CHARLES HUTCHINSON talks to a band that's not afraid to take on rock's greatest hits.

HAYSEED Dixie's greatest hit won't find its place in any book of rock lists.

However, they will be eternally grateful to the out-of-town motorist who wrapped his car round an old oak tree at Devil's Curve in Deer Lick Holler Valley, Appalachia. He died, but his music lived on or, rather, the box of vinyl on his back seat came into the possession of these scavenging bluegrass mountain hicks.

Their find, the Oz rock of AC/DC, duly mutated into the rockgrass of Hayseed Dixie, as Whole Lotta Rosie, Touch Too Much and Highway To Hell were given the bluegrass, kick-ass treatment on guitar, mandolin, banjo and fiddle. Britain and Europe eventually caught on, so much so that fifth album A Hot Piece Of Grass has been released over here first.

After conquering Glastonbury with no fewer than three sets last month, Hayseed Dixie play York for the first time on Monday in a sold-out show at Fibbers. Band mastermind and producer John Wheeler can't wait.

"You guys in Yorkshire do the best beer, man!" he says in a voice that crackles like fire. "I guess when I was 19/20 in Chicago I had my first Theakston's Old Peculier, and that's when I discovered the difference between ale and beer. After drinking that beer I vowed never to drink ale again."

He's not only here for the beer but for telling the story of the rise of Hayseed Dixie. "That crash story's not real - far from the truth. I was working as a producer in Nashville in 2000, when I met banjo player Don Wayne Reno and mandolin player Dale Reno, the sons of bluegrass player Don Reno, who'd written something like 670 songs but died at 56 and, because he didn't die young or live forever like BB King, he's got passed over.

"They were playing with lots of people, as the Reno Brothers, working as hired musicians, which is pretty much what you do in Nashville. We were sitting there on the porch one day, drinking beers and we just started playing AC/DC songs for fun and it just grew from there," John recalls.

Their debut album, 2001's A Hillybilly Tribute To AC/DC, caught the attention of America's breakfast radio shows. "It pretty quickly sold 120,000 copies. Crazy! We'd originally burned only about 25 copies on our computer to give to our friends! We'd just say to them, 'this might be something you could play at your party!'."

Since then Hayseed Dixie have sentenced Queen, Ted Nugent and The Cars to a rockgrass makeover on A Hillbilly Tribute To Mountain Love in 2002 and turned their attention to the painted prancing of Kiss on 2003's Kiss My Grass. Their British breakthrough came last year when Cooking Vinyl launched Let There Be Bluegrass, an introduction to Hayseed Dixie's delight in making everyone from AC/DC to Aerosmith and even The Darkness walk the hillbilly way.

"There never was a big masterplan, and we just keep showing up and playing, and more people keep turning up...and we get our beer tab paid!" says John.

"I'm not lying about that: we'll drink with you and we'll out-drink you. Those guys in Scotland can drink, but after five days in a grudge match I got them in the end, man. 'No man, they said, we're whooped'."

Hayseed Dixie love a good time . Just don't mention bands of the doom-and-gloom nature of Coldplay. "They're stare-at-your-feet, feel-miserable c**p. I don't get it. I don't earn as much as they do but I'm having a great time. What the hell is that, singing about their pain?" John says. "I think it's about entertainment; when everyone walks out at the end they should have a big smile on their face."

Hayseed Dixie are not a spoof, John insists. "There's no reason why you can't play well and have fun. Look at AC/DC's Angus Young; he's still wearing those shorts but he plays his face off every night and no one's going to tell him he can't play," he says.

"I don't take myself seriously, but I take what we do very seriously, providing fun for people for two hours. That's what they pay me for. 'Entertain me', that's what they're saying.

"Look at Glastonbury, we were playing the Lost Vagueness stage at one o'clock in the morning, and there was a woman there hanging up on a meat hook. Our show was methadone for all the rock'n'roll junkies who still hadn't had enough. Know what I mean."

As Hayseed Dixie set about adding Green Day, Neil Young and 2004's favoured sons Franz Ferdinand and Outkast to their list of rockgrass converts on A Hot Piece Of Grass, bear this thought in mind: "There's four big elements in any good mountain song - drinking, cheating, killing and going to hell. They're all from the British ballad tradition and they're no different from rock songs," John says.

"Bluegrass music evolved in isolation, developing its own style, but it's always been in the tradition of rough music written by people who've lived hard lives."

Hayseed Dixie play Fibbers, York, on Monday. Sold out.

Updated: 08:58 Friday, July 08, 2005