For some thirty years Ned Hill has walked the tracks of a hard-bitten troubadour, wearing equal parts humor and fury on his t-shirt sleeve, working at a shoe factory in the daytime and singing his songs at night in dives for door money. Any given weekend will have him driving 500 miles to play dusty rock and roll, and sing country songs about damaged love, castaways, dying small towns, and people who’ve been knocked down and kicked hard.
Six Feet Above Ground is Hill’s first solo album. For fifteen years (2001-2016) Nashville’s oft acclaimed Ned Van Go was the rough-hewn vehicle for Hill’s tunes. Before that there were similar leadership roles in The Cowards and The Blue Cha Chas. While all their (occasionally brilliant) records progressively showed off maturation, the new release is a quantum leap further still.