Reverend Horton Heat (w/ Black Joe Lewis, Piñata Protest)

Reverend Horton Heat (w/ Black Joe Lewis, Piñata Protest)

Loaded .38s, space heaters, and big skies. Welcome to the lethal, littered landscape of Jim Heath’s imagination. True to his high evangelical calling, Jim is a Revelator, both revealing & reinterpreting the country-blues-rock roots of American music. He’s a time-travelling space-cowboy on an endless interstellar musical tour, and we are all the richer and “psychobillier” for getting to tag along.

Seeing REVEREND HORTON HEAT live is a transformative experience. Flames come off the guitars. Heat singes your skin. There’s nothing like the primal tribal rock ‘n roll transfiguration of a Reverend Horton Heat show. Jim becomes a slicked-back 1950?s rock ‘n roll shaman channeling Screamin’ Jay Hawkins through Buddy Holly, while Jimbo incinerates the Stand-Up Bass. And then there are the “Heatettes”. Those foxy rockabilly chicks dressed in poodle-skirts and cowboy boots slamming the night away. It’s like being magically transported into a Teen Exploitation picture from the 1950s that’s currently taking place in the future.

Listening to the REVEREND HORTON HEAT is tantamount to injecting pure musical nitrous into the hot-rod engine of your heart. The Reverend’s commandants are simple. Rock hard, drive fast, and live true. And no band on this, or any other, planet rocks harder, drives faster, or lives truer than the Reverend Horton Heat. These itinerant preachers actually practice what they preach. They live their lives by the Gospel of Rock ‘n Roll.

From the High-Octane Spaghetti-Western Wall of Sound in “Big Sky” to the dark driving frenetic paranoia of “400 Bucks” to the brain-melting Western Psychedelic Garage purity of “Psychobilly Freakout” The Rev’s music is the perfect soundtrack to the Drive-In Movie of your life. Jim Heath and Jimbo Wallace have chewed up more road than the Google Maps drivers. For twenty-five Psychobilly years, they have blazed an indelible, unforgettable, and meteoric trail across the globe with their unique blend of musical virtuosity, legendary showmanship, and mythic imagery.

The 11th studio album from REVEREND HORTON HEAT, boldly titled REV, released on January 21, 2014, and stands as the band’s highest charting album in their 25-year career. Debuting on Billboard’s Top 200 Albums Chart at #111, Top Current Albums Chart at #104, #26 on the Independent Albums Chart, and #2 on the Heatseekers Chart, Rolling Stone called REV, “a throwback to old-school psychobilly-style Horton Heat” and “13 tracks of pure psychobilly mayhem” by Guitar World. On tour forever, don’t miss the Godfathers of Psychobilly, REVEREND HORTON HEAT. Rev your engines and catch the sermon on the road as it’s preached by everybody’s favorite Reverend.

###

Black Joe Lewis is the realest motherfucker there is. When COVID-19 sidelined his touring, he started laying concrete to help support his baby mama and his kid. That’s fuckin’ real. When Joe and his band, the Honeybears, popped onto the national stage over a decade ago, many critics embraced him but still, there were some that maintained that they hadn’t paid their dues.

Joe’s still here. Still going. Still cashing checks and snapping necks. The dues of hard work; the delirious heights of the industry as well as the disappointments and low hanging fruit. Through this all, Joe’s only honed his mastery over gut bucket blues guitar and his true voice. It’s a vital and distinctly American voice that never anticipated the attention he wound up receiving, never went looking for it either. It just started happening.

The garage, the blues, the propulsive and synergistic live performances that inhabit the spaces of James Brown, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and the MC5…those things happened naturally from the very beginning and could only be accurately communicated in the live experience, not a press release or a slick brand campaign. Sharon Jones, Charles Bradley, Cedric Burnside and Lightnin Malcolm, The Dirtbombs, Detroit Cobras, the Strange Boys; these are some of the artists that Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears shared countless bills with; almost a roll call of the most influential soul and garage bands of the last twenty five years.

Has the soul blues garage explosion from that era been commodified or worked into the overall template of pop rock? Sure. But the ground floor was a vital space for people that like guitars and grease and at this point Black Joe Lewis is one of the last standing that was there. Last of a dying breed. Or maybe a missing link. Does this make him a throwback? A throwback to a throwback? It’d be tempting and easy for Joe to go along with that but nah, we don’t think so.

We know that Joe Lewis is genuinely doing his thing and that he’d do it regardless of what’s coming down the pipe. A stone cold original and a veteran at that. If you like whistling in your music and some floppy hat, quaky kneed dudes cloyingly singing at you, then you might not “get it” but whatever…there are enough intrepid, degenerate weirdos that do. Those are the folks Joe cares about. Not the glad handing set. Not the fair-weather friend set getting down with the flavor of the month. Like the title of his last album says, “the difference between me and you” is Joe defining for himself that there’s the belabored wannabes and then there’s dudes that actually “HAVE the blues”…whatever the hell THAT is! Joe’s concrete pouring boss is going to miss him.

###

Piñata Protest is an accordion fronted punk rock band from Texas. The San Antonio band’s fusion of Tex-Mex and punk is a fresh sound the LA Weekly hails as “festively energetic,” and NPR alt Latino deems “brilliant” and “mind blowing.” It’s Selena meets Slayer. An intoxicating border mash up of The Ramones and Ramon Ayala.

The group rapidly rose from being “one of the most original forces on the local music scene” (San Antonio Current) to cutting a feisty debut album, Plethora, to launching onto the road playing with such acts as Girl in a Coma, Reverend Horton Heat, The Hickoids, Brujeria, Lower Class Brats, Voodoo Glow Skulls and Mustard Plug plus appearances at such festivals as South By Southwest, Chicago’s Latino Fest and the American Sabor Music Festival and Tejano Music Awards Fan Fair in San Antonio.

On the band’s new EP, El Valiente, a joint release by Cosmica Records and Saustex Media, the band’s irreverently self-described “mojado punk” develops and explodes into a strong and cohesive mix of punk rock aggression, cheeky riffs on Mexican standards, and original songs reflecting their lives, influences, and desire for a mosh pit, Tejano style. Noted Grammy-nominated producer Chris “Frenchie” Smith (The Toadies, And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Built to Spill), produced the new album and captures the band’s sound that critics praise as “fiery punk rock” that “use[s] the traditional squeeze box in unexpected ways.”

“This bilingual accordion-fronted quartet is committed to the notion that old-school punk rock and old-school Latin border music can be fused into something modern. And loud,” notes The New York Times. As singer/accordionist Alvaro Del Norte stresses, it’s simply an organic development out of the differing sounds that the band members all heard as they grew up and came of age. And from his belief that music should first and foremost provide a fun release from the rigors of everyday life. Along with del Norte, Piñata Protest is comprised of guitarist Marcus Cazares and his bassist twin brother Matt and drummer JJ Martinez.

Songs like “Vato Perron,” “Tomorrow, Today” and the title track, “El Valiente,” perfectly capture the band’s signature blend of speeded up Tex Mex, buzzing guitars, and way witty Spanglish lyrics. “Life On The Border” explores the insider/outsider Mexican Americans experience in a bright accordion-led punk rock drinking song. And in the band’s cover of the classic Mexican ranchera standard “Volver, Volver,” Piñata playfully sticks to the songs lyrical traditions while adding a punk rock element making the classic tune equally at home in a San Antonio West Side beer joint or in a So Cal punk rock club. The band closes the set with a pummeling burst of wham, bam, thank you ma’am fury on “Que Pedo” which shifts back and forth from punk to speed metal and back again in the course of its blistering 45 second running time.

“It captures a moment of coming together as a band and breaking out of our shell,” says Del Norte, of their road seasoned sound that El Valiente takes to a whole new level. As the Phoenix New Times observes, “When you think about the dichotomy of growing up Chicano, the fusion actually makes perfect sense.” As Del Norte readily admits, for much of his life he rejected the traditional Mexican-American music he heard at home growing up in San Antonio. “I hated Tejano and conjunto and anything in Spanish. Didn’t think it was cool,” he explains.

Instead he dug R&B and pop/Top 40 music until he heard in bands like The Ramones, The Clash and Black Flag a sound, attitude and messages that spoke to his feelings, experiences and soul. He learned to play bass and did time in a punk rock and an emo band. After High School, Del Norte had a change of heart regarding the Mexican music he grew up with. Born in Nuevo Laredo into a family that immigrated to Texas undocumented (and later became naturalized), Alvaro soon realized Tejano, norteño and conjunto spoke to a part of who he was, as well as speaking to larger cultural and human issues.

At Palo Alto Community College in San Antonio, he studied accordion with master player Juan Tejeda, a respected folklorist and founder of San Antonio’s Tejano Conjunto Festival. It led Del Norte to start a band that combined the punk style he loved with his Tejano/norteño musical roots he had grown to appreciate. “I was sick and tired of bands all sounding the same. I thought long and hard: What can I do to do something different, something fun?” he explains. He started recruiting musicians at Snaps Skate Shop, a skateboard store in a funky old warehouse with a half-pipe inside that was a San Antonio punk scene gathering spot. It’s also where the first version of Piñata Protest debuted, although their inaugural show was almost derailed when police raided the joint. Undaunted, the band set up outside and played unplugged.

“I remember just having a puzzled look when Alvaro first told me about his idea of fusing the accordion with punk music, but he had a few raw recordings that honestly blew my mind,” says Martinez, a human tattoo collection who honed his taut drum chops playing heavy metal, indie-punk, pop-punk and hardcore. Too busy in other bands to take up Del Norte’s invitation to help start the group, he later saw a show “and fell in love and totally regretted not joining.” He eagerly jumped onto the Piñata Protest drum stool a little later when the invite came again.

The brothers Cazares also grew up with the same cross-cultural musical mix as Del Norte and Martinez plus similarly playing in punk, emo and hardcore bands. Bassist Marcus, an automotive and lowrider culture buff, was the first to sign on. Guitarist Matt, a professional tobacconist who collects rare cigars and pipes, was “already a fan” when he was recruited as a last-minute fill-in and quickly earned his full member stripes.

Crisscrossing the country on tour, the band honed their sound to a razor’s edge sharpness and high wattage energy and racked up media praise in their wake for the band’s rollicking powerhouse live performances: “This band is manic, Hispanic, accordion driven, and loaded with punk rock attitude. Alvaro Del Norte squeezes and plies the keys of his accordion with frenzied energy, [and] he’s an amazing performer. He leaps about, spins around the stage and even does windmills on his accordion a la Pete Townshend. He exudes charisma from every pore” (East Portland Blog). “They are a band that is in your face, and living proof that musical cultures can combine to create something powerful. And live they are impossible to resist. If you’re not dancing, then you can’t be in that room, because the energy is just that intense” (Salt Lake City’s Rebel Gurrl). “From the moment Piñata Protest took the stage, [the club] was at full throttle. Sweat-soaked shenanigans and musical insanity ensued …and the women went wild!” (San Francisco’s The Owl). “A damn good show” (Phoenix New Times).

“We’ve really grown together musically,” Del Norte observes. “We’re friends and hang out with one another outside the band. We’ve gotten really comfortable with each other. We can almost predict what someone is going to play. It’s like finishing each other’s sentences. Everybody has a lot of enthusiasm and is on the same page. We’re a family now.” Playing both the rock club tour circuit and Mexican American celebrations in and around their hometown, Piñata Protest have been pleased to see that their appeal ranges from sweet old abuelas to little kids as well as the toughest Chicano vatos to indie rock’n’rollers.