December 11, 2025 – Hoke's Jukebox

and I’d have laughed – but both hit as surprise high points in a recent Nashville visit.

First, the Beatles’ German version of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” rang out in “Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm” at the Frist Museum downtown, a post office turned art-deco gallery palace. That night, brother Jim Hoke’s Floating Zone band performed it in spirited but faulty German live at East Nashville’s 5 Spot. Guest singer Pat Sansone (Wilco, the Autumn Defense) pulled that title from the tip-request jar; he also tugged out a twenty, joked “Don’t mind if I do” and mimed pocketing it before tossing it back into the jar.

Pat Sansone, left, and Jim Hoke

That “Stump the Band on the Beatles” request segment of Jim’s monthly showcase followed originals from Jim’s recent albums “The Floating Zone” (2021), “I Was Born in Ohio” (2023) and “Tune Up The Bongos” (2025) – all available on BandCamp.

Above: Hoke’s Floating Zone Band, from left: fiddler Matt Combs, cellist Austin Hoke, percussionist Kirby Shelstad, Jim Hoke playing pedal steel, drummer Ben Parks, guitarist Chris Cottros and bassist Dave Francis. Below: Austin Hoke, cello, at left; Hoke at the pedal steel

It all began with pedal steel (by Jim) and cello (by son Austin) duets of a spiky, sparse beauty in Milhaud’s “Sumare” and playful jazz lilt in Zappa’s “Ay Bee Sea.” Then the band joined, a player or two at a time, to gang up on Jim’s pop numbers, first the instrumental “Grim Determination,” then the romantic desperation of “If You Change Your Mind” – first number at full, formidable strength, and first vocal tune, with close harmony by Jim’s collage-artist-pianist-singer and cultural catalyst wife Lisa Haddad.

Jim Hoke, left, and Lisa Haddad; bassist Dave Francis at right

Hoke’s later shift from guitar to uke echoed the earlier change of pace. This time, a run of pop songs yielded to meditative string sounds in a sonic detour into uke instrumentals. First came pop-song zip in the impatient “Gotta Go,” then the wistful bio of a neighborhood sling-shot tough in “Vince Horan,” followed by Pat Sansone’s first guest vocal in “Bus Stop.” Bassist Dave Francis’s booming mock-pompous harmony beefed up “El Kabong” and Hoke’s angst in “I’m in the Doldrums” resolved nicely in the uke tunes.

Then things built again in the peppy reclaimed-friendship saga of “Woodstock,” with references to people and places from our childhood; another instrumental, then a build through several vocal numbers to the rambunctious flat-out “Mitzi Gaynor.”

Sansone returned to sing the chorus in “Komm Gib Mir Deine Hand” (“I Want to Hold Your Hand,” in German); and he stuck around through the other Beatles’ requests, likely the only singer onstage who could falsetto the chorus in “Across the Universe.”

Pat Sansone reads Beatles’ lyrics from his phone

With no keyboard onstage, and without a return to the pedal steel that co-starred in the opening run, the strings carried the instrumental harmonies in both originals and Beatles’ requests. Cellist Austin and fiddler Matt Combs linked tight with Hoke’s acoustic guitar under his vocals. Introduced as longtime member of the Grand Ole Opry house band, Combs spun a funny tale about Little Jimmy Dickens. Francis’s bass, Ben Parks’s drums and Kirby Shelstad’s percussion flew just as tight, but unobtrusive, while Chris Cottros decorated many numbers with feisty electric guitar zing.

The requested Beatles’ covers challenged the band, though they quickly identified the keys and worked up arrangements before finding someone who knew all the words. They played things straight and respectfully, then Hoke closed the show by cueing Sansone to fade his lead vocal in “Universe” – the band, too – letting the audience fill the cozy silence by singing it themselves.

The music reached out from the stage in fun, rocking waves, warming me with shared memories of growing up together with the rockers, jazz numbers and classical compositions that inspired Jim to make music and me to love and want to be part of it through words and pictures.

Old friends gathered at the show: Did one of them request “Komm Gib Mir Deine Hand”?

Ralph Mauriello came from Crossville, Tennessee. He and Jim played together from fourth grade into their 20s in bands called the Al Cabos, the Auratones and West Side Highway. Jim reunited the Auratones for my 50th birthday party, a wonderful surprise.

Tom Aldi flew in from Raleigh; he played with Jim in a pop-up “band” called the Cycle of Sound. Unannounced, uninvited, they clustered on front porches, pressed doorbells and started rocking. Some beneficiaries/victims slammed the door, though one invited them into a back yard pool party and another hired them to play a wedding.

Michael Davis drove from Atlanta; a drummer, he was among many room-mates in a Hamilton Hill flat where his band Autumn practiced in the attic; my job was to fend off police attention on a lively, happily noisy block with two other bands and a biker gang.

McCartney Photos at the Frist

Just as almost everybody of a certain age knows many Beatles’ songs, most fans know the sudden worldwide super-stardom of the young quartet, from growing adulation at home to taking America by storm.

McCartney’s photos at the Frist portray that storm from within its eye, as my daughter Pisie and I found earlier in the day of Hoke’s show. McCartney shows his band mates as friends, with easy candid intimacy. They seem relaxed and very much themselves, as no one else ever saw them. McCartney handed his camera to crew members when he went onstage; and even these performance images feel intimate since they were shot from the wings.

How fun to wander through gallery after gallery with McCartney’s photos on the walls, amid screens showing videos from the Ed Sullivan show, news conferences and hanging out in Florida. These seaside vacation photos are in color; everything else is in newspaper-y black and white.

Pisie and I mixed among a high school music or art class who looked ready to move to Brooklyn, or at least to East Nashville whose residents hail the place as the Brooklyn of the south.

While the Beatles were surrounded by fans’ adoring attention, McCartney gazed back, outward, at ordinary people, and most tellingly, at oblivious non-fan folks. His curiosity embraced everyone, both through his camera and his songwriting.

Just as no one else could have shot McCartney’s photos, no one else but Jim Hoke could have made his music – songs that grew from and describe places and people from our childhood in Guilderland. Yes – he even found a rhyme for where we grew up.

“Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm” leaves the Frist at the end of January and opens in February at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.

All That’s Cool, But Also…

Jim Hoke played a day-long recording session for Paul McCartney’s “Egypt Station” album at Henson Studios in Hollywood, along with fellow horn players from Nashville and Memphis. And my wife Ellie von Wellsheim told us in a guest blog here about seeing McCartney perform recently in Montreal.

Bonus Photos