Reverend Horton Heat Serves it Hot in Uncasville

Reverend Horton Heat frontman Jim Heath is content with his career. After 28 years bringing an unabashed celebration of sex, booze and hard living to venues across the country, Heath and his band have cultivated a diverse and loyal fan base.

Few rock 'n' roll bands last a decade, let alone a quarter-century--especially with a rigorous tour schedule like Reverend Horton Heat's. In the band's early days, it wasn't uncommon for them to play 300 gigs a year. Anymore, though, the group only tours about one-third of the year.

"We were always a party band ... in every town, people were waiting there to party with us. The next night would be really difficult to play music," said Heath. "We knew if we kept this up, we were going to die. So we had a band meeting and decided we are here to play music and we cut out the partying."

Heath is feted by peers and loved by fans for his ability to make his guitar cry the blues and wail rock 'n' roll with blistering, reckless abandon. He loves extremes: sudden drops from loud to soft, or a sweet, sustained guitar riff followed by a jolt of speed. 

Heath absorbed all kinds of music growing up and was influenced early on by Johnny Cash, The Cramps and The Blasters, along with blues artists such as Howlin' Wolf, Freddie King and Buddy Guy.  These diverse musical tastes have made Reverend Horton Heat an adaptable beast.

"I took a few lessons, but what really worked for me was just listening and trying to copy what I heard," Heath said. "I dropped the needle about a million times until I could imitate what I heard."

When he started Reverend Horton Heat in the mid 1980s, Heath didn't want to be pigeonholed into a specific musical genre. Instead, he used rockabilly as a foundation from which to build an original mix of surf guitar, swing, country, jazz, blues and up-tempo rock 'n' roll.

Spawned from the Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas, the band would play in the punk-y Twilight Room one night, and around the corner in a blues bar the next. Further along in their career, RHH opened for Johnny Cash and two weeks later played with Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson.

Today, the trio serves up a hearty mix of rock swagger at a surf-rock speed, topped with a dash of blues and some countrified melodies. The band released the two-CD and DVD box set 25 to Life in 2012, and recently announced it signed with Victory Records and plans to release a new album in 2013.

The Rev swings by the Wolf Den, Thursday, April 4^th flanked by upright bassist Jimbo Wallace and drummer Scott Churilla. Ultimately, though, it's Heath's original compositions and guitar skills that drive the band.

"I'm an electric guitar player and I hear all instruments in a song." Heath explained. "So I come up with the whole arrangement before I have a song for the band to work up. I am very focused on the beat…I started realizing how funk beat is in everything so I think about beat pretty intensely when I write a song.”

Heath also experiments with a variety of guitar techniques.

"One technique I worked on my whole career is mimicking pedal steel and steel guitar licks with my guitar--the way you hold three notes, and then bending one of them will give you a kind of pedal steel guitar swell effect," Heath said.  A technique he uses in slow and moderate-tempo country songs like “Where in the Hell did you Go with My Toothbrush?”   

Heath continues to experiment with playing lead and rhythm guitar simultaneously.  He explains one technique:  “one (technique) is bass finger picking like Travis or Chet Atkins style where the bass notes are alternating while my fingers are picking out …. that is involved and took some years to get the subtleties down”

Another signature move calls for Heath to play lead and rhythm guitar simultaneously--a technique he uses to fill out the trio's sound and which he's named the "hurricane."

"I play a drum note on the low end while I am playing the strings on the top end--the key to that is how I mute the strings," said Heath.  “While I am playing a lick, I am not just focusing on hitting those notes, I am also focusing on the tip of my fingers and the back of my fingers are stopping the other fingers from sounding.”

But Heath's aptitudes aren't confined to the technical realm. With his lyrical prowess, Heath plays around with pun-filled songs such as the fast-tempo "Big Little Baby," Heath pens a love song for his tall girlfriend, whose "heart is as big as her feet are long": "Well, I got a sweet baby who's six-foot-tall / Well, she's a full grown woman who's got it all."

In the slow country tune: “Where the Hell Did you Go with My Toothbrush?” Heath laments of a rough break-up: “Where the hell did you go with my toothbrush? /And where in the hell did you happen to spend last night? /You didn't leave a bar of soap when you left me/And you didn't even tell me they was turning out the lights.”

In the funny “Martini Time,” Heath writes “Hey, buddy do you got the time? / No I don't got a watch, can you spare a dime? / But I got two olives and a couple of limes / Guessin' that means it's martini time.”

On stage, Heath has it all--mingling anarchy, virtuosity, deep blues and a hammy guitar playing shtick that keep all eyes focused on him.

Whether he's singing with gentle menace or bending new curves into a blues note, Heath is a master of tension and release. It's during a live show that bona fide Reverend Horton Heat fans are born. And Heath says fans are everything to the band.

"We party with the people who come to see us at the show. ... To me, music is an art form that involves getting up there and playing in front of people," Heath said.