Preview
SOUTHERN CULTURE ON THE SKIDS
Tuesday, May 11
Night Gallery
Anyone who has heard Dirt Track Date, the major label debut of South Carolina’s Southern Culture on the Skids was probably drawn to their signature tune "Camel Walk." With its swanky surf riffs and vocalist Rick Miller’s effortless fetishization of snack food and footwear, it’s trademark Southern Culture.
The rest of their catalog is an equally enticing blend of hi-fi garage, swamp blues and instro-rock that is clearly concerned with the finer things in life – Mexican wrestling, barbecues and fried chicken. Bassist-vocalist Mary Huff’s towering beehive hairdo and sugar sweet voice are a perfect balance to Miller’s winking white-trash irony and drawling croon. Notably his cry of "Little Debbie, Little Debbie, I’m comin’ on home!" in the chorus of "Camel Walk" not only solidifies his love of music, but food as well.
Though Miller immortalized the sugary snack-food goodness of the Little Debbie Oatmeal Pie in "Camel Walk," the band’s relationship with the single serving dessert goes back to an audience participation number the band used to play called "The Kudzu Limbo."
"The worst Little Debbies I ever had were in Mississippi," says the laid-back Miller."We toured so much that anything that we could come up with that was a little bit different – that was fun for us – we’d try it. We went to this place called Hudson’s Salvage. It was this huge warehouse full of items that were… maybe a little bit water damaged or this or that. We found 500 Little Debbie Oatmeal Pies that were ‘smoke damaged,’ so we got ’em and we threw them out without really trying them. Everyone was going ‘oohh, oohh.’ They had been in an electrical fire and somehow they tasted like burning plastic. It was awful."
If you hadn’t guessed, Southern Culture on the Skids are known as much for their shtick as they are for their music – probably because they go hand in hand. Their website has a recipe page and they have more than one song about fried chicken – all of which would be distracting, if they weren’t so good at it.
"Yeah we’ve got a shtick," says Miller in his defence. "I don’t really have a problem with it, but some people do.
"There is nothing wrong with shtick. The grunge guys – their shtick was plaid and moping around all the time. Once you get on stage it’s all called entertainment to me." According to Miller, it doesn’t matter what image a band projects as long as they remember one thing: "It is important to be entertaining for your audience. That’s where some of that comes into it. Some songs are more shtick than others. I think on (our) new record there is very much less than there has been on the other records… I think we have an identity, which is good, because you want to stand out in the crowd if you want to make a dollar in this business."
With their latest album, Mojo Box, Miller and company stand out not for their references to banana pudding or souped-up automobiles, but for the best song writing of their career. The band recently parted ways with their keyboard player Chris Altman, who was a big proponent of shtick, according to Miller. They are now joined on stage by Ed Crawford of Firehose, who brings a lot more muscle to the proceedings. Add to this, Miller’s time away from Southern Culture, producing records for other bands, and it’s not hard to see why Mojo Box is one of their strongest records to date.
"We wanted to consciously work on the songs," says Miller. "The things that we do really well sometimes get obscured by a big pink wig or some of the image-oriented stuff. I was very pleased with this record with the harmonizing and the playing in general. We worked at that… I really wanted to try and make a better record that rocked, that veered away from so much of that image that we had in the past."
If the change is something that scares long-time fans, it shouldn’t. Miller hasn’t forgotten the importance of entertainment value and promises that the set is still peppered with classics from their back catalogue.
"It’s not so much reinvention, but a transition," says Miller, "and I think it is something that is long overdue."
CELEB TOP FIVE
The top five places to get fried chicken in North America according to Rick Miller of Southern Culture on the Skids.
1. Rodman’s Bones & Buddies – Portsmouth, Virginia
2. Nunnery-Freeman Barbecue – Henderson, North Carolina
3. Love’s – Mobile, Alabama (best chain restaurant and most dangerous – "a guy pulled a gun on us in the parking lot, but we were there late.")
4. My mom’s – which is pretty damn good. "She fries it in a pan."
5. "It doesn’t really qualify as fried chicken, but a buddy of mine takes potato chips and Cheezits and he puts them in a plastic bag and he jumps up and down on ‘em. And then he breads his chicken with potato chips and cheese crackers. And then he bakes it and it’s damn good." |
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