Hot Apple Pie

When we first heard their big hit, the highly polished “Hillbillies (Love It in the Hay),” we figured these guys for manufactured, Big & Rich-bandwagon funtry (as in “funky country” — we may or may not have coined that term). Turns out Hot Apple Pie is full of accomplished musicians who are forming their own sound after leaving Little Texas, the Charley Daniels Band and a Wayne Toups tour, respectively. Behind their Eagles-meets-James Brown sound lies a jazz degree, a flat-picking champion and a lot of brazen takes on the country genre. Rascal Flattsesque boy band? Nope. Purist-friendly? Nuh-uh. Hot Apple Pie is somewhere in between, and thus sure to please the masses. But only for the moment. Our guess is, this band’s sound is too 2005 for its own good.