Rev it up and go

>> Hallelujah, Reverend Horton Heat returns

by JOHNSON CUMMINS

Before Reverend Horton Heat (aka Jim Heath) even settles into answering questions, you quickly realize that he is the genuine article. His voice is punctuated with a slow, Texan drawl and a Johnny-Cash-like register that hints at a strict regimen of Lucky Strikes and bourbon.

Although the good Reverend may not be an ordained minister serving the Lord, he is one the best rockabilly showmen of the past 10 years, and that, my wayward flock, is the gospel truth. The Reverend has been preaching a sermon of Gretsch twang to a congregation of hellbent psychobillies for over a decade now and still clocks in at least 200 shows a year.

The Reverend's current record Spend a Night in the Box is a stripped-down hot rod of rockabilly raunch. Producer Paul Leary (ex-Butthole Surfer) chose to stop muddying up the mix with overdubs and studio trickery and just let the Reverend do what he does best. The result is the closest he's gotten to a traditional-sounding rockabilly record.

"I really made a conscious decision to get the Reverend Horton Heat rockabilly sound on there this time," says Heath. "Our old label, Interscope, hated our rockabilly stuff. It was like pulling teeth with them, they tried to take it off of the record. Record labels are always concerned with making sure the artist doesn't shoot himself in the foot, and the only time I'd hear from them was to tell me that only five of the songs out of 30 were good enough. I'm at the point now that if labels are going to make suggestions like that, I'm just not going to communicate with them at all."

Now on his fourth label, Time Bomb, the Reverend's rockabilly sound is given room to soar. Finally finding a label that allows him to shove his roots to the forefront, he still finds himself having to answer to his most outspoken critics, the rockabilly purists. "The people who are the purists are usually people who don't know jackshit about music and are just trying to be somebody. With a lot of these supposed purists, I can remember when they were into Depeche Mode and didn't give a shit about people like Louis Jordan. But now they say they're better than me."

The new record was put down to tape at fellow Austin-ite Willie Nelson's studio. Adjoining Willie's studio is a golf course on which the Rev found time to "shoot nine" between takes, and although the Reverend didn't see Willie in the sandtraps, he did receive a visit from C&W's favourite "mellow fellow" in the studio. I had to ask if he noticed any evidence of Willie's penchant for smoking his weight in pot.

"We didn't notice that he was stoned when we saw him, but we did notice that he had a guitar amplifier hard-wired into his phone system. We could never quite figure out why the hell he did that."

With Hank Williams III at Club Soda on Tuesday, July 25, 9pm, $20, all ages