The Dilemma of REVEREND HORTON HEAT

The Reverend Horton Heat — a.k.a. Jim Heath — plays raunchy, sweaty, uptempo rockabilly with a punk edge, which is why it's sometimes called punkabilly. Keeping firmly in the rockabilly tradition, he sings a lot about girls and cars and partying. And on certain nights, when the sound is right and the crowd, usually made up of fiercely loyal fans, is feeding off the band and vice versa, his is arguably the greatest rockabilly outfit in the world.

It's been said that the Reverend's more somber subjects (like "Someone in Heaven," a slow song about his mother's death that breaks up the near-continuous punkabilly barrage of Revival, his new CD on Yep Roc Records) just don't hold up as well as the basic rockabilly values of sex and vintage cars. My own take is that lyrics are way down on the list of things that make Reverend Horton Heat compelling. Take "Indigo Friends," for instance, a damage-and-death song about heroin that is also on the new record. It boasts some of the Reverend's most searing guitar lines. The subject matter is heady, but it works because the music is fast and hard and raw — a lot like the Reverend himself. My guess is that, especially in a live setting, most folks won't even hear the lyrics.

The core power of rockabilly-best described as a sort of mid-1950s white hillbilly meets black R&B hybrid-emanates more from cranked amplifiers, a sweat-drenched crowd and a certain vocal swagger than any kind of lyrical quality. At its best, the music approximates the magic that Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore and Bill Black conjured up five decades ago.

"I was drawn to the real rock and roll of the fifties because my cousins exposed me to rockabilly, and I hung around record collectors and got turned on to Sun Records," where Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis first recorded, said Heath by phone from his home in Dallas. His voice has that scratchy, slightly damaged quality so common to vocalists who sing nearly every night. "At the time punk rock was somewhat new, and the whole punk alternative thing lent itself to the rockabilly thing. Rockabilly was this wild rockin' music that was also a little scary. A lot of it was just that energy — cut-time beats, swing beats, the cross between rhythm and blues, crossing up country with blues. It's the real melting pot of music. It never really had its day in the sun. About the time it started, it was over.

"Then came the sixties and all of the sudden Bob Dylan was rock and roll. The Mamas & the Papas was rock and roll. That's not rock and roll-it's folk." At this point in the conversation, Heath is starting to get worked up. "Rock and roll had that manic energy that was scary and on the edge of destruction. It scared the record labels. They thought it was race music. But the big corporations found Elvis and immediately watered it down, and then the Beatles came in and that was really the last nail in the rockabilly coffin."

Heath, 45, started out playing in the early eighties in his hometown of Dallas-in rock bands, R&B bands and, of course, bands that played the fifties-era music that he's always loved. One day nearly 20 years ago he was playing his own material under his real name in a little club in Dallas' Deep Ellum district. The man who hired him mistakenly kept calling him Horton, instead of Heath, and told him that his stage name should be Reverend Horton Heat because his music is like gospel. (Not gospel music but GOSPEL, as in THE WORD.) Needless to say, the name stuck.

By the late eighties the Reverend, who had hired a drummer and stand-up bass player (a trio format to which he's always remained true) was signed to Seattle's Sub Pop Records, home of Nirvana, Soundgarden and lesser-known grunge bands before the term had ever been coined. As punk as those other bands in its own way, Reverend Horton Heat began to develop a cult following, based in large part on Heath's rich, bellicose guitar playing. By the mid nineties Interscope Records, a major label, had picked up the band and released Liquor in the Front (produced by Ministry's Al Jourgensen), an aggressive, dark record in keeping with the times that is easily one of the Reverend's best efforts.

Ten years and a few records later, the band — Heath on a very mean guitar and vocals, Jimbo Wallace on upright bass and Scott Churilla on drums — finds itself on Yep Roc, an independent label known for its edgy roster. The label released Revival in June 2004. Recorded at Last Beat Studio in Deep Ellum next door to where the band rehearses, only a block from where Heath played his first gig, and within walking distance of the tech who repairs his vintage guitars, the album represents a return to his roots-both literally and figuratively.

"I'll probably never do another album outside of Dallas, away from my family," said Heath, who has two young daughters. He dubbed the record Revival because "it's kind of what I feel I need right now, my life is so hectic and so crazy. I was overworked and struggling to keep my head above water. I could have called the record Vacation, 'cause that's really what I need, but the Go-Go's already had that name....

"We play a lot of gigs, it keeps you on top of your game," said Heath, with a touch of weariness. His band clocks in at more than 150 shows a year, and he's clearly torn between family life and the music that takes him away from his wife and children. "The best musicians in the world are the guys who play the Tiki Room in Tulsa every night. Everybody has put so much emphasis on the recording thing. Bands put the cart before the horse. No matter how good your record deal is, you've still gotta go out and play."

In fact, Heath doesn't seem particularly impressed with the recording process in general, not even when it comes to his own records. He's more apt to talk about a good or a bad song — and to Heath records are merely collections of songs than a whole record. He dismisses musicians who are overly involved in the studio as "advertising executives." "It's not about getting a record deal and recording and all that shit. It's about a vibe you get when you're playing."

Of the band's 20-year success, he said: "A lot of it is just that I'm lucky. A lot of it's hard work. We toured so much before we ever had an album out, and we've kept that up. People everywhere consider us kind of a hometown band because we tour so much. We keep going back. If you love to play music that's what you do.

"This band thing is just a little bittersweet because we spend so much time on the road. It's an odd way to live. Every family is pretty weird and one of my family's oddball traits is that daddy gets on the bus and leaves a month and is back for a month. It's a bit of a balancing act.

"But I'm not complaining. I'm getting to live the dream and be in a band."