Reverend Horton Heat fired up after 24 years 

For nearly 25 years, Reverend Horton Heat has been bringing its brand of punked up rockabilly to the masses around the world. With bits of humor tossed into the mix from time to time, singer Jim Heath felt it was time to focus on that side of the group and explore more of the country side of rockabilly. The band's latest release, Laughin' & Cryin' with the Reverend Horton Heat, is the result. We recently caught up with Heath by phone while he was spending a rainy day off in Omaha, Neb., to ask about the new album and the band's upcoming tour with Motorhead.

Creative Loafing: I know that Lemmy joined you on stage last year, but what's the history there -- have you ever toured with Motorhead or done any recording with them?

Jim Heath: With Motorhead, not at all. We did a recording that is yet-to-be-released. He wrote a couple of songs that were recorded backing him up. That led to the deal where he came out on stage with us. In the middle part of our set, the crew guys brought his amp out and set it up and played six or eight songs with us.

Any chance of you joining them or him joining you on the tour?

I don't know about that. We'll have to see how things go.

How did this tour come about?

I really think a lot had to do with Lemmy wanting us to be on tour with him. He wanted us and another of his favorite bands is Nashville Pussy and it's us and them. I imagine it had a lot to do with him. You know, the powers that be... who knows what all went on behind the scenes. I just heard it was going to happen and we're glad to be doing it. What's good for us to is -- once a year, we used to do some kind of a trip with a band that's way bigger than us and we'd go out and open up. That's always been something that's been good for us and fun to do and we haven't done that for a long time.

It's definitely an interesting pairing.

Yeah, considering where we're at right now -- we're releasing a country album and going on a heavy metal tour. I'm not exactly sure about that. One of the keys to my career is that I've always done stuff that -- the best stuff was the stuff that was different and odd and not the planned-out obvious stuff. I think it will somehow work. We have a pretty big following across the country in a lot of these markets so a lot of our fans are going to be there and want to hear some of the new songs. It'll be different, but, you know...hey.

As far as the new album, it's your first album in five years with Reverend Horton Heat -- you had the Rev. Organdrum album in there. Was that part of the reason for the delay?

Not necessarily ... Not musical things, but general life things that forestalled the album. I've been -- throughout most of my career -- diligent about getting a new album out every two years, every two years. We did that for so long that it almost kind of made our fans mad. When you come out with a new album, the sad thing is that it makes a lot of your old fans mad because, 'Hey these songs aren't like the other ones!' Well, they're not those songs. They have a preconceived notion of what it's going to be, but it's never that way because it's new material. They're not used to the new album, but then it grows on them and then by the time they start to really like it, you hit 'em with another new album. [laughs] And then they're mad again. I figured it was kinda cool to just wait longer anyway, but it was coupled in with a bunch of life issues -- my mother passed away and I had a lot to deal with with that and being there with my family. Another thing to that's bumming me out [laughs] -- Reverend Horton Heat is a fairly successful entity now and that means endless dealings with bookkeeping, taxes, lawyers ... stuff. Stuff that I never imagined. [laughs] That's why I play guitar and didn't finish business school. I'm not going to complain too much about any of that, but I have to make sure that the business side of Reverend Horton Heat is in order.

Why kind of outlet was the Organdrum stuff for you? Was it just to take a break from Horton Heat?

Yeah. At the end of every album cycle, I always look for something else to do that's going to make me a better musician/singer/songwriter. At the end of a particular album, I might have gone out and gotten a book about Nashville guitar style or maybe I wanted to read about music theory. We finished the album Revival around 1994 and I was sitting with the keyboard player, Tim Alexander, and going, 'I want to do some music theory stuff because I'm getting into the Hammond organ sound so I'd like to learn how to incorporate that.' He said, 'You know, I was always wanting to do an organ trio. If you and me got some songs together and found a drummer in the neighborhood, we could do some full-on gigs.' It's been a fun deal. When I get to do those gigs, I get to basically be a sideman. In Reverend Horton Heat, I'm the be-all, end-all -- not to take anything away from Jimbo or slight what the other guys do -- they are very, very, very crucial -- I'm not having to sing lead and be the front man the whole time. I'm able to show up and play little club gigs and it's fun.

Getting back to Laughin' & Cryin' -- what was your approach for this album? Did you set out to showcase the humor and country side or was it just how it turned out?

I wanted to do a classic country-sounding album. It didn't all end up sounding exactly like that. I wanted it to have humorous lyrics and I'm not sure it necessarily does that. Reverend Horton Heat was always out-of-the-blue with upright bass and rockabilly sound. When we started, hardly anybody had seen that style of music being performed. I didn't want us to be seen as a novelty act, so I started to write serious songs. Even though some of those songs are pretty good, it's really the funny songs that are the most entertaining. I kind of decided to focus more -- not every one on this album is, but most of them have some sort of funny or humorous twist to them.

I hesitated at the first few bars of "Aw, the Humanity," because I'm more of a fan of your upbeat stuff, but I was literally laughing out loud at the lyrics to that song.

A love song based on the crash of the Hindenburg. I'm pretty proud of that one. [laughs]

The whole album showcases your sense of humor -- is that something that comes easy for you lyrically?

Oh yeah. To me, it's easier to write a funny song because serious songs tend to be so heavy. Once you get into that area, they tend to get pretentious pretty quickly too.

They don't have to be as personal, either.

Yeah, pretty much. I guess so.

I read a mention of an alter ego named Harley Hogg that you created for this album ... ?

I was going to try and have an alter ego named "Harley Hogg the laughin' and cryin' singer." [laughs] When we were rehearsing for that, it sounded like I was singing while crying for the first half of a verse and then singing while laughing for the second half [laughs] ... it was so ridiculous that we couldn't get through a whole song, but there's a little bit of that in there. If I ever do it, it'll be super-exaggerated.

Was there hesitation of putting this album under the Horton monicker -- obviously your stamp is on it, but there's a slight departure...

I pretty much knew that wasn't going to be the case. I've wanted Reverend Horton Heat to do a classic-sounding country album for a really long time. I'm not sure we did that on this album, but a lot of the songs are working really well for us live and that's my main thing.

You can tell it's different, but it's still got the rockabilly root and your stamp is on it through the vocals and guitar work. It's not a big departure.

The funny thing is -- Reverend Horton Heat started the concept of the band was to be like an authentic '50s rockabilly band with songs that I had written instead of doing covers. In a way it goes back to that, because there are three songs that I wrote during that time on the album -- 1985, '86, '88. Those songs fit in really well with the new songs for this album.

Which songs are you referring to?

"Drinkin' and Smokin' Cigarettes" -- I think I wrote that in 1988 or 1989. "River Ran Dry" -- I think I wrote that in 1985. "Crazy Ex-Boyfriend" -- I think I wrote that in '86. I've got a lot of songs and as albums get put together someone may not think a particular song fits in... I've got a lot of songs. Well, it's three songs out of 12. Three-fourths of the songs are new.

How do you come up with a setlist when you have so much material to draw from?

Well, I think that's one reason why we play such a long set. We know we have to play the songs that people have on their albums from the old Reverend Horton Heat stuff. We want to do something new, but it's hard to kick the others to the curb, so we end up playing an hour-45 or a two-hour set. [laughs] People want to hear those older songs, so I do feel somewhat obliged to play those. It seems like we're always making that harder on ourselves. We've been trying to figure out to fit the newer songs into our set -- we found a way to fit in about six of them, but then last week we worked up four really obscure Reverend Horton Heat songs that we haven't played in over a decade. .. [laughs] now we have to figure out how to fit in those.

What will you do with a shorter set opening up for Motorhead?

Yeah, I haven't really ... That's gonna be hard. I don't know what we're gonna exactly do on that. I would imagine that because it's a harder crowd -- even though we're going to play some stuff off the new album -- we're going to focus on a lot of our psycho-type songs when we're not doing the new stuff. We still have to play the old stuff... [laughs] I don't know what we're going to do.

You'll figure it out. All those years of experience will serve you well, I'm sure.

We played for years and years without a setlist. We'd call the songs as we went and that's a good way to do it. As long as the band pays attention and doesn't get lost between songs, it works really good because different crowds are different. If you go in and have a setlist for a Motorhead crowd and the one night you have your own show and grandmas are there with oxygen tanks, you have to switch gears quick.

It sounds like you'd be able to pull some audibles if you needed to also ...

Yeah. You never know what's going to happen.

Do you know what you're going to do next, after this tour?

I am going to start playing some gigs with Rev. Organdrum again. Those are usually just Dallas gigs and we can't even play on the weekend. The good thing about that is we've got a great, great saxophone guy who knows all of our songs inside and out and knows that whole era. We may do a new Rev. Organdrum album with saxophone -- it's that sleazy, '50s-style saxophone. His name is Johnny Reno -- he played with Stevie Ray and plays with Chris Isaak. I think the next Reverend Horton Heat album is going to go back and get a little more slammin' and a little psycho again. Of course, if this hits the country charts and we make a gazillion dollars and there's a bunch of tobacco chewing good old boys wanting to hear country... who knows. [laughs] I'm out there having fun and playing music. Good God, I can't see us having to go play Billy Bob's. [laughs] It may be fun for some gigs, but we like our screaming crazy rock 'n' roll fans.

Rev. Horton Heat will open for Motorhead, along with Nashville Pussy, at 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 11 at the Fillmore Charlotte. Tickets range from $21.75 to $33.