Saved By The Reverend Horton Heat

Geoff Carter

Wednesday, June 9, 1999 | 2:58 a.m.

This article first appeared on March 22, 1997.

The phone rings at 3:00 exactly. It's the Reverend, just in time for happy hour.

"Hey, Geoff," he says in his raspy, guttural Texas twang. "This is Jim Heath."

"JIM HEATH?" I exclaim, grinning. "Hey man, where's that ten bucks you owe me?"

He laughs, and asks nervously, "I don't really owe you ten bucks, do I?"

He doesn't. In fact, most times I'm listening to the Reverend Horton Heat, whether cruising over the Strip late Friday night, grooving with a suicide blonde over by the jukebox or shooting pool with a bunch of other drunk, belligerent idiots, I feel obligated to cut him a check myself, for making some of the best damn rock and roll in the history of mankind. The Heat isn't just a band; they're a movement, a Lone Star saga that began when Jim picked up the guitar at age ten. As an adult, he hooked up with bassist Jimbo Wallace and drummer Patrick "Taz" Bentley and began to administer a gospel born of gin, souped-up Fords and dangerous women, delivered rapid-fire with a stand-up bass, rolling drums and hard-assed guitar.

The Rev calls the band's killer barrage of rockabilly, blues, country and straight-up punk "psychobilly" because, truthfully, it couldn't be called anything else. The band's reputation began to build immediately, on the strength of the records-Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em, The Full-Custom Gospel Sounds Of The Reverend Horton Heat, the breakthrough release Poker In The Front, Liquor In The Rear-and nonstop touring. Almost overnight, they went from cramped bars to opening for a diverse array of artists, including Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins, White Zombie and Johnny Cash. These days, they're headlining and thank God. Their sound is big, cool, sexy, mean-one more reason not to mess with Texas.

The Rev's latest record, It's Martini Time, is the first with new drummer Scott Churilla (Taz left the group immediately following a gig at the now-defunct Fremont Street Reggae & Blues). Don't think for a moment that the band has lost anything. In fact, Martini Time has an even greater kick than the last round, despite the previous batch of cocktails being concocted with Ministry's Al Jourgensen, another celebrated psychobilly. Every song-from the hi-speed hijinx of "Now, Right Now" to the dirty strip-bar blues of "Slow"-cruises like a Sherman Tank through a lot full of used Toyotas. There are no crashes; just happy accidents. "We're going to tear out the mailbox/rip out the floor/smash out the windows/and knock down the door," Heath cheerfully declares in the vintage rockabilly rave "Rock The Joint," going on to play a note-for-note interpretation of the guitar solo from Bill Haley's "Rock Around The Clock." If you can't take the sounds, get out of the path of destruction so the rest of us can groove to the shockwave.

The band may sound crazy sometimes, but Heath himself is anything but psychotic. Cracking jokes and telling stories, he's as easygoing as they come. Many of his songs have stories behind them, like the new album's "Cowboy Love": "One night, Jimbo and our tour manager asked this taxi driver in Fresno to take 'em to a happenin' bar. I guess the cab driver didn't know what was up, or maybe he did, who knows...he dropped 'em off at a gay bar. It was a gay country and western bar in Fresno! It was called 'The Faded Rose' or 'The Buckaroo,' I dunno. Anyway, they were drinking their first beer when they looked over and saw a black cowboy kissing a white cowboy, and they knew they were in the wrong place." He chuckles. "I just wrote the song. I don't know why that ended up on the record. Probably 'cause our record company has as poor of taste as we do! Sometimes I need them to say, 'No, Rev, you can't do that.'"

The record industry comes up more than once during our conversation. "Baby boomer, X/I dunno what I am/all I need to know is/when it's time to slam," Heath growls in "Generation Why," obviously fed up with an industry preoccupied with marketing. "It's a song about ho fucked up labels are," he sighs. "It's just a little brat of a song. Some things never change, just stick 'em up your ass."

Other songs on the record indicate that the industry grind may be getting to him. "That's Showbiz," for all its goofy, film noir cliches, delivers a scathing rebuke of the trappings of fame and fortune. Over a hip-jazz beat, the Rev deadpans a tale of a broken performer, gigging his way to oblivion: "No matter how bad you feel... You could have a fever and the dry heaves from that left-handed cigarette and shot of Old Crow you did between the first and second show. You could have a social disease you caught from that blonde bombshell in Boise. You could feel bad 'cause you lost your wallet, your dog, your best friend and even your wife. And no matter how bad you feel, when those house lights go down, a smile lights up your face... Why? 'Cause that's showbiz."

It was a relief to find out that Heath was kidding...somewhat. "I dreamed myself doing that, as some sort of beatnik poetry thing," Heath said. "I swear I woke up saying, 'man, that was pretty good, I oughta write that down!' And I did; it was about five in the morning. Hell, the next thing I know, we're in the studio doing it. It's tongue-in-cheek, but still true enough to be scary. Sometimes, I like to make fun of sad songs. I get truisms in there, too; that makes it pretty confusing sometimes. Like describing a rat big enough to carry off a slice of pizza."

Oh, yes-he's been there.

"It was in this place called the 9:30 Club, in Washington DC. It was amazing, man. The alley (behind the club) was the one John Wilkes Booth ran down, so it was an old motherfucker. And there were these rats, they were huge, they were everywhere. They gave us this pizza in the dressing room that was so disgusting, we didn't wanna touch it. The rats would jump down on this slice of pizza, grab it and drag it through this lil' bitty hole in the pipes. It was amazing!"

Heath's touring anecdotes recall the early days of rock and roll so strongly, it's hard to believe that he wasn't there the first time around, touring roadhouses with Jerry Lee Lewis. Truth to tell, "The Killer" is Heath's biggest hero hands down, though a meeting has still yet to occur. "We were gonna try to get him to play piano on our last record, but it was gonna cost too much money and we don't get too much to make our records. Hmm... ah, we probably could'a got him. I love Jerry Lee Lewis, I really do." He pauses, then blurts out, "You ever read the book 'Hellfire?' That's the best book about rock and roll that ever could be. It's hilarious. He was really funny, but at the same time he was very passionate, and that comes through in his music. If he found bootleg tapes, he'd just take 'em out, douse 'em with gasoline and burn 'em right there in the store. In the middle of an interview, he'd get angry and hang the (interviewer) out the window!"

The Reverend clearly wants to preach an older gospel, one that predates Lollapalooza and MTV. "I met Carl Perkins, we did a show with him recently. He had a great story: once when he was touring with Johnny Cash when they were real young, Cash took some M-80's and blew out the water system of the hotel. He lit it and tried to flush 'em down the commode, and with the compression in the pipes, it blew some guy off the john!" He laughs hard. "Another time, Cash and his brother had this crazy idea that they were going to raise chickens while they were on tour. The premise was that all these hotels they were staying in had all this empty drawer space, and they could raise chickens in these drawers. I mean, think about it!"

He's had his own bouts with that kind of chaos. When MTV came to visit the band in the midst of recording Liquor In The Front, they found the band slobbering drunk and producer Jourgensen standing on the mixing console with his pants down and a pencil stuck up his ass. Once, when Heath was drinking with renowned Butthole Surfers vocalist Gibby Haynes and tomato juice for a batch of Blood Marys proved scarce, they replaced the missing ingredient with barbecue sauce. They dubbed the concoction a "Bloody Leroy."

It's fairly obvious that booze is a substantial contributing factor to the Rev's creative drive, but despite his talent for mixed drinks, Heath likes to keep things simple. "I do the martini thing, but that has to be something really special," he admits. "I don't like people to try and buy me a martini. Mostly I do vodka tonics. My favorites are gin & tonics and vodka tonics, 'cause I always order after hours: I tell the bartender to make it look like water, without a straw. That way, it just looks like you're having a glass of water, unless you stand under a damn black light or something." That's not to say he won't drink whatever you want to buy him. "Oh, we totally try to get people to buy us drinks! Even if we don't even get a chance to drink 'em all. Bars love us for that. They sell tons of drinks while we're there."

Another favorite intoxicant is one that the majority of his college-age audience won't touch, even if they do drink Jagermeister and Boone's Strawberry Hill: Heath loves country music. "I think all the (recent) interest in the country field has been good, 'cause it's given 'em money to try out acts that nobody would've cared about before," he says. "The band BR-549 is great. And Junior Brown is my personal god. I can't believe how good he is on the guitar. And there's a few of the mainstreamers that I like. I think Alan Jackson's pretty cool. I like Jimmie Dale Gilmore; I've talked to him a couple of times. That's bringing back the real country stuff." Provided, of course, said music is clearly distilled. "I think Garth Brooks had some great songs, but he really overdid it so much that it's distasteful! 'Friends In Low Places' was a great tune, but then...what the fuck? He's makin' goober faces and jumpin' off platforms, landin' on ladders-it was the KISS aspect, I think. When he admitted he liked KISS, it was all downhill from there."

Heath is in no danger of adopting those tactics, or any other typical rock-star baggage. "I've had scores of nine to fivers. Man, I am so grateful I don't have to do that anymore. When I was talking to Carl Perkins, he said, 'Man, I'm just trying to feed my family.' I could fully relate. This is all we know how to do; might as well keep doin' it."

The fuel that's driven the band for the past decade is in no danger of exhausting itself. Wallace balances on top of his bass while beating it within an inch of its life. Churilla, a veteran of KMFDM and Sister Machine Gun, pounds the skins with same the intensity he gave to industrial metal. Heath may have quit smoking cigarettes ("I've put on about thirty pounds...used to smoke two packs a day, for ten years"), but his gravely howl still sounds like a fuzzpedal. And they're ready to take on Las Vegas once more, louder and faster than ever. Just on the strength of the new record and the live shows I've seen, Jim Heath's got my ten bucks locked up.

"Vegas can be a depressing town," he admitted. "But kinda cool depressing. There's all kinds of crazy, kooky shit people will say and do in that town. We get drunk, and a good time is had by all."

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