Tribute Shows
***Originally booked for 2021 -postponed until further notice due to Covid-19***
A show dedicated to Merle Haggards life and music. This full band show is inspired by Merle’s “Live at Austin City Limits 1984” Album - my favourite of his concerts. Songs include Okie From Muskogee, Silver Wings, Mama Tried, Ramblin Fever and many others. The look and style of this show best resembles Merle Haggard onstage circa 1978-1988. If you would like to book this concert contact ryan@ryancook.ca for more information.
Following the success of One Night Only with Hank Williams I presented a show celebrating the music of Buck Owens & The Bakersfield Sound. Featuring the Sunny Acres band -a five-piece country band we mixed songs from my previous albums with a full set of hits from Buck Owens & the Buckaroos catalog circa 1960-1970.
Buck Owens helped to create the “Bakersfield Sound”, a distinct flavour of country music that opposed the “Nashville sound” and charted 21 #1 hits on Billboard charts between 1963-1988. In this show you hear the familiar songs of Buck’s catalog like “A Tiger by the Tail”, “Waitin in your Welfare Line”, “Together Again”, and collaborations/cover songs Buck worked into his shows of artists like Simon & Garfunkel, The Band, and Dwight Yoakam.
The Sunny Acres 2019 lineup featured Kye Ehresman (drums), Dave Campbell (pedal steel guitar), Jill Chambers (bass fiddle) and Phil Sedore (lead guitar).
’It don’t mean a thang if it ain’t got that twang.’ - BUCK OWENS
Ryan Cook began performing as Hank Williams in 2009 when he performed consecutive sold-out weeks of the Maynard Collins play "The Show He Never Gave" in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada.
Having performed at some of the same stages as Hank Williams including the Ryman Auditorium, and Ernest Tubb Midnight Jamboree in Nashville, TN, Ryan has also studied Hank Williams life through the biographical work of Colin Escott, Sneezy Waters, The Country Music Hall of Fame (TN), Hank Williams Boyhood Home & Museum (AL), and The Hank Williams Museum (Montgomery (AL).
Along with band mates the Drifting Cowboys, this two-act feature performance includes 22 songs from the greatest Country Music singer and songwriter of all time. Ryan Cook and company re-animate the sounds of Don Helms haunting steel guitar, Jerry Rivers fiddle arrangements, and the yodelling of the lovesick boy from Georgiana, Luke the Drifter himself: Hank Williams.
“I feel like I’m watching Hank in his prime on a stage that he was no stranger to… I flew to Nova Scotia to experience the magic for myself, and wasn’t disappointed!”
“Ryan Cook’s channeling of Hank Williams- his voice and heartache- is a moving experience. A terrific performance by this young artist and his band”
