Forget what you see and hear what you hear. Nashville's Th' Legendary Shack Shakers ain't no psychobilly band.
"They look at us and they see upright bass and double kick drum and whatever, " says guitarist David Lee , "but then when they hear it, everyone's like, 'Oh, that's definitely not psychobilly.' The purists, the ones in Europe who are psychobilly to the core, are right off the bat, 'You guys definitely aren't psychobilly.' They're quick to make sure, almost like putting it in our faces."
In fact, search the Shack Shakers' van, and you're more likely to find CDs by ZZ Top and Django Reinhart than anything by The Cramps or Southern Culture On The Skids. Furthermore, one gets the feeling that these guys are too respectful of roots music to cloak it in winking theatrics.
"What makes blues and gypsy music special is the microtones and the bends in it," says singer/harmonica player/primary songwriter Colonel J.D. Wilkes. "That really scratches that itch in ya, ya know. It's got those weird, bent, kinda fucked-up little bends to it and those scales, and it's just so pleasing."
"Agony Wagon," the first track on the Shack Shakers' second album, 2004's Believe, is a hard-driving polka (Eastern European music has that cool bent shit in it, you see), but rural American styles—amped up a few notches—are the most recognizable ingredients. Along with founding Shack Shakers guitarist Joe Buck, Kentucky native Wilkes played with Hank Williams III before forming this outfit in 2001. Lee, a veteran South Carolina punk rocker with plenty of country in his blood, joined after Buck returned to Hank's band full time.
You know it ain't proper
Prancing down the bridal path past your papa
Delilah and Bathsheba and even Eve
Have more to offer, you double-crosser
— "Where's The Devil When You Need Him?"
The loosely conceptual Believe is rife with Southern Baptist imagery, conjuring a twisted tent show revival that, according to Wilkes, is only part satire. Son of a Catholic father and Baptist mother, Wilkes grew up in the South and attended the kind of Bible schools where folks spoke in tongues and did cartwheels for Christ.
I was entertained by it all, I wasn't miserable," says Wilkes. "I was lookin' around, thinkin' this is crazy—people wavin' their hands in the air and all this jumpin' pews and doin' back flips into the baptistery. It was crazy; it was great. Really, that's why all those people go to church is to get their rocks off in a 'holy' way where they don't have to feel guilty. But they're just havin' a big punk rock throwdown just like anybody else."
Religion was fun for Wilkes, who clearly went and did the reading on his own. And beyond the Bible he discovered the great Southern authors, putting a literary shine on his experience of the region. "Some of it was novelty, "says Wilkes of the Shack Shakers' 2003 debut album, Cockadoodledon't, "but a lot of it was that I was startin' to dabble in the Southern Gothic themes—murder ballads and old blues hollers. I was starting to play around more with the wording and the literacy of songwriting, which I'm still trying to perfect."
Well our tarnished, old loving cup is empty
The wreaths of roses have withered away
But the whiskey and the bullets are plenty
How I wish you were here with us today
— "The Pony To Bet On"
Wilkes explains Southern Gothic for those of us who aren't quite sure: "It's different than Gothic. It's Flannery O'Connor and Harper Lee and Faulkner and all that. It's sort of the dark, seamy underbelly of the South, but there's a mystical quality too. It's not like the Jerry Springer, nasty, dysfunctional South that the media likes to paint the picture of. This is more of a Gothic, grandiose version of the grotesqueness of the South. It's all the cross-cultural dynamics of race and class and religion and all those things that cause trouble, but the beauty they reveal in art and life. So it's very much based in reality, whereas Gothic literature is a medieval fantasy. Southern Gothic is the reality around us down here in these parts. It's like the sideshow and the circus and all that. It's entertaining but there's something sick about it at the same time. It's where we're from, so it's what comes natural. We're trying to tell big stories, trying to portray something bigger than ourselves and more epic than ourselves."
But tapping local traditions is only half the story when it comes to making the kind of music that excites Th' Legendary Shack Shakers. Don't expect future recordings to involve drum circles, township jive bands, or other world music clichés, says Wilkes, but blue notes are always welcome, whatever part of the globe they come from.
"Lotsa gypsy music," says Wilkes about the direction of their next record, "and by gypsy it could be Latin too. It's really got so much in common with all of the Old World, Eastern Bloc—and not just that—because it's migrant music. It's really world music. It has to do with the world as in everything, the whole world. It's blues, it's this sort of Phrygian mode stuff, it's country. And it's all the places where they overlap. We'll bring in a tuba and a banjo on this next record and they'll be side by side."
He says the next one will also be harder, faster, louder. It's where the Shack Shakers want to be, and it's also a way to get the kids on board. Wilkes doesn't care what's hot—he hates the idea of passionless music and undeserving buzz bands—but neither is he interested in stale niches of any kind.
"We could play these precious little roots scenes the rest of our lives and get nowhere," he says, "but the hard rock scene is probably where we need to be. We probably need to play like a Warped Tour or play to some kids and get out there. The entertainment value in this band will win anyone over that's got an open mind and a youthful heart. That's where we need to be puttin' ourselves from now on."
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