A new music documentary featuring legendary figures in the local country and rockabilly scenes debuts at the Southgate House Revival later this month.
Honky Talkin’: Tales & Travails From The Honky Tonk Trails, a documentary that intimately examines the lives of working musicians, will premiere at the Southgate House Revival on Aug. 23.
Longtime Cincinnati resident Eric Weltner — the film’s director and writer — created Honky Talkin’ to explore how musicians navigate the unique pressures of life on the road, from grueling hours and creative ruts to financial uncertainty.
“I was always just intrigued in what that life is, because I think a lot of people have this image of being a professional musician, that everybody is Taylor Swift or Beyonce, and about 99.5% of them are not — they are real people doing a job,” Weltner says. “A lot of it is like any other job — a lot of travel, a lot of arranging, a lot of cold calling, trying to get gigs, dealing with car trouble on the road, just ordinary life things.”
Weltner has previously directed two films, International Incidents and The Mohawk Monopoly — both about minor league hockey.
To better understand the lows and highs that musicians face, Weltner and his locally-based production team interviewed a number of bands and musicians — including Northern Kentucky legend Bobby Mackey and Vevay, Indiana rockabilly band Jerry King and the Rivertown Ramblers.
Though Mackey’s honky tonk in Wilder, Kentucky (now temporarily located in Florence while they build a brand new, one-story bar on the same site in Wilder) is perhaps more locally famous than its namesake, the musician behind the legendary establishment is just as interesting.
Inspired by country music heavyweights like Hank Williams, Merle Haggard and George Jones, Mackey began making his own signature brand of country music after graduating from Lewis County High School in 1968. In 1978, Mackey opened Bobby Mackey’s Music World in Wilder — a true honky tonk with music, ghosts and plenty of stories that make it into the Honky Talkin’ documentary. Last year, Mackey was inducted into the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame.
Weltner told CityBeat that his crew was the last professional film crew in the old Bobby Mackey’s Music World location before demolition began in December.
“Bobby Mackey has been around for 50 some years, and had his own club for nearly 50 years at this point, and his story is interesting because he had to choose — go to Nashville and make it, or do I stay here where I’m established, and run my own thing? That’s what he did. He’s been highly successful with it,” Weltner said.
Jerry King and the Rivertown Ramblers have been making country and rockabilly music and touring locally since the early 2000s. In 2006, they achieved breakthrough success with their hit “Honky Tonk Bop,” a true country-rockabilly tune. The band has recorded tracks at the legendary Sun Studio in Memphis, where rock and roll, country and rockabilly artists like Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis recorded music from the mid-to-late ’50s.
Other bands and music industry professionals featured in the documentary include The Royal Hounds, Morgans Mill, Jason & The Scorchers lead singer Jason Ringenberg, Bobby Mackey’s Music World General Manager Denise Mackey and Southgate House Revival owner Morrella Raleigh.
All of the featured interviews help paint a clearer picture of what life looks like for the working musician — from the highs of stellar performances to the lows of missing out on family life while on tour.
“I was told by one of the bands that divorce is a very common situation in the music industry, where people feel almost estranged from their families by being on the road eight or nine months out of the year, and have somewhat tenuous relationships with their spouses and their children,” Weltner said.
Though some musicians, like Mackey and Ringenberg, have achieved this familial balance and mainstream success, they sometimes face new sorts of challenges once they make it to the big leagues. The documentary touches on the pros and cons of getting signed to a major record label. For many, being signed to a major label means finally outsourcing tougher aspects of the job — like marketing and booking tours — to someone else. However, that major label deal can also come with less creative freedom and more pressure to constantly deliver.
There are also plenty of fun insider stories in the documentary, including a recounting of Ringenberg’s experience opening for The Ramones in Texas in 1983.
“There are a lot of little nuggets that people will just find fascinating,” Weltner said. “You know, maybe even hearing about a professional oboe player who tried to crash a CD release party to be onstage with one of the bands. Things like that. Those are things that really happen to real people. Or maybe a random rockabilly show in the middle of Indiana at three o’clock in the morning at a Waffle House — things like that appear in the film … We get stories of the fun, the entertaining, the bizarre, the less-than-fun, like buses breaking down and equipment being stolen, things like that. So there’s a lot to the story, and there’s a lot to being a professional, touring musician.”
Honky Talkin’: Tales & Travails From The Honky Tonk Trails premieres at the Southgate House Revival on Aug. 23. The night will also include performances from Ringenberg, The Royal Hounds and Jerry King and the Rivertown Ramblers. For more information about the premiere, visit southgatehouse.com.
For more information about Honky Talkin’: Tales & Travails From The Honky Tonk Trails, visit the film’s Facebook page.
Watch the trailer for Honky Talkin’ below:
This article appears in Jul 23 – Aug 5, 2025.