Ray Campi

...Rocks!

(Bear Family)

The man with "a scarf around my neck" never knew adulation of the soulless music industry, but that truth only heightened his coolness. (Besides, who ever gave a flying slapback about mainstream sanction?) Ray was Rollin' Rock royalty, and his 'round the globe hot repute ensured everlasting panthon residence.

The accompaying 36-page booklet includes personal biography by Rip Masters, Deke Dickerson foreword, uncommon snapshots, and exhaustive discography. As tracks compiled attest, the handkercief-wavin', big-bass slappin' man had the sock from Lone Star beginnings to Van Nuys culmination.

Recommended: "Caterpillar," "I Didn't Mean to Be Mean," "The Crossing," "Livin' on Love," "It Ain't Me," "Give That Love to Me," "Let Go of Louie," "The Man I Met (A tribute to the Big Bopper)," "Sixteen Chicks," "How Low Can You Feel," "Booze It!," "Rockin' at the Ritz," "Quit Your Triflin'," "Rattlin' Daddy," "Rockabilly Music," "Rockabilly Man," "Pan American Boogie" (live)

Videos: "Caterpillar"   "The Crossing"   "It Ain't Me"   "Booze It!"   "Quit Your Triflin'"   "

Bear Family

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Sleazy Records

Ghoultown: Death ain't nothin' but a thing

Tidings that recently emanated from BadlandsBeyond revealed Ghoultown -- a Texas Count Lyle production that last perpetrated wax some six years ago -- is again stalking studio passageways.

"We are in the process of recording our new album titled TOO BAD TO DIE," read a June 2 Facebook message. "This will be our 6th full-length studio release and 13th overall release.

"We are working hard to bring you the best collection of Ghoultown songs yet, offering a familiar yet amped-up group of songs that take you on a dusty and dangerous journey into our strange landscape of gunslinging Rock'n'Roll. No release date has been set, but rest assured it will be worth the wait!"

The group features on Facebook numerous behind-curtain photos of their studio activities, disclosing to all how sausage is made in spurred-monster kitchen.

During such time as will transpire until new grooves-of-the-macabre materialize, consideration is appropriate.

Few bands have accomplished that which distinguishes Ghoultown: the formulation of a truly singular persona. In the group's slap-leather milieu populated by shambling and hollow-eyed hombres from below, no string goes un-thrashed, and all poundings are doomsday ones.

Ghoultown's thunderous Tales of the Crypt transmogrification of Zane Grey's dusty-stampede world has never assumed deserved position in chart highlands. But that only illustrates Legs McNeil's dictum that cool music seldom enjoys mass popularity. 

In the group's darkside rowdiness, guitars gallop like wild stallions with tone settings. Poundings-times-ten collude, lending animation against which spectral host Count Lyle's dead-man's drawl scrawls jaggedly.

Eyes wide and ears a-ring, slack-jawed townsfolk marvel at the spectacle: Sinister invocations so resolute as to force all bearing stunned witness into tonic-clonic floorshows. 

Even Wyatt and Doc fall to their knees in sybaritic paroxysms. 

It's been years since I stopped puzzling how the men who comprise Ghoultown developed staggering musical proficiency, when all around stank of human decay and lead-slingers from the netherworld sprang like wicked phantasms in midnight moments.

Wiser, I concluded, to unquestioningly dig the merging of remorseless metal and zombie-caballero airs that alternately hyper-pulse and unfurl in teasing ominousness, as ghastly swinging-saloon-doors-in-Twilight-Zone sagas bore into cerebra, never to be erased.

Mesa-looming wraiths etch Ghoultown's hard-lashed menace, Bone-cold determination is a core surrounded by echo-clad desolateness.

"We have 11 new tunes polished up and ready to record," reveals a Facebook Ghoultown message. "We can say the recording is coming along very well!"

Whispered words telling of Ghoultown's impending disc are no doubt passed down the bar from gunhand to apparition to saddle tramp to bloodsucker. 

The barkeep polishes a glass, hoping to see sunrise.

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Videos: "Bullets Don't Argue"   "I Am the Night"   "Drink With the Living Dead" (live)   

The P-Town Skanks

"Meat" finds sharp-incisored Psycho and histrionic throat-urgings punctuated by a curious break -- that may have been recorded on the sly at some Eastern-territory hands-in-air celebration (bongos -- and is that a zurna?) -- before again tearing ass. 

Video: "Meat"

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Danny B Harvey: Fingertips combustible 

There are legions of able guitar slingers, all of whose efforts help stoke important flames. Kentucky-born Danny, though, ranks way high. 

Swing, Rockabilly, Jazz, Blues, Classical, Country - Danny interprets each with ease and the posture of an erudite academic (who's swung a chain or two, in his time). Indeed, listening raptly as he fashions wondrous works simultaneously indebted to American roots argots and accelerative of them as heady, reinvented creatures, one feels like a fortunate pupil.

Danny's features generally remain placid as he swipes at his Telecaster under multi-colored and strobing stage lights, tearing from it lick upon astounding lick. He occasionally shoots audiences a slight smile as if to ask, "See how easy this is?"

For him, perhaps.

An assiduous showman, he freely indulges both US cat and UK Teddy Boy styles. Black leather jackets are alternated with vivid and elegant drape ones. Motorcycle boots, vivid creepers, two-tone bowling shirts, solid-hued tees -- all report to his closet.

Danny has through decades of applied heart earned industry respect as a first-chair player guaranteed to add class to anyone's cause. His fretboard wizardry has advanced missions mounted by Levi Dexter, Wanda Jackson, Lee Rocker, and Bow Wow Wow. 

Also on the list are groups including The Rockats, Honeydrippers, Swing Cats, Lonesome Spurs, 13 Cats, 69 Cats, Devil's Daughters, and Headcat (with Lemmy Kilmeister, Slim Jim Phantom, David Vincent, Jonny Bowler, and Alan Davey).

His most recent recording, at this writing, is Headcat Plays Buddy Holly. The disc reflects Harvey's capacity for animation of pure Rock'n'Roll, its Blues and Country facets at high luster.

When renowned titans Danny, Slim Jim, and Lemmy cast fortunes into one jackpot, a supergroup of planetary capacity assumed configuration. Meat-and-potatoes, crasharound rocking was zested by the piquancy of gods.

Early on, Danny told Blabbermouth.net: "I'm so excited this album is coming out, showing how important Buddy Holly was to Lemmy, Slim Jim, and I. We all love Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee and Little Richard, but as Lemmy said in his book White Line Fever, 'Buddy Holly never did a bad track, as far as I could hear.' I'm sure that's why our first album was mainly Buddy Holly songs."

There exist no previous DBH discs one shouldn't obtain. Here are two that merit acknowledgement:

Having by the early 2000s already done movie soundtrack endeavoring, Danny was solicited by Cult Films for its 2004 Dark Angel: Bettie Page, which starred Paige Richards.

"I played all the instruments on those recordings, as I do on a lot of my recordings," Danny told me in a 2005 interview for Rockabilly magazine. "I always record the drums using a combination of sample loops and real drums. Of course, the guitars, keyboards, and bass are all me."

For Dark Angel, he composed and performed smart backing for vintage Bettie stills and film loops. Titles included "Whip Dance," "Fighting Girls," "Bound and Gagged," and "Whatever Happened To?"

Characteristically, his soloing enunciated a panoply of emotions and inclinations, from ecstasy to aggressiveness to pensive, introspective articulation.

"Bettie Page's influence over men and women alike is off the Richter Scale, as far as I'm concerned," he told me. "Girls all over the world dress like her, walk like her, and cut their hair like her. Her look is timeless and will always be in style."

For his 2005 solo, all-instrumental CD Rockabilly Jazz (Raucous 2005), Danny again played everything. Filled nearly to bursting with buoyant runs, bends, trills, and twangs, the disc was manna. He revisited classic modes and airs, charging them with fresh elan.

It was what a happy guitar turned loose sounds like.

"My finger-picking style is a direct derivative of Chet Atkins's and Merle Travis's picking style," Danny explained to me at the time. "I love to play loud and fast, but playing like Chet Atkins is very challenging."

Merle Travis tribute "The Travis Rag" is a carbonated, finger-picked romp over high-spirits clay. "Cattlesburg Express" rolls and rollicks merrily down driven-steel tracks in headlong ramble. "Dixie Doodle Dandy," splices traditional Southern and Northern melodies, recalling Link Wray's 1959 "Dixie Doodle."

In Jazz aspect, "Misty" unfurls sumptuous atmospherics. An exhumation of the Benny Goodman/Charlie Christian chestnut "Seven Come Eleven" gambols with uptown carriage. And the stately "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good To You?" ambles serenely, chin high.

An instinctive hybridizer, Danny is that rarest and most meritorious of players -- a heart-wired, creatively inquisitive, adventurous artist whose encyclopedic knowledge and expressive abilities awe riveted listeners and envious colleagues, alike.

His best work may well lie ahead. But Headcat Plays Buddy Holly and looking further back offer unique rewards.

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Videos: "Whiskey Hollar Blues" (solo w/Bettie reel)   "Crazy Baby" (13 Cats)   "Hammerhead" (solo)   "Whip Dance" (Paige Richards) "Not Fade Away" / "Fool's Paradise" (Headcat, live)   "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" (Headcat alternate mix)

Back in the Day, 2016

Evan Johns

Somewhere Over the Skyline / Panoramic Life

(Alternative Tentacles)

Evan left us in 2017. His name never adorned top sales charts, nor was his visage captured on wall posters. But such commercial accolades are as nothing, when contrasted with his imprint on music.

Across his 2013 and 2016 albums, Evan laid down his roots bona fides. (Not that need existed; the multi-instrumentalist - spitfire guitar being his ace - had previously established himself as both H-Bombs chieftain and Robert Gordon accomplice.) Guttural delivery bore unmistakably Lone Star State countenance, which advanced his common-man lyrics. Mandolin and banjo peeped through the pane. Rumbustious stomps made themselves heard, as did Tex-Mex spice additives and acoustic Blues blood affinity.

By making these discs newly accessible, Alternative Tentacles adds valuable works to the grand American Musics repertoire.

Somewhere Over the Skyline:

Recommended: "Guitars and Rock'n'Roll," "All Broke Down," "Souls with Broken Hearts," "Look Away," "Fun is Good," "Coolest Girl I Ever Knew," "Fess Up," "Thin Ice, Deep Water," "It's a Good Life"

Videos: "Guitars and Rock'n'Roll"   "Fun is Good"   "Coolest Girl I Ever Knew"   "It's a Good Life"

Alternative Tentacles

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Panoramic Life:

Recommended: "Shadows in the Snow," "Me and You, You and Me," "Highjacked," "All Alone," "Unfaithful Lies," "That Dog," "This Old Guitar and Me," "Goodbye Lonely Blues," "$75 Guitar"

Videos: "Shadows in the Snow"   "Highjacked"   "This Old Guitar and Me"   "$75 Guitar"

Alternative Tentacles

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The Flowertones

"Side by Side"   digital single

(Swelltune Records)

Vibrant Pop in happy bloom...poetry extolling ardor eternal...a kaleidoscopic collage of hues and textures in euphoric parade. Sunny harmonies and understatedly persuasive playing guide through sweetness and shine. Amid a sea of beaming teens, Dick Clark claps as if a kid himself. (A full-length Swelltune disc is planned for later this year.)

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Hotrod Hillbillies

25th Anniversary 2000 - 2025

(Self-issued)

As of this April 2 review, the Hotrod Hillbillies' Cowpunkabilly + collection can be acquired exclusively at stage fronts and via the trio's website. Long-famed Xavier Ortiz, who spurs the lead stallion, is skilled at both clod-kicker pickin' and muscular chording that brands airspace at high speeds, while firing off mohawked-cowpoke-on-the-next-barstool drawling that assures no sissified slickerisms will sabotage the kick-ass evening.

Recommended: "Why Can't You Love Me," "Disrespectful and Mean," "Big and Tall," "Redneck Girl," "Folsom Prison," "Backseat," "You Wanna Race?," "Texas Sky," 

Videos: "Why Can't You Love Me"   "Disrespectful and Mean"   "Big and Tall/Redneck Girl"   "You Wanna Race?"   "Texas Sky"

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zdigital (previous releases)

The Star Mountain Dreamers

Rawboned humanity thrashes in roots pugnacity; studio tech contrivances scramble down the road, lest they be stomped flat.

Video: "Trail Burnin'"  

Wild Records/shop

Wayne 'the Train' Hancock flips off Nashville

Too seldom do any of us shake hands with juke nobility. So when it does come through the door, we all should savor the moment.

At this writing, Wayne is enthusiastically undertaking a honky-tonk, barnstorming stampede. Beginning last January, he and joint-jumping brothers-in-rhythm have delighted crowds throughout the land. Further swing-your-partner exploits are on calendars.

Texas Rockabilly scramble has always figured in Wayne's music. Rip-rollicking Country Swing jollity gulps oxygen, too. Whirling dancers don't worry about genre strictures any more than does the man at the microphone, himself. 

Much was made of Wayne's significance, when he first landed shoes in national consciousness with 1995's top-drawer "Thunderstorms and Neon Signs" (produced by Lloyd Maines). 

"Wayne the Train," as he was soon hailed, personified buoyant juke joint rhythm slinging. His battered and furiously downstroked acoustic, rough hewn everyman drawl, and the mischievous, toothy, sideways grin he flashed - as slap bass walked the line, electric lead-picking stung, and steel caromed off jump-bop rhythms - earned broad renown. Lofty expectations became hand-tooled truths.

He has a hell of a ball - as do all who hear him.

Great things have since come from the starkly rustic raconteur, in whose twangy voice seemed to lurk the limber-limbed ghosts of every time-lost honky-tonk under the risen troubled moon.

Accompanists have entered and exited, across decades of shows and miles of road doggery. But all have been players of awe-striking caliber. They drew deeply from Country Swing and Jazz pools, eager to sit in on the man's merriment.

When Wayne slips into swaybacked, mid-tempo Country Blues, he evokes Hank Williams, Sr. - a genuine touchstone for all who would tread this unadorned path. And he relaxes still further, now and again, delivering sonorous, back-porch plaints of universal melancholia.

Amid interchangeable, corporate cut-outs who illegitimately claim kinship with bygone radio and Opry luminaries - genuinely talented folks who serenaded generations of calloused-hands Americans - "Wayne the Train" poses a threat both natural and needed.

"Man, I'm like a stab wound in the Country Music of Nashville," the paradoxically rebellious traditionalist once laughed. "See that bloodstain slowly spreading? That's me!" 

Back in the Day, 1979

Ray Campi

Rockabilly Rebellion

(Rollin' Rock)

Each time you drop a needle on gone wax, remember that Ray and Rollin' Rock's Ronny Weiser were very much among 1970s (and beyond) Rockabilly Rebels whose indefatigable toils helped the wildcat sound rise again. Since his 1950s Texas ramblings, Ray bore feral witness to homestyle Country's prominence in the glorious Red White and Blue story - often with hot-rodded, handerchief-waving abandon that dug the cool things possible when Sol sinks. Tracks compiled on this platter are good-time, good-humored evidence that the bar on the corner of Sunset, where Country and Rockabilly met up and shook hands, was one fractured destination. Indie label-maven Rockin' Ronny and the King of Rockabilly threw hellacious Van Nuys bashes - ones we still can and should dig.

Recommended: "Tore Up," "Ballin' Keen," "Don't Get Pushy," "Pinball Millionaire," "Eager B-B-Beaver Boy," "Georgia Slop," "You Don't Rock'n'Roll At All," "One Part Stops Where the Other Begins," "Dual Wheels No Brakes," "Rockin' and Rollin' Towards Tennessee"

Videos: "Ballin' Keen"   "Pinball Millionaire"   "Dual Wheels No Brakes"   "Rockin' and Rollin' Towards Tennessee"

Kupindo

Tradera

Bomp!

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Ronny Weiser

Hotrod Hillbillies

"Why Can't You Love Me"   digital single

(HRHB Records)

It's secure speculation that, were this gravelly substance bottled, the label would feature a skull and crossbones. Twist off the cap anyway, but hold it at arm's length - Texas toxicity will flood airspace. 

Making their way through no-shit crunch are Xavier Ortiz's guitar lines, hazardous ones from which no MD license would rally. Abetting Xavier and dangerous drummer Mike C. is Tony Slash, he of Rocketz infamy. (The Golden State ripsnorter grapples a doghouse.) Repeat dosings of the amphetemine thrill-tonic are prescribed.

Dave Irish produced at California's Pot of Gold studio. The storied band's forthcoming 25th Anniversary LP will include this track, as well as other new ones, live recordings, and previously unheard demos.

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Xavier and his Mama

The Sparkles

The Complete Recordings

(El Vidocq)

These 1960s Levelland, Texas, Garage personages are prized by afficianados of that unique, gritty sound. They slouch in the rank of Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs, and Roky Erickson's 13th Floor Elevators; at least certain of the combo's cracking wax was produced by Norman Petty, he of Buddy Holly and Crickets renown. Employing two drummers, they put to vinyl some of that era's coolest racket, a truth known to owners of Pebbles, Nuggets, and other sub-genre compendiums. Included among somewhat obscure riches is "No Friend of Mine," the Sparkles' biggest triumph. (Occasional surface noise only accentuates vintage.) They are even said to have inspired the '80s Fuzztones. Indeed, that group covered several Sparkles numbers.

Previously a 2019 Jukebox Music Factory release. JMF is also the property of El Vidocq owner Laurent Laffargue.

Recommended: "The Hip," "He Can't Love You," "The U.T.," "Oh, Girls, Girls," "No Friend of Mine," "Hipsville 29 B.C. (I Need Help)," "I Want to be Free," "Something That You Said (Makes Me Cry," "Daddy Gonna Put the Hurt on You," "Jack and the Beanstalk"

Videos: "The Hip"   "No Friend of Mine"   "Hipsville 29 B.C. (I Need Help)"   "Jack and the Beanstalk"

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Copasetic Mailorder

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Groovie Records

PlatinumRecords

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