Hide your children, Satan’s right hand man, Col. Wilkes of Th' Legendary Shack Shakers, fronts a band known for playing sadistic carnival music for Southern Goth lovin’ folks. Lately, the band’s been terrorizing fans while opening for Robert Plant at this year’s SXSW and last weekend’s Bonaroo. Following the same derangements heard on 2003's Cockadoodledon’t, the band’s first full length Believe makes great music for a psychobilly hoedown.
The drunken boogie of “Piss and Vinegar” finds a foolish Wilkes boasting, I’m a jumpin’ Jim Dandy doin’ a hillbilly bugaloo. “The Pony to Bet On” is saloon music for Norman Bates bastards, with lyrics The points kept on spreadin’/Til you called off the wedding/And left me with one tired old gray mare. The lyricist rhymes his riddles over a CB on “Bible Cyst,” and “Cussin’ In Tongues” sounds like the King of the Hill theme with Wilkes playing a toy piano and a See and Say. If it works, might as well use it. On Believe, everything just happens to work incredibly well.
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