“That’s what I like to see young man; teamwork!” yells Jon Spencer as he thanks the audience member who has just nonchalantly replaced his fallen mic mid song.
Primarily of Blues Explosion fame, the great man has been releasing edgy, balls out blues-based rock n’ roll for over two decades and tonight’s gig with venerated rockabilly outfit Heavy Trash promises to be equally penetrating.
Support comes from Bloodshot Bill, a one-man band, who is every inch the rockabilly purist and has the audience on side from the first riotous note.
He crashes through popular tracks ‘Thunder and Lightning’ and ‘Five and Ten’ like Elvis on a speedball, to the extent that you’d be forgiven for worrying whether he can keep up the pace.
He can, he does, and the crowd love him for it.
As the room steadily fills Heavy Trash take the stage and without introduction blast into ‘Back Off’, which hits like a billy club to the base of the skull and instantly arrests the whole room.
Their set up is classic rockabilly with Jon Spencer on acoustic guitar, Matt Verta-Ray on electric guitar, and Bloodshot Bill returning to thumb fuck the upright base.
Verta-Ray, moustachioed and serious, has the presence of a back street hustler who could easily have a pistol stuffed deep into his belt.
Yet, he is clearly the soul of the band and the cool methodical contrast to the lightening in a jar that is Jon Spencer.
Evidently the band’s authority on gender, Verta-Ray takes the vocal duties on ‘The Female Form’ and ‘Good Man’, performing each with a tested swagger and spirited soulfulness, but ever conscious that a bellowing Jon Spencer stands to his left ready to burn down the house that Verta-Ray just built.
As a collection Heavy Trash appear like the devil possessed house band on a river boat damned and destined for the underworld, at times steady like a train at others like ramshackle voodoo phantoms baying the crowd to ghoulishly chant along to a deadly call and response.
Crowd favourites ‘Dark Hair’d Rider’ and ‘Punk Rock Mama’ really ‘cook’, while ‘(Sometimes You Gotta Be) Gentle’ with its detonating dynamite drum pattern wonderfully combines Matt Verta-Ray’s bluesy surf licks with Spencer’s thunderous declaration that he wants “nothing EEELLSSSEEE!!!”
Heavy Trash is further testimony to the diversity of Spencer, who has collaborated with artists from the late, great RL Burnside to Beastie Boys, and his unfathomable ability to pick the best musicians for the job.
Verta-Ray and Bloodshot Bill do not look, talk or play like anyone else, and fit into Spencer’s world like whiskey fits a shot glass.
As they draw the gig to a close with ‘Trouble’ and with Spencer making declarations of anti-war both sides, act and audience, go their separate ways to someday meet again and thrash, thrust and shimmy like only Heavy Trash can make you.
Words: David McPhee
Photos: Thomas Ritchie
