hopped-up alt-country-blues
THE REVEREND PEYTON'S BIG DAMN BAND
Fast Heart Mart opens the show

Sunday, January 31, 2010 at 7:30
Santa Fe Brewing Company, 37 Fire Place
$13 advance, $16 door. General Admission. Free for SW Roots Music members.
Tickets at Lensic Box Office 505-988-1234 or Santa Fe Brewing Co.

The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band—embraced equally by traditional country-blues, indie rock, and punk audiences—play an infectious, updated version of the sound created by country blues legends Son House and Furry Lewis. "We end up playing with a lot of punk rock bands and any kind of roots acts from bluegrass to alt-country to rockabilly to you name it. We'll play with anyone, really," says frontman Revered Peyton in his deep Hoosier drawl.

Formed just three years ago in rural Indiana and comprised of fingerstyle guitarist Reverend Peyton, his wife and washboard player Breezy Peyton, and drummer-brother Jayme Peyton, the band's first record, 2006's raucous Big Damn Nation, impressed Irish rock act Flogging Molly so much that the popular band invited them out on the road. "They said that they do to Celtic roots music the same thing that we do to old country blues: Write songs about things that are happening now and people we know," whether it's a number about being too poor to afford health insurance of just missing Mama Peyton's fried potatoes. The band's live shows--with Breezy wearing clean through stainless steel washboards, the Reverend furiously picking his strings, Jayme firing up the tempos with his kick and snare drum--are a decidedly raucous experience.

"We come from the same tradition as Charley Patton and Furry Lewis," says the Reverend. "Patton was playing with his teeth and behind his head in 1930; now people say that's punk rock, but they've been doing that for a hundred years.... Country blues was the first punk rock, if you ask me."

The band's brand-new record, The Whole Fam Damnily, features the kind rowdy, rancorous numbers for which the band is best known. But also melodic, slide-driven barnburners ("Walmart Killed The Country Store") and heartfelt fingerstyle ballads.