This weekend is Plymouth’s Art in the Park event. There will be all sorts of art, vendors and much more. One of the vendors is native Detroiter, Huck Johns with his Huck Hats display.
Some of you may recognize that name. Huck’s band, Broken Toys was formed in the mid-90s, featured Johnny “Bee” Badanjek from Mitch Ryder and the Wheels on drums. He even went on to score a cowriting credit on Kid Rock’s 2004 album. He’s worked with some of rocks biggest names, including putting out his own music simply called HUCK in 2006. Check out his music here.
During covid, Huck made the decision to move his wife and son from Los Angeles, California to a Nashville, Tennessee suburb where he created art, including custom marionettes, which he hand made. He also started drawing, which you can see here.
Huck’s life would change while walking into a local Franklin, Tennessee bar. “I walked in wearing a 100x beaver felted hat I had originally purchased from a retail shop, and rebuilt, reshaped it into an open road , distressed it pretty good added a few unique features and it became “my everyday Huck Hat”” He said he got a lot of compliments. Someone asked him right away where he’d gotten that hat. That’s when the lightbulb went off. “We can make hats and sell them!!”
Since he’s started making these hand crafted hats, people like Jake Kizska from Greta Van Fleet, Struggle Jennings, Waylon’s grandson, Butch Walker, even the CEO of Barrett Firearms, Chris Barrett all have hats from Huck. He said he has orders from Yella Wolf, Peter Keys, Rickey Medlocke, Bryce Soderberg, Carlos Alomar, Mike Wolfe, Uncle Cracker, Jimmy Hall, Larry Fleet, Tim Montana, Alex Williams, C Thomas Howell among others.
That’s the very shortened story of Huck and how Huck Hats were born. Take a look at his webpage and visit him this weekend in Plymouth.
Pictures of his marionettes and hats are below….
-Meltdown-
