Submitted photoWayne Hancock

If you’re a singer-songwriter who trades in the kind of ultra-traditional country music most of us rarely hear anymore, you can’t ask for a much better seal approval that one from the Hank Williams lineage.

Hank Sr. was the original country music superstar, a figure whose iconic status transcends genre boundaries. His son Hank Jr. was part of the outlaw movement of the 1970s; his music and his image never quite jibed with his father’s. Hank Jr.’s son, Hank III, however, carries the spirit of his grandfather, and he can let it out … when he wants to.

He doesn’t want to very often, though. He’d rather play punk rock and heavy metal. But he’ll gladly point you in the right direction if it’s some Hank Sr.-style twang you’re looking for: “Wayne Hancock has more Hank Sr. in him,” reads a quote across the top of Hancock’s press kit, “than either I or Hank Williams Jr. He is the real deal.”

Indeed, for 20 years Wayne “The Train” Hancock has been one of Earth’s foremost practitioners of traditional country music, working all the while in the relative obscurity afforded him by mainstream country’s cluelessness. His 1995 debut, “Thunderstorms and Neon Signs,” is a modern classic of the genre, and his catalog since has been a seamless patchwork of honky-tonk, western swing, rockabilly, roadhouse blues and just about any other style that has a hint or more of twang and sounds like it was shipped in from the early- to mid-20th century.On Sunday, The Train will roll into Bend’s Volcanic Theatre Pub, no doubt primed to turn a New West arts venue into an old-school juke joint. Be there or be square.

Wayne “The Train” Hancock, with Melody Guy; 8 p.m. Sunday, doors open 7 p.m.; $12 plus fees in advance at www.bendticket.com, $15 at the door; Volcanic Theatre Pub, 70 SW Century Drive, Bend; www.volcanictheatrepub.com or 541-323-1881.