Smiley Hawkins

Smiley Hawkins is a country and Americana singer from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, now based in Salisbury. He grew up singing old-time folk songs and old hymns (some really, really old!), trained as a classical composer, and finally found his way back home through Hank Williams, Marty Robbins, George Jones, and Townes Van Zandt.

His original songs waltz all the way from heartbreak, outlaws, to comic numbers about Southern life. He draws on sources as far apart as the King James Bible and classical Japanese poetry.

His shows also include standards of American country from the years before Urban Cowboy, from the honky tonk kings of the ’50s to the outlaws of the ’70s. Every concert is billed as Smiley Hawkins Presents: The Smiley Hawkins Show, and runs like an old variety show including jokes, anecdotes, and crowd work between songs.