BIG-VALU PACK O' SOUTHERN TWANG FOR THE FANS:

SOUTHERN CULTURE ON THE SKIDS

By Tim Roberts

They're a band of such professionalism, so efficient and self-reliant enough that they don't need a team of roadies to set up their essential gear on stage: several bottles of Miller High Life, a plastic grocery bag containing two boxes of fried chicken (for use in a song) and a compact, sunglasses and a towel for their bass player.

A few minutes later, they walked onto the stage, plugged in and played their relentless twangified hillbilly rock for nearly two solid hours.

And the folks who paid their $15 to get in to Headliners Music Hall to hear Southern Culture (S.C.O.T.S.) on the Skids got more than their money's worth.

Frequent visitors to Louisville, the Chapell Hill-based S.C.O.T.S. always bring a fine, solid, crowd-pleasing show with them and their fan base in the city seems to grow each time they come to town. Based on how crowded the dance floor in front of the stage at Headliners became with each song S.C.O.T.S. played, it seemed that people in the crowd had duplicated themselves less than a half an hour after the show began. An hour into the craziness, there were fewer people hanging around the bar and up in the balcony. The dance floor was a thick murk of bobbing heads, bodies twisting to the twang and arms hoisting bottles of beer into the air.

For those who aren't acquainted with the whole S.C.O.T.S. experience, the trailer-park personas, the songs that celebrate southern kitchiness and a style of music that has been described as "southeastern-coast surf rock" to "electric twangabillly," the band is a trio consisting of guitarist Rick Miller, who has a blowtorch fingerpicking style, bassist Mary Huff (who wore an ice-white bouffant wig, one of several thousand in her collection) and drummer David Hartman.

From the opening instrumental, "Skullbucket" from Dirt Track Date, to their final encore selection, S.C.O.T.S. took us on a wild musical tour of the seedier side of southern culture: moonshiners, backwoods porno producers, cheap hour-rate motels with sour towels, dirt track racing, double-wide mobile homes and, of course, fried chicken as a metaphor for sex, all with a sound that was amped-up crazy. And they didn't skimp on the twang and reverb.

Opening the show was The Ladybirds, a newish band in Louisville, fronted by a pretty lead singer and three guys with hairstyles straight out of the Senior Class of 1973, featuring their distinctive, heavy take on rock music styles already half-century old . Despite some technical problems toward the end of the set, they finished with warm appreciation from the audience at Headliners getting ready for S.C.O.T.S..