Salt Lake City Concerts: Reverend Horton Heat, Robert Earl Keen, Dixie Dregs

By Brian Staker, 1-12-07

Reverend Horton Heat, Junior Brown

If you don’t worship at the altar of heavy metal with acts like Thursday‘s Metal Church, perhaps this rockabilly double bill is your type of religious service. Junior Brown, although a serviceable vocalist, does his preaching mostly with the digits, as the fantastic fretwork of this Hendrix for the country set is enough to make you believe in the existence of divinity. With the pedal steel welded together to a fire-engine red Telecaster, you’d swear he has an extra arm to evoke the hailstorm of riffs emanating from the amplifier. Not to mention Tanya Rae, his wife and backup guitarist, whose beauties will also have you testifyin.' Yes, Ricky Bobby, guitar gods also need a smoking’ hot wife.

The most esteemed Reverend Horton Heatis a man of the cloth in title as well as practice, preaching the gospel of red meat, alcohol, hot rod cars, and easy women. Since his early 90’s debuts that capitalized on the grunge boom’s lifting of all musical boats flying the flag of heavy music that wasn’t metal, he’s enjoyed steady popularity due to the fanaticism of followers of the rockabilly revival. Like any successful sect, he is preaching to the converted to some degree, but last year’s holiday album We Three Kings perhaps helped convert some of those stubborn Christians over to his fold.

Colonel J.D. Wilkes is commanding officer of the Legendary Shack Shakers, one of the newest entries in the rockabilly religion, and they add a carnival dimension to the festivities, often using stage backdrops taken from his comic book art. Pandelerium, the title of their latest album, describes the experience well. Think about what the Greek god Pan represented. Add deleriousness. Mix well.

<>January 12, Saltair

Also appearing:
January 11, Durango, CO (Fort Lewis College)


Frank Caliendo

The popularity of comedians is much more fickle than music, since the pressure of having to be funny is much more intense and focused than the multitude of pleasures music can provide. So it benefits comic wits to have a deep well of material to draw from, since if that onus wasn’t enough, jokes don’t generally work if you’ve ‘heard that one before.’ Thus Frank Caliendo is one of the most well-liked comedians of the day due his wide range of impressions.

Not with the elastic features of a Jim Carrey, Caliendo fits into the old school tradition of a Rich Little, whose fairly generic face could seemingly be molded into the appearance of many different celebs. And while different styles of humor come and go--the moment being a particularly politically volatile time--his impressions are able to adapt to a doable George Bush on down to apolitical subjects like Andy Rooney, Jack Nicholson and perhaps his most notorious at the moment, John Madden. I swear I sensed Madden toning himself down on the football commentary lately, as if to elude mockery. But he can’t resist, after a few minutes, going into full-bore ramble mode, like a receiver downfield scrambling to get into the open. That’s the key to Caliendo’s humor: revealing people who just can’t quite get a grip on themselves.

January 12-13, Wise Guys

Robert Earl Keen *Staker‘s Pick of the Week!!

Although there may be some overlap between the audiences for this show and the hard-living revival meeting with Reverend Horton Heat, this Texan takes a much more wistful, folky side of the country spectrum. Luckily for him, landing on the Lost Highway label provided the perfect vehicle to market his music to those who might be most receptive to it. Look at contemporaries like Nanci Griffith and Lyle Lovett to see where his musical impetus comes from. But far from being a follower, Robert Earl Keen has been in the vanguard of the direction the new and alt-country genres have been motoring towards.

With songs like “The Road Goes On Forever (But the party never ends),” Keen isn’t just writing about some deep rosewater philosophical meanderings, however, but his music might be seen as the sermon for the day after the raucous religious tent show finds you with a heavy, not-so-heavenly hangover. This year’s Live At the Ryman (Koch) shows that over twenty years into his career, he’s still in fine fettle.

January 13, Suede (Park City)

Also appearing:
January 11: Denver, CO (Grizzly Rose)
January 12: Aspen, CO (Wheeler Opera House)
January 14: Jackson *Hole, WY (Mangy Moose)

Dixie Dregs

This is really a southern fried week for live music in the area, but this entry is the most out there of the lot, seemingly the least likely to hail from the region. Yet as their name evinces, the Dixie Dregs deal with the same stigmas as any musician from that part of the country, the stereotypes and put-downs plaguing the locale seemingly since the age of the plantation. The group started in Augusta, GA behind guitarist Steve Morse clear back in 1975, the heady days of Lynyrd Skynyrd and other southern rockers. But this band took a completely different tack, pursuing a path of jazz fusion that had at one time Steve Goodman from the Mahavishnu Orchestra sitting in as a member. The group would appeal more to Yes-men than fans of Molly Hatchet. But as the prog boom waned, the group disbanded in 1982, not to reform until a decade later.

In the space of their absence, the emergence of Cds and the growing US economy made for an explosion of band signings and musical opportunities for groups whose fields had grown fallow. The group added a humorous element to a genre often a bit stolid and lacking in laughs, to put it mildly. With national fiddling champ Mark O’Connor a bluegrass element has been added, that is a selling point for the group who still wears their long hair that got Morse kicked out of school in the seventies, impelled him to the University of Miami school of music and ultimately our ears.

January 13, The Depot

Also appearing:
January 12: Boulder, CO (Boulder Theater)

The Wailers

Appearing for most of their lifespan in the same breath as “Bob Marley and the,” the Wailers have been like the Beatles or Rolling Stones of reggae music. Or more precisely, maybe like Dylan’s backing band the Band, musical exemplars yet lacking the crowning jewel. At over forty years extant, by now they are the elder statesman of the genre. Marley’s death in 1981 threw them into a musical and legal conundrum, but after several years things got sorted out and the group went on, though without the inspiration of their front man. With Junior Murvin handling vocals and lead guitar, a chance to hear the hits from the group that almost single-handedly created a style and a beat.

January 13, Deer Valley
January 14, Suede (Park City)

Also appearing:
January 11: Missoula, MT (Wilma Theatre)
January 12: Sun Valley, ID (The Ski Tour/Street Party)


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