WHISKEY SHIVERS: Whiskey Shivers
Whiskey Shivers
Whiskey Shivers
CBM 001
Long ago, bluegrass was dubbed folk music in overdrive. Decades later, punk’s faster-and-louder ethos experienced a faster/who-needs-louder breakaway as a new generation pogoed to fiddle breakdowns and discovered a standup bass’s punk potential.
The barefoot boys of Austin-based Whiskey Shivers call their acoustic music trashgrass rather than risk offending purists by saying it’s bluegrass. I see it as thrashgrass, though it has quiet moments too, as the quintet keeps their sound shifting mercurially on songs spurting mainly from their own pens.
Grounded by washboardist Joe Deuce’s bottom-of-the-well bass vocals, “Graves” sounds like a prison work song on a 1940s field recording. Its refrain “Who’s gonna dig these graves?” became a macabre audience sing-along the night I discovered the band playing the Middle East in Cambridge, Mass., opening the evening for the hellbilly (yes, hellbilly with an “e”) Legendary Shack Shakers. With lines like “I’ve got nightmares that make me laugh” on “Been Looking for,” it’s clear why the Shack Shakers took them on tour. As with O Death, there’s no dress code here (at least above the ankle). Their attire that night ranged from necktie to pure punk.
Happy/sad is a recurring motif. We can dance at the gates of Hell in “Pray for Me” before a segue of cheery whistling that opens “Angel in the Snow.” When skilled fiddler/lead singer Bob Fitzgerald laments “all the good that I’ve done wrong” and begs, “Would you pray for me? I’ve got sins no one can see … They’ve got wings and follow me,” we’re hearing country music’s lost-soul tradition handed down by the Louvin Brothers and Gram Parsons. The 1960s-’70s influences of the bluegrass/rock Dillards and Cajun fiddler Doug Kershaw are also evident.
Two dissimilar videos on their web site reflect their shows well. From their 2011 CD Batholith, the full-color “Gimme All Your Lovin” video is comically lascivious. From 2012’s CD Rampa Head, the noir “Jealous Heart” video – appropriately shot in black and white – may make you laugh nightmarishly.
So how might the founding fathers of bluegrass in their respectable jackets and ties feel about these sweaty dudes? Well, stern Bill Monroe was one of the few Nashville stars to encourage young Elvis Presley in the ‘50s. In 1995, he surprised Steve Earle by joining him on stage. As for Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, both absorbed rock into their playing after their split. Up in Hillbilly Heaven, bluegrass’s bygone heroes just might be giving Whiskey Shivers a thumbs-up.
— Bruce Sylvester