Bringing down the house with “Banana Pudding”
My favorite band from Chapel Hill, NC returned this week for another awesome five-night run at Austin’s Continental Club (which I will need to do an Austintatious story on, promised that last year). Admittedly, I attended the opening show on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning but I have been running the last several days on very little sleep and now I can finally give a more elaborate account of the show. Since they’re playing until Saturday, I am still within my own self-declared deadline of when a story is still topical for Picayune.
As always, people ask, “What are Southern Culture on the Skids like?” After listening to them for over a decade, I would say the fastest and easiest answer to give most people is this: The B-52’s redneck cousins. I personally think people also ask because they don’t know much about all the different musical genres/styles. The other problem lately is when a band has a name that reads as a phrase, it’s assumed to be either Emo (My Chemical Romance, Cute is What We Aim For) or Nu-Metal (As I Lay Dying, Lamb of God).
Background and explanations complete, on to the show. The opener was an interesting local Funk act called Barfield. They definitely got the crowd energized for SCOTS at midnight. When Rick, Dave and Mary hit the stage, everyone was definitely good and rowdy as the trio kicked off with their instrumental “Skullbucket.” There were the usual favorites too: “69 El Camino,” “Liquored up, Lacquered down,” “Camel Walk,” “Daddy was a Preacher, Mama was a Go-Go Girl,” “The House of Bamboo,” “Nitty Gritty,” “The Wet Spot,” and “Carolina Chickenshit Farmer.” Due the hot rod show coming to Austin at the end of the week, they pulled out most of their car-themed songs and more instrumentals. They did a few songs from the new album Countrypolitan Favorites, namely my current stream favorite “Fight Fire,” and the very fitting covers of “Tobacco Road” and “Muswell Hillbilly.” No SCOTS show is ever complete without “Banana Pudding.” Sadly no “Biscuit Eater” or “Eight Piece Box,” but their catalog is so large and they’re such nice people in person, it didn’t ruin the show. For the encore they did this great instrumental accompanied by the Continental Club’s waitress as their go-go dancer. The lady definitely had some moves and at 6’ 3” (she had no problem answering) she was an even greater presence on the stage. There was this one part when she’d lean so far back you’d think it was a limbo contest.
I got to talk to Rick after the show to see how he was doing, how was his son and how I loved the usage of him giggling on their recent cover of the Who’s “Happy Jack.” Surprisingly, he remembered me from the show last year. We talked a bit about his Apple equipment and his upgrade to 10.4 since there’s finally an LE version of ProTools, still the first choice of rock stars everywhere. When I told him how I found the school photos included in the new record a hoot, he explained that they had the album cover and all related pictures taken at their neighborhood Wal-Mart. I thought he was kidding. The pictures are too well done in my opinion. Then everyone was laughing when he said the band bought the Deluxe Package which included the jigsaw puzzle they were selling at the t-shirt stand. I can’t emphasize enough on seeing SCOTS live, you will have a good time, even if you don’t know the bulk of their material.
In their honor, I plan on going with them as the inaugural entry for a new category I have been putting off call Brushes with Greatness. Mary and Rick were great sports in having my picture taken with them as you’ll see.