Spring 2007 Performers

T.T. Tucker & the Bum Rush Band
and J.B. Beverley & the Wayward Drifters
Friday, January 12

When Hasil Adkins, the late psycho-billy cult figure from West Virginia, needed an opening act for his Roots Café debut, the logical choice was the Baltimore psycho-billy ensemble, T.T. Tucker & the Bum Rush Band. Led by Beat poet Tom Diventi, featuring the Roots Café's resident soundman Craig Hopwood on steel and propelled by a rough-and-ready rhythm section, the group has found the overlap where old-fashioned hillbilly music and underground punk-rock meet in acts of drunken madness. The broad range of the band’s debut album, “Barely Alive In Baltimore," is indicated by such song titles as “George Jones Made Me Cry Today” and “Eat the Rich for Christmas.” Whether performing their own “Born To Party” or Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues," Tucker and comrades have taken the torch from Adkins and gone marching on.

 

Discography:
T. T. Tucker Bum Rush Band: Barely Alive In Baltimore (TTT, 2006)

tttucker.com

In the summer of 2005, the D.C. band J.B. Beverley & the Wayward Drifters spent seven weeks on a cross-country tour with their pal Hank Williams III. Like the grandson of Hank Sr., Beverly and his mates grew up in a punk-rock era and found a similar edginess in the honky-tonk music of the ‘40s and ‘50s. Beverley's contempt for contemporary country music is obvious from the title track of his latest album, where he sings, "Give me a dark bar and a jukebox/Over that radio/Toby just don't cut it/Give me Haggard, give me Coe/I'm tired of watching Nashville/It's a washed up fashion show." Backed by the drummer-less Wayward Drifters (Dan "BanjerDan" Mazer on banjo, dobro and mandolin; Jimmy Swope on electric guitar; and Johnny "Lawless" Ray on stand-up bass), Beverley makes the tradition of Ernest Tubb and Merle Haggard sound as modern as the White Stripes.

 

Discography:
J.B. Beverley & the Wayward Drifters: Dark Bar & A Juke Box (Helltrain, 2006)
J.B. Beverley & the Wayward Drifters: Highball (Helltrain, 2004)

www.waywarddrifters.com