full-time musician after leaving his last job. “(I’m a) pizza delivery guy — retired,” he said. “I wouldn’t shave my beard. And I’m making more now.” Two years ago, McCamish and Hill formed the band, which they named after woodchucks, also called “whistle pigs.” They don’t refer to their songs as “bluegrass” music. “’Cause we’re not from Kentucky,” McCamish said. “I just call it ‘hillbilly music,’” Hill said. “We sing the old-time songs, a nd we use the old-time instruments,” McCamish said. “We kind of rock it out a little bit more,” Hill said. They also play their originals. “Some of them are borderline rockabilly, maybe country even. Folk,” McCamish said. A lot of the “hippie people” are attracted to the bluegrass bands in Carbondale, but Whistle Pigs “get all the punk-rock people and the rockers, metal heads,” Hill said. Explaining how he got into playing washboard, Hawk said he played drums in another band. “I just treat it like it was a drum. I just pick different areas on it to be different parts of a drum.” Hawk often wears special gloves to play. “He made some gloves that are leather work gloves with shotgun shells” glued to his fingertips, McCamish said. “Washboards last about two gigs with him until they get a big hole all the way through.” “ ‘Long Term Plan’ is one I wrote for my grandma,” McCamish said. “She asked me one day if I had a long-term plan. She wor ries about me. I didn’t. I haven’t. So, I went and wrote her that song. It’s just about sleeping in my car and eating sardines and just hoping I can get a dime for every song I sang.”