Quiz Jim Heath about the
closest thing he’s seen to a
religious experience in his
time in The Reverend Horton Heat
and he’ll have a story. Here it goes:
Heath and company once played a
party in a concrete-floored warehouse
with electricity issues.
Heath had to keep away from
the mic or risk getting shocked.
During their set, a girl offered
Heath a bottle of Rolling Rock
that, in his recollection, was “like a sacrament.”
Clutching his guitar in one hand, he
reached for the beer with the other. As he
touched it, a jolt passed between the two
strangers. The bottle lit up. Heath jerked
the drink away, breaking the current, and
“Everybody just went ‘Whoa.’ They thought
I was a kind of god or something after that,”
he recalls in his drawl with a chuckle. “I
thought that was pretty cool.”
Of course, the charged bottle was a
product of science, but listening to Heat’s
“Big Sky” can compel you to chalk it up
to the glory of rock & roll. The rumbling
instrumental guzzles feedback, slows
briefly, darts between frets, and takes off
roaring. While assuredly the key song in
the band’s repertoire, it’s one among dozens:
Since bonding in the mid-’80s, Heat
has knocked out eight albums, two retrospectives,
a collection of Christmastime
covers, and a handful of singles. Their
style samples a smattering of flavors—rockabilly, surf rock, punk, psychobilly,
the blues, ’60s outlaw country—and wraps
itself up in a hot-rodding, lowbrow package.
Through just guitar, vocals, upright
bass, and drums, their rock has grown
weighty and irresistibly American.
Heat is a product of the South. Like a
summer in their hometown of Dallas, their
music is hot and greasy. “That area from
Tennessee through Arkansas into Texas is
really the birthplace of rockabilly,” says
Heath. “Growing up in that area, country
blues [were] really popular.” The front man
owes his career to “Folsom Prison Blues,”
Johnny Cash’s rebel classic: It was the song
that birthed his guitar skills (“I thought I
was learning how to play like Cash. It wasn’t
until years later I realized that I was really
trying to play like Luther Perkins, Cash’s
guitar player.”) and allegedly gave him
his act’s moniker (The legend is that during
a solo Heath performance of “Folsom”
in 1985, a Dallas promoter howled, “Go,
Reverend!”). Cash’s At Folsom Prison and At
San Quentin later exposed a different facet:
“I could hear those prisoners’ reactions
to the lyrics,” Heath says of the iconic live
recordings. “I was still pretty young. Until
hearing that, I didn’t realize how powerful
lyrics could be.”
From there, Heath dove into the Chicago
blues of Chess Records, citing Sonny Boy
Williamson, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf
and Little Walter as early influences. “I
really liked the harmonica players, too.
I was almost going to be a harmonica
player.” Sticking with the guitar, he moved
onto B.B. King licks. “That led me into rock
& roll and rockabilly.”
Heat’s output holds deepest rooted in the latter. “[We] started trying to be an authentic rockabilly band playing original songs as opposed to cover songs from that era,” Heath says. “At a certain point, I was working and hanging around a lot in alternative clubs. I decided to use rockabilly more as a platform than to stay in that particular framework. I’d have influences of other stuff.”
As his view expanded, so did the outfit’s sense of humor. ”I really didn’t want us to be a novelty act, so we have some more serious stuff,” he adds. Heath says that they’ve recently become comfortable with camp but, really, the seeds were sown on their debut LP Smoke ’Em If You Got ’Em: track five is tagged “Big Dwarf Rodeo.”
Is that bottle-electrifying power still
what makes Heath tick? Oh, yeah. “I still
love that stuff,” he says. “I still listen to it.”
In the lineage of rock & roll, Heath isn’t its
creator—only its apostle.
REVEREND HORTON HEAT
w/ Nekromantix
The Depot
400 W. South Temple
Friday, July 17
8 p.m.
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