Chicken Tractor Deluxe

Chicken Tractor Deluxe is an old time country and Americana band based in Central Pennsylvania, playing American rural music.

Drawing roots from old 78 rpm records, rural church music, mountain murder ballads, classic country and
honky tonk, string band and old time music, all run through the cosmic filter of predecessors and inspirants such as Dr. Humphrey Bates and his Possum Hunters, Lily Mae Ledford, Gram Parsons, Sarah, A.P. and Mother Maybelle, George Jones, the Louvin Brothers, Blind Willie Johnson, Walt Whitman, Carl Smith, Wade Ward, the Wringers, Eugene Chadbourne, Daniel A.I.U. Higgs, The MacGillicuddies, Gaither Carlton, Clarence Ashley, Charlie Poole, Frank Proffitt, Fred Cockerham, Charlie Feathers The Wayward Girls, Brother Claude Ely, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Uncle Dave Macon, Hazel Dickens, Hasil Adkins, Ola Belle Reed, and Arthur E. Brumley.

In 2011, the band’s second release, Nightclub Jacks and Undertakers, was named album of the week by country music fan blog Family Reunion Country. Turnstiled and Junkpiled wrote about Nightclub Jacks, "Chicken Tractor Deluxe has a wide variety of vocal styling and country-based influence. The brass tinged, 'When That Great Ship Went Down' is straight up Levon Helm while 'The Cuckoo' sounds like it could have come from a Steve Earle, Del McCoury session. The Bluegrassy, 'Father Bed' is a little bit Doc Watson and 'Reuben's Train' conjures up memories of the fine tuned roots rock Beggar's Banquet-era Rolling Stones." Nightclub Jacks follows Chicken Tractor Deluxe's debut CD Tin Can Holler, released in 2009.

CTD is: Jimmy James Baughman (upright bass, vocals); Nell Hanssen (guitar, trumpet, vocals); Kai Schafft (vocals, clawhammer banjo, guitar); Gary Gyekis (drums); and assorted others, as we desire, including frequent appearances by Dr. Dave Mudgett on the pedal steel and electric guitar.