Hayseed Dixie + Rockstar
Edinburgh Studio 24, 21st November 2004
What would have happened if AC/DC had written the score for Deliverance? Duelling banjos on the highway to hell? Squeal like a pig, boy… with delight, that is. It's Hayseed Dixie.
But first up, openers Rockstar. Swinging erratically between foot on monitor metal mayhem and college radio rock, they don’t seem to have yet decided whether they want to be Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Rage Against the Machine or, er, Endorphin. Still, they're proficient enough and fill in the time nicely 'til the headliners are ready to hit the stage.
So here's the deal: Hayseed Dixie are a bluegrass band who play heavy metal covers. Complete with banjo, mandolin and fiddle, they take classic metal tracks by the likes of AC/DC, Aerosmith, KISS and even the Darkness and transform them into the kind of music Roscoe P Coltrane would listen to whilst chasing Bo and Luke Duke through Hazzard County. Clad in Waltons style dungarees, they hit the stage with all the class and crassness of the Macc Lads and they're damn funny, damn entertaining and damn fine musicians. Just watch that banjo go!
You may find it hard to imagine the likes of 'Ace of Spades', 'Highway to Hell', 'Walk This Way' and 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love' transmuted into rootin' tootin' Deep South redneck rock, but trust me, it works. And as for their charming tribute trio to the larger lady, consisting of Spïnal Tap's 'Big Bottom', Queen's 'Fat Bottomed Girls' and AC/DC's 'Whole Lotta Rosie' – what can I say? Except pile on the grits, I suppose…
Admittedly as the evening wears on, the joke does start to wear a little thin, especially when we get to their original material. Funny, filthy and flimsy as an episode of The Beverley Hillbillies, their self-penned songs show the same irreverent strain of humour as 'Big Bottom' – but without the finesse. Lines such as 'I'm keeping your poop in a jar/So I remember what you are' and 'I would if I could/Be you so I could f**k me' are amusing but hardly subtle…
Nevertheless, they're enormously endearing, a band that clearly love booze, music, Scotland and their fans (not necessarily in that order). As we file from the venue, they're waiting by the door to press flesh and kiss cheeks – hell, they're even playing Kirkwall, how dedicated is that?!
And as for Deliverance? 'We don't like that movie,' frontman Barley Scotch opines in his deadpan Southern drawl. 'It makes us look sloppy.' Musically, however, they're anything but. Ye-hah!
