Th' Legendary Shack*Shakers at Sticky Fingerz: A peek behind the sideshow tent flap for the uninitiated
By Nicole Boddington
Last October, Th' Legendary Shack*Shakers, a four-man rock 'n' roll sideshow from Nashville, charged into Sticky Fingerz on a jam-packed Saturday night. Marked by a maniacal sound and irreverent lyrics—what you'd expect if you inbred Southern Culture on the Skids and the Reverend Horton Heat—the Shack*Shakers blend country blues, bluegrass, rockabilly, rock 'n' roll, punk rock, polka, and psychobilly into something, if not new, then energized.
Kentucky-born honorary Colonel J.D. Wilkes leads the pack. A rail-thin thirty-something with Buddy Holly glasses and suspenders, he sat quietly behind the merch table until it was time to play. Then he popped onstage and aimed for some kind of erotic madness, slithering around like Iggy Pop or Marilyn Manson. He tapped bobbing heads with a cane; he pecked and strutted like a chicken; he flipped off his suspenders and peeled away his shirt—every rib was visible. He baptized new followers with spit and fistfuls of orange pubic hair. Wilkes is vulgar, but fascinating.
The Little Rock gig was one of the last shows in the band's backyard, as they soon embarked on a thirty-city European tour opening for Robert Plant, who after witnessing the weirdness and wildness of the Shack*Shakers' live performance at last year's SXSW, invited the band to join him. The tour kicked-off in Paris and drew sold-out crowds of 3,000 plus to venues like London's Hammersmith Apollo.
Fresh off the Plant tour, the Shack*Shakers returned to Little Rock a few weeks ago, bringing something new with them: Pandelirium, the group's fourth album and second LP on Yep Roc. Enlisting friends Jello Biafra, of the Dead Kennedys, and the Reverend Jim “Horton” Heath, they've taken a step in the right direction. It's a twelve-track, thirty-two-minute freewheeler that opens with a giggly “Wipe Out” laugh and ends with a maudlin, fading polka accordion. At times racy (“Ichabod,” “Iron Lung Oompah”) and other times languid (“Bible, Candle & Skulls,” “Nellie Bell”), the album proves that the Shack*Shakers have twisted Americana down to a fine art.
At the latest show, Wilkes' entrance was more dramatic, even spooky, much like the new album. He walked onto the blacked-out stage wearing a black-leather, pointy-eared, zipper-mouthed dog mask. Cane in hand, he struck at random, as if targeting the faint-of-heart.
As the guitar and bass fueled up, Wilkes ripped off the mask, jerking into the role of a wild-eyed evangelical preacher. From his pulpit, he delivered his message to “sinners in the hands of an angry God,” chanting “Ichabod,” a biblical figure associated with inglorious events. Mark “The Duke” Robertson beat his upright bass bloody, never pausing to ash the cigarette dangling from his bottom lip. David Lee, seemingly separated at birth from Tommy, violently banged his blonde-bombshell guitar slung low on his hip. Brett Whitacre, later introduced as new drummer #4,336, seemed a little boyish and innocent in all the mayhem, like he showed up at the wrong show and somehow got convinced to stay and play.
The Colonel concluded “Ichabod” by clanging a cowbell, beckoning the audience to “come and git it.” David Lee sliced into “South Electric Eyes,” a schizophrenic jibber jabber, in which, if you listened closely, you would find “scalawags, carpetbaggers, fat cats, and Dixiecrats,” but before you could put them together, Wilkes was hatching another plot, “salt of the earth turned scum of the earth/we're the alter ego of a Christless church/all left to waller in a squalor of a holler/with a redneck ring around the blue collar/Don't believe the lies/Wake up and rise/Came as no surprise/These South electric eyes.”
Wilkes may be quick with words, but too often he resorts to the same Southern clichés calling into question, in typical punk-rock fashion, God, government (more specifically, the preamble of the Constitution), and all other truths we hold to be self-evident, much like punk rock heavyweights, the Dead Kennedys, who did it better, smarter, and brasher.
But, what Wilkes lacks in lyrical depth, he makes up for in off-kilter delivery. At Sticky Fingerz, he furiously
hurled his words—and occasionally his 85-pound body—at the crowd, never letting up, breathing like a beast. He flipped and flopped, dressed and undressed, and stopped only to shove a thick velvet rope down his pants with which he simulated masturbation.
The show opened with two songs off Pandelirium, and then, the bluesy “CB Song” from their sophomore album Cockadoodledon't let fans take a break from the hard-pounding new stuff and slide into something a
little looser.
The crowd warmed
up; sweaty bodies pressed against each other like
they were in a juke joint.But this relief, if you could call it that, was fleeting because the band quickly jacked-up the tempo with low rumbling drums, signaling that the “Creek Cats” were on the prowl, and what emerged was a spastic ditty grounded by Robertson's bass lines and Lee's rapid riffs.
Wilkes taunted his audience, “You're lukewarm, Little Rock. It makes me want to vomit you out of my mouth.”
Then, he heaved into his harmonica, hips unhinged, and leaned on Lee a bit and Lee leaned back. They pushed; the guitar and harmonica sounded off. If the crowd wasn't going to get into it, Wilkes would do it without them. Between blows, Wilkes crooned into another one of his favorite toys, a ham radio microphone, deepening and distorting his voice.
After an hour-long, seventeen-song show, the lights went out. Some guy begged for an encore of “Piss and Vinegar,”but got “Help Me from My Brain,” another fast-paced, jittery number with dizzying lyrics difficult to keep up with. The Duke plucked the bass on an anxious beat. Crazed Wilkes reached again for his ham radio mic, screaming at the top of his lungs, this time with help from the crowd, “It's my brain/What a shame/It's my brain/What a blame/Help me from my brain.”
In the end, the Colonel gave his seal of approval: “ Little Rock, you're alright,” absolving us of our lukewarm-ness. We, the congregation, shuffled out of the bar in a go- forth-and-sin kind of cockiness, and of course, most of us won't live up to the mission, until the next time these guys pass through town.
Th' Legendary Shack*Shakers are the kind of band you've got to see to believe, and more so now with this latest album. With screeching fiddles, big guitars, fancy piano, and heavy bass lines,Pandelirium is vaudevillian Southern goth at its bawdiest. Wilkes holds it all together, sounding like Tom Waits's illegitimate redneck child prodigy and looking like a white Steve Urkel, exploiting the biblical and bizarre for a shock-and-awe effect. If you're in the mood, it works. If you're not, it'll force itself on you.
When she's not shack shaking, Nicole Boddington can be seen walking her terrier along the Arkansas River and coming into and out of Arkansas Business Publishing Group where she works as an assistant internet editor. You can email her at nicole.boddington@gmail.com.
