FOR NORTH CAROLINA'S premiere hillbilly garage swamp surfers, Southern Culture On The Skids (a.k.a. SCOTS), it's all about that classic band-audience symbiosis called "energy transfer."

Although sometimes the energy can get transferred with just a hair too much enthusiasm. Guitarist Rick Miller advises me of this when I tell him that my fondest memories of my N.C. days are from the nights at SCOTS gigs when he'd drag me out of the audience to tap out a drum solo on his helmeted drummer's head during their "Wipeout"-meets-Link Wray raveup number "New Cooter Boogie." I never dropped the beat, Rick.

"Yeah, we had to cut that portion outta the set. One night I got this really big, really drunk guy up there. When it came time for the solo he hit Dave so hard he just about knocked him down and out!"

Such are the perils of the road. Miller, drummer Dave Hartman, and bassist Mary Huff navigate the asphalt roughly 250 days a year. This band lives to kick out the jams. SCOTS bumps, twists, hunches and grinds its way through a live set that's roots-rock at its most vital. Several Link Wray numbers figure prominently; the Louvin Brothers "Great Atomic Power" is gospel music gone to hell in a thrashbucket; Slim Harpo's "Shake Your Hips" is a ten-minute tour de force that somehow channels Harpo, Savoy Brown and Sonic Youth all at once. Their originals are pretty damn swank, too. There's your "Voodoo Cadillac" (Tony Joe White meets Creedence Clearwater), your "Mudbuggy" (fuzztone surf at the dragstrip), your "Nashville Toupee" (Chuck Berry for hillbillies), your "Fried Chicken And Gasoline" (truckers' rock to get you down the road and through the lonesome night)...you get the picture.

There's a story, possibly apocryphal, about how Rick Miller came to name his band. He'd been jamming with three fellow Chapel Hillians who who were more into Crampsish retro-primitivism than the kudzu-fied janglepop of the day. One day Miller was making a tape of Johnny Burnette, Panther Burns and Elvis: "I flipped off the tape monitor and R.E.M. was playing on the radio, and I said, 'Man, oh man, that stuff just don't cut it. I like southern culture--on the skids."

From that point on, Miller's mission in life was clear: strip it back to the basics. SCOTS recorded a first album cleverly called First Album before going through some stylistic and personnel changes; in '88 Hartman and Huff turned up, said they could handle their share of the driving, and that was that. In between tours the trio found time to record scores of 45s and three indie albums (Too Much Pork For Just One Fork, For Lovers Only and Ditch Diggin'). Last year, Geffen Records saw the light come on in the outhouse.

Says Miller of the deal, "It's great. We've even got a clause in our contract where we can do one-off singles for independent labels. We're gonna do vinyl, do the new record, Dirt Track Date, as a co-Telstar/DGC 12" release. They didn't even make us get a producer; we'd done Ditch Diggin' ourselves and they liked that. So just went in and came out three weeks later with a record. It was pretty straightforward; I think we kinda came full circle back to the swampy rock."

Miller adds that the album, which should hit the stores in June, includes a "thrashy" number called "White Trash"; a Shirley Ellis cover, "The Nitty Gritty"; and three SCOTS instrumentals. (Miller: "One's called 'Galley Slave,' which is our ode to Hercules movies. It's got Mary singing in the middle eight in her siren voice, you know, wailing on the rocks thing. And then we did a Hawaiian instrumental with a lapsteel. We couldn't figure it out -- 'That sounds Spanish to me.' 'No, it sounds Hawaiian!' So we ended up naming it 'Make Mayan Hawaiian.' Bad pun, huh?")

SCOTS on record is one thing, and it's a fine thing indeed. Still, you gotta see this band to believe 'em. There's Hartman standing up, Moe Tucker style, mercilessly bashing his cans. There's Huff, attired in one of her numerous wigs, thumbing her bass and doing her own hip shake. And Miller, sometimes in big overalls and hick cap, sometimes in a putrid electric green suit with pants legs four inches too short, crooning outrageous lyrical double entendres, his eyes bugging out while he coaxes sensual waves of tremelo, reverb and fuzztones outta his cheap axe. In short, good sleazy fun for the entire family.

It rarely takes more than a song or two for crowds to warm up to the SCOTS aesthetic, although Miller admits that once in awhile he has to really work the room.

"A lot of big music towns like L.A. or New York, people are kind of jaded. It's hard to get 'em into the live show. Of course, when you wear that much leather and are pierced so many places, I know it's kinda heavy to move, you know, so....We have no problems making fools of ourselves and we expect the same from our audience. Still, after a few times, we get a regular crowd like we do anywhere, dancing and having fun. We're playing the Viper Room on this tour, as a matter of fact. We'll be on the lookout for celebrities -- our kind of celebrities. You know, the guy in "Walking Tall," Joe Don Baker. And Max Baer, Jr., trying to get Buddy Ebsen to come out -- forget Kate Moss!"

One sure-fire crowd pleaser for SCOTS is "Eight Piece Box," an ode to finger-licking lust in the drive-thru lane set to a chicken-pickin' twangy riff. Before the song's over, willing nubiles from the audience climb onstage to become impromptu Skidettes as they dance and partake of the SCOTS complimentary fried chicken.

"We went to Europe," says Miller with a laugh, "and there's a good audience for American roots music there. I think there are some language barriers, though. The rider from our U.S. shows had been transferred; because of 'Eight Piece Box' there's a clause that says we got to have an 'eight piece box -- no chicken, no show.' And they bring out these gourmet chickens that they'd baked: 'Oh, they must have chicken!' So they just watch us rip it apart and throw it at people, or the girls eat it and spread it all over their boyriends' bodies and stuff. But they caught on real quick. They got swept up in the moment, just clamoring to get onstage and dance and throw chicken."

More of that band-audience energy transfer, eh Rick? "Yeah, yeah! If you get people on your side early, they'll go anywhere with you.... There are some days, however, that I'd rather not see another piece of chicken at all."

CONSUMER NOTE: Southern Culture On The Skids make their first ever Tucson appearance on Saturday, June 10, at the Downtown Performance Center. You'd be a schmuck to miss 'em. Or the free chicken. In honor of this grand occasion, yours truly and Deejay Extraordinaire Kidd Squidd will be spinning three hours of nothing but primo SCOTS on Squidd's "Rock Roots" program that afternoon. KXCI-FM, 91.3 on yer dial, from 2 to 5 p.m. Do the new cooter boogie, y'all.
--Fred Mills

		© 1995-97 Tucson Weekly . Info Booth