Concert review: Southern Culture on the Skids at The Grey Eagle
Would someone please work the extensive catalog of Southern Culture on the Skids into a jukebox musical? There’s big money in that kind of thing.
Mamma Mia! has milked ABBA for all it’s worth — twice. They did it with the Beatles, Billy Joel, and Alanis Morisette, too. Hell, even Green Day has a musical. So, all I am asking is: would someone please look at Southern Culture on the Skids? The band’s long-celebrated documentation of the horn-rimmed diner waitresses and Skoal-can ringed back pockets of America is ripe for the picking.
We’re talking dirt track racing, cheap motel rooms, El Caminos, tipsy bouffanted matrons, a shady but glad-handed fella called the “King of the Mountain,” and the bossa nova of the Bamboo Room. Tuck in a little intrigue and salacious dialog between the songs and you’ve got the makings for a gaudy Southern noir. As a model, you could even use the setlist from its Dec. 3 show at The Grey Eagle.
Fans have been urging me to see the Carrboro, NC-based rockabilly band — aka SCOTS — for more than two decades, and the group has been around for closer to four. That’s notable for two reasons: 1) It sets them, and their core constituency (and me), squarely in the post-middle-age Gen X demographic, and 2) they completely rip onstage. In fact, it’s probable that the first point has led to second: When a band is this tight, this together, even as guitarist and singer Rick Miller lets fly an eight-minute mash of rockabilly and surf rock from his well-weathered Danelectro, you can tell these players have been performing with each other for a long time.
That instrumental, christened “Meximelt,” from the 1996 album, Santo Swings, is only one of many times the band’s blazes licked the skillet under the dancing feet of the Friday night crowd. Throughout signature psychobilly songs like “Voodoo Cadillac” and “Bone Dry Dirt,” and the doo-woppy “Nitty Gritty,” the audience did its best to keep up with the band. Miller’s guitar playing is the standard bearer for rockabilly style, and drummer Dave Hartman kept the solid surf rock beat rolling on a three-piece kit while Mary Huff (and her hair) towered over the audience, making the bass parts look easy. Adding to the hooraw, occasional “Extra Skid” Roy Lee Gittens wandered in the background, shaking maracas and tambourines, singing into the air and looking like he was having just a great time.
I’m not a big fan of the whole Southern kitsch thing. It felt like cosplay 20 years ago, and at this point we really should know better. I’m glad I can get sweet tea in Chicago and collard greens in Seattle, and let’s all finally admit that, as a contraction, “y’all” just makes sense. But I could do without another person telling me what “Bless your heart” really means, and nobody eats Moon Pies, so let’s just give it a rest.
That hang-up is probably one of the reasons I stayed away from SCOTS shows for so long, and that’s my loss. I don’t know how much white cotton tanks, one-button overalls, and precariously perched trucker hats factored into the shows over the decades, but, even with Huff’s big hair wig, SCOTS put on a pretty hot rock and roll show.
Even the songs that strayed from the rockabilly, swamp-rock riffs held their own, and the bandmates don’t seem to have to look far from Kudzu Ranch — their Mebane, NC studio and hangout spot — for inspiration. The country-bop “Call Me,” from the band’s 2021 release, At Home with Southern Culture on the Skids, is an ode to COVID-19 isolation: “Now 12 months have gone since I played a song while a room full of people danced/I went shopping in pajamas, can't find no bananas, no toilet paper up on the shelf/My biggest fear they might run out of beer, then what would I do with myself?” Visiting a similar, but more woebegone theme, “Just How Lonely,” from 2000’s Liquored Up and Lacquered Down, had Huff singing with a solid ’80s-era Pretenders vibe.
As the show careened to its eventual conclusion, SCOTS broke out some of its hits and old-school numbers that have locked the band in with its fans. To my ears, radio players like 1995’s “Camel Walk” and 2016’s “Freak Flag” don’t rise to the levels of its other songs. But nobody asked me, and the tunes worked like a revitalization tonic, reviving anyone in the room who thought they were done dancing. “Banana Puddin’,” a silly 1997 release that I do recall a friend sharing with me over some yuks some years back, was also a big hit in the room.
I didn’t know I had a rule about leaving shows once fried chicken starts flying, but I guess I do. As the band emerged for their encore of “Eight Piece Box,” so did the Bojangles cartons. While SCOTS played its signature cult classic, audience members took to the stage to fling chicken parts through the air and I made for the exit. It was the only truly gimmicky part of the performance, but one that seemed to delight the brethren. At this point, the schtick is probably expected, even demanded.
And who am I to question tradition?
(Photo courtesy of the artists)
