Where Rustic Glory Came From: A Happy Curmudgeons Memory Song with Hendrix’s Bassist as a Guest

Dave Hamilton’s Song of Love and Loss, Played with Guests Billy Cox and Bobby Balderrama

The bass on Rustic Glory belongs to Billy Cox, who anchored Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys. Happy Curmudgeons recorded Rustic Glory with Cox as a guest, invited by the band’s founder, singer and guitarist Dave Hamilton. Still, the song is Hamilton’s, and every name on its credits carries a history of its own.

Happy Curmudgeons’ Rustic Glory is in the playlist below, and the band’s coverage is gathered on the Happy Curmudgeons profile. The song came to MusicRoots.News through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news titles. Press play, then stay with the story.

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Guest Players and a Simple Acoustic Groove Give Rustic Glory by Happy Curmudgeons Its Hook

Cox is not the only guest, though. Bobby Balderrama plays lead guitar. He played lead in ? & the Mysterians, whose 96 Tears topped the US charts in 1966. Jim “Moose” Brown, known for his work with Bob Seger and Vince Gill, adds Hammond B3. Meanwhile, Todd Glass, who has drummed for Robert Gordon and Link Wray, keeps time.

The hook, then, is partly a matter of who is in the room. Otherwise, the song itself stays plain. When the single arrived on 1 July 2022, The Static Dive heard a simple acoustic folk and funk groove.

It sits in acoustic rock and Americana, so it carries the warmth of classic rock radio. The band’s own notes compare its mood to a memory sweeping in like a summer breeze. That nostalgic pull is what first catches the ear.

It helps to know where the band comes from, too. Happy Curmudgeons formed in 2015 as a small group of friends who shared a passion for music. Most of the players hail from metro Detroit. After years of local gigs, they decided that writing their own songs was the way to grow. The result was 11 original songs on their first album, Meant 2 Be, released in 2017.

Dave Hamilton Wrote Rustic Glory About Love, Loss and the Moments That Stay With Us

Hamilton wrote the song and sings it, playing the acoustic guitar under his own vocal. The notes to the official video give his reason for writing it. He made it to reflect on love, loss and the lasting beauty of moments that stay with us.

In a 2023 interview with FVMusicBlog, he described a celebration of those who have gone but left their love behind. That is the lyric’s subject, stated plainly, and the arrangement is built to support it.

Similarly, the title fits that brief. Rustic points to the plain, weathered surfaces of Americana, and glory to the memories those surfaces hold. It is a writer’s pairing: an old image and a large feeling in two words.

The approach belongs to a long line. The Band built a whole tradition out of songs about memory and place. Likewise, Bob Seger turned a remembered summer into Night Moves, a Michigan rock standard. Rustic Glory sits in that company without borrowing any one song’s shape. It is a memory song told in plain words, carried by players with decades of records behind them.

That is also why the guest list matters to the writing. A song about looking back gains weight when the people playing it have long careers of their own. The players become part of what the lyric means.

Finally, the video follows the same line. Published in February 2025, it invites anyone who has walked down memory lane to feel the warmth of the past.

Five Players, a Detroit Mastering Room and a Red Vinyl Pressing Shaped Rustic Glory

The arrangement is simple to describe. Hamilton’s voice and acoustic guitar sit at the centre, with Cox on bass and Glass on drums. Then Balderrama’s lead guitar and Brown’s Hammond B3 fill in around them. Five players, each with a clear job.

The production chain stayed close to home. Mark Byerly, who has played with Bob Seger and Justin Timberlake, produced the track. Josh Ford and Joel Bunkowske engineered it, and Bill Skibbe mastered it at Third Man Records in Detroit. On Spotify, the song runs to 4 minutes 34 seconds.

It has also travelled. Rustic Glory took Gold in the Americana and Folk category of the 2022 W.A.M. Awards. Reviews kept arriving a year later, from Illustrate Magazine to The Musical Road.

The song now sits on the album 2nd Chances, a ten-track record released on 26 July 2024. Grateful Web singled out saxophonist Dave McMurray and percussionist Pepe Espinosa among its other guests. Byerly himself appears on Be Kind. The album was also pressed on limited red vinyl at Jack White’s Third Man Records.

The official video has passed 470,000 views on YouTube. The band also reports more than 500,000 streams for the song across Spotify and YouTube. According to the band, their music has also reached SiriusXM channels such as Underground Garage, Deep Tracks and North Americana.

This is a song for listeners who came up on classic rock radio and still reach for Americana. It is also for anyone who reads the credits before pressing play.

From the MusicRoots.News Curator Team: “Rustic Glory hands a songwriter’s memory piece to players who each carry a piece of rock history, and the song is richer for every name on the credits.”

Where to Hear Rustic Glory and Follow Happy Curmudgeons, From Spotify to Threads

Stream Rustic Glory on Apple Music or YouTube Music, and find the band on Spotify, the Apple Music artist page, Deezer and SoundCloud. The debut Meant 2 Be is on Bandcamp. For videos, subscribe to their YouTube channel, and visit the official site for news and shows. Then follow Happy Curmudgeons on Instagram, Threads, TikTok, Facebook and X.

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