If Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart built a country band, it would be much like Seattle’ own kings’ of “Raunchy Tonk,” the Shivering Denizens.
The quartet spent ten days in Nashville with Andy Gibson at his home studio and the result s their new album Sex, Drugs & Outlaw Country. The ten-song collection is a sonic delight as Gibson (who plays for Hank Willians III) added his superb steel playing to the mix and brought in veteran session players Billy Contreras on fiddle and Rory Hoffman on piano. The Denizens have built a ravenous following with their crackerjack delivery of jacked-up two-step and rockabilly beats to accompany their tales of debauchery and trashy beer-drinking sing-alongs.
Leader Ron E Banner is in rare form here as he kicks off the album with ”Barroom Brawler,” the story of a character we’ve all seen a time or two. The fiddle joins rapid fire banjo from Lee Harvey Hartwood for the spin-your-partner-round song of a brokenhearted cowboy, “Vixen Blues.”
The high lonesome pedal steel arrives on another tear-jerker two-step about romance and drug abuse, “Bubbles in a Spoon.” The tempo quickly shifts into high gear as Hank Leinonen demonstrates his wicked thumpin’ skills on the stand-up bass during “Crooked and Crazy.” Banner paints a self portrait of his life as a honky-tonk hero that is, no doubt, a fan favorite in the band’s live show, with its raise-one-up-and-shout-it-out chorus.
The blue movie soundtrack “Cell Block 69,” must have been inspired by the Netflix series Orange is the New Black. It is either a “song about women in prison,” or it may just be a misogynist’s wet dream. The lighthearted “Carnival Song” gives Gibson another chance to show off those pedal steel skills. Then we get a dose of old time religion during the bluegrass holler “We’re All Gonna Die.”
The barrel house piano perfectly sets up the scene for the rambling “Barefoot and Pregnant,’ a great dance song about a gal who “even though she’s pretty, she’s mean as hell and gritty”…just the way the Denizens like em’.
http://www.theshiveringdenizens.com/
