The amphitheatre lights faded to black, and there was a stillness in the night; the canned music stopped playing; a murmur sounding like the drone of traffic on the Interstate emanated from the crowd as people shuffled as best they could in tight confines, inching nearer to the stage. The assembled were watching, listening and waiting as the lights gradually illuminated the scene and clouds of smoke billowed from inside the impressive backdrop, which depicted a frontier town with its buildings bookending a church. Four musicians emerged from the smoke and stood in a line behind microphones, one of which was positioned alongside a single bass drum.
It resembled the pivotal scene from an old Western movie, “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral,“ when Marshal Wyatt Earp and his two deputised brothers, Morgan and Virgil, along with a reluctant Doc Holliday, faced the outlaw Clanton Brothers gang. This was Greenfield Lake in Wilmington, North Carolina however, not Main Street in Tombstone, Arizona. And the four men on stage had instruments strapped onto their sides instead of six-shooters.
The quartet on stage were Nate Hilts (guitar, lead vocals), Scott Pringle on mandolin, cellist Danny Kenyon and Colton Crawford (banjo). Collectively they are known as The Dead South. All wore attire suitable for the period – white shirts, black slacks and suspenders, and either hats or derby. Hilts wore a black jacket, not a waistcoat as Wyatt Earp did. With such elaborate stage props, the band was setting the bar high, and it can happily be reported that The Dead South were indeed very good throughout the ebb and flow of the evening’s performance.
As the gaudy red lights came up, the band eased into ‘Snake Man,’ the single from the “Sugar & Joy” album, stepping up the pace considerably as part 1 bled into part 2 of this tale about being asked to trust a character with such a moniker: “Just take my hand / no bullshit attached / Because I’ve got a secret plan / I’m the snake man.” ’20-Mile Jump’ followed with Hilts’ rough-hewn vocals aided by Crawford demonstrating why the kick drum was there.
After each song, the lights were cut, and more smoke poured out before the first notes of the next tune were struck. ‘Son of Ambrose’ had an irresistible banjo rhythm to its bluegrass roots. The song is about a young man going off to World War II then coming home to start a family with the resultant misery that befalls many Dead South characters. After enough of these dystopian narratives, you might imagine being stuck in the midst of Lemony Snicket’s ‘Series of Unfortunate Events’. ‘Yours to Keep’ is a sparse number featuring Hilts’ guitar and raspy vocal, singing about a secret that is very hard to keep with the title of the new album stashed in the lyrics. “Bright away the chains and stakes / and fall down for the night.”
The Dead South’s music is often termed bluegrass due to its upbeat, quick rhythms, but the band is much more than the average bluegrass outfit. The four listened to a lot of punk and heavy metal growing up, and those genres, along with some folk and country seasoning, have kneaded their way into the heady mixture that is the band’s sound. You might term it “gothic grass.” That sound is distinguished by substituting a cello for the upright bass you would expect to see, however, in Kenyon’s hands, the cello is not a stationary instrument as he straps it on his shoulder, strumming or picking the strings while constantly moving around the stage as if he were an Atari game piece. His bowed solo was crystal clear with just the right amount of tension on ‘Father John,’ a murder ballad about a vigilante slaying a gang of criminals,
Hilts and Pringle harmonised on the macabre ‘Tiny Wooden Box,’ before the band came in full force on ‘Time for Crawling’ and their signature tune, ‘In Hell I’ll Be in Good Company.’ The crowd roared its approval as Hilts sang the gory details: “It didn’t hurt, flirt, blood squirt, stuffed shirt / Hang me on a tree / After I count down, three rounds, / in hell I’ll be in good company.” An adept ear for narrative storytelling is what separates this band from Regina, Saskatchewan apart from similar groups. Even the deceptively simple ‘Honey You’ has a couple telling a story of environmental collapse as they look for a new home: “Before the sun dries us up and turns us to sand / Do you remember when the ocean went mad / And we were to blame? / We ran to another world with lives to save.”
The instrumental ‘Clemency’ began the encore run as guitar, cello, banjo, and mandolin took their turn soloing into the fury of ‘Completely Sweetly’ from the new album. Kenyon’s cello added a layer of depth before segueing into ‘Broken Cowboy’ with Pringle’s mandolin creating an atmosphere thick with emotion while Crawford’s subtle banjo interjections added a counterpoint to the depressing tale of a man who watches it all crumble. “I married my wife / We had two kids / I gave her a daughter She gave me a son / And we rode those damn horses til we had none.”
No Dead South concert would be complete without the intense closer, ‘Banjo Odyssey.’ The playing was dynamic, strings bending and riffs exploding, allowing the song’s ribald theme of loving your cousin to echo through the night and transport the crowd to that mythical place where the roots of Americana music run deep.
Sunny War (aka Sydney Ward) opened the show, accompanied by her drummer, Alan Eckert, and an acoustic guitar (named Big Baby after her song) that she bought after replying to a Craigslist ad. “I went to the guy’s house,” she related, “and was told the guitar was in the basement. And for whatever reason, I had to go down there with him to get it. It cost 50 bucks, and it’s not even worth that.” Nevertheless, it served her purpose as she used only thumb and forefinger to pick out slithering, single-note country blues riffs to go along with her songs of a hard-knock life sung in a raspy, arresting voice. Her deadpan delivery belied lyrics written by a young woman who has been homeless, busked on city streets, left home feeling she was a burden to her distraught mother, had her life messed up by drugs, and yet still found a way to pull herself up and carve out a career in music.
“Armageddon In A Summer Dress” is her new album, and several songs from it were in her set, particularly ‘No One Calls Me Baby’ and the eerie ‘Ghosts,’ which she wrote after hallucinating from gas fumes in the old house where she was staying. “They′ll be down in the ground when you need them the most / And now, somehow, you believe in ghosts.” With the power and conviction that she sings the song, you wonder if those ghosts are still haunting her.
