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Rev. HH: Don’t give them a hand (or any other limb) |
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Written by Glenn BurnSilver
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Wednesday, 19 July 2006 |
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 “I was just really tired. It was just a long drive,” Jim Heath, aka the Reverend Horton Heat, apologized when our scheduled interview began seven hours late. “I’m just trying to find some time to sleep on this trip.”
Not exactly the most glorious rock ’n’ roll story to begin an interview with the leader of a band that has a well-earned reputation for tearing down the house night after night.
Thankfully, he made up for it.
“I’ve been hit with everything on stage — bottles, shot glasses, artificial limbs,” he added.
Artificial limbs?
“Yeah, all kinds of crazy stuff people throw at us,” he said. “I don’t dig that too much.”
He didn’t keep the limb, but such is the fire and intensity of a Reverend Horton Heat show that anything can and will happen.
Playing hard and fast, Heath fired up his musical menagerie of 1950s rockabilly, Dick Dale-style surf and vintage R&B with a hint of blues during the late-1980s when synth-pop, post-punk and hair metal were in full swing.
Picking up members here and there and gigging in the Dallas-area clubs where he grew up and still lives, he added a reputation for blistering performances that matched his music. Appropriately, the band’s name was born one night in one of those sweaty clubs when the owner declared Heath’s music like gospel.
“I guess (he) perceived my music to sound like gospel,” Heath added with a hearty laugh.
Perhaps somewhat more amazing is that a band performing “99 percent original music” was able to tour the United States and Europe without having released an album.
But luck always seemed to follow Heath. Stranded in Seattle and sleeping on floors after a scheduled gig never materialized, the band managed to play a small club. About five songs in, upright bass player Jimbo Wallace broke a string. When he tried to tear the string off, he sliced his finger open.
“Blood was spurting everywhere,” Heath recalled. “He was tossing blood on his bass but he just kept going and we kept going and it was pretty wild. It was a little bar and the crowd really got into it. And the guys from Sub Pop were there and that’s how we got our (first record) deal.”
Eighteen years and eight albums later, the most recent is 2004’s “Revival” (Yep Roc), Heath continues to champion his sound.
“I don’t really see myself abandoning what I am doing in favor of trying something else,” he said. “I still have that fire to be as good a singer, songwriter and guitar player as I can be.
“Besides, it’s too much fun.”
THE SHOW
Reverend Horton Heat, with Horrorpops, Throwrag
doors 6 p.m., show 8 p.m. Friday, July 21
Mishawaka Amphitheatre
13714 Poudre Canyon Highway, Bellvue
$18, call 482-4420 or go online to
www.mishawakaconcerts.com
THIS IS MAKIN' IN
Reverend Horton Heat has toured and performed with a who’s who of rock, blues, country and alternative musicians, but Jim Heath said one two-week period in the 1990s stands out.
“A long while back it was Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, us and Marilyn Manson on the bill, and there were 32,000 people,” he said. “Then about a week later we opened up for Johnny Cash in this little club. At that point I was thinking, ‘We are getting to do some pretty cool shows.’”
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