Standing Over By The Record Machine: Ex-Neckbones Tyler Keith & The Apostles make perfect beer bottle-smashing soundtracks
Plus a remembrance of Weirdos guitar hero Dix Denney.
The Tyler Keith statue up in the Oxford, Mississippi town square. (Pic courtesy Tyler Keith)
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Meantime, have I got a rekkid for you….
TYLER KEITH & THE APOSTLES - Hell To Pay [Black And Wyatt Records] LP
Tyler Keith was the shining light of The Neckbones, the Oxford, Mississippi raunch-punks who were the first rock ‘n’ roll band signed to blues primitivist label Fat Possum Records, back when they were the ‘90s home of such supreme beings as R.L. Burnside and T-Model Ford. Loose, dirty, and straight out of the world’s greasiest garage, their three albums resembled overly-distorted, lo-fi, moonshine-fueled jam sessions between The Replacements and The Heartbreakers, with Bob Stinson busting every guitar in the room and knocking over the drum set at the end. At the heart of this primal sneer-rock was literate-yet-snotty, heart-on-sleeve songwriting that suggested Paul Westerberg and Gram Parsons collaborating on a brace of tunes for the third New York Dolls album. And it all hotwired live sets that resembled a punk rock A.A. meeting gone deeply off the rails, powered by lyrics along the lines of: “Don't give her no money/Before you fuck/She'll leave you stiff/And you'll be shit out of luck/I know why she do what she do/It's the crack whore blues.”
As Lisa Howorth of the Oxford American put it in a love letter to the band published 11 years after their unfortunate end, “I can only compare it to hearing ‘(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction’ for the first time at about fourteen and feeling like I had jumper cables clamped onto my nipples. Not erotic exactly, but so electrically clarifying: Oh, duh, to hear and dance to this is why we were put on this Earth! In short, rock ‘n’ roll.”
Fortunately for those of us who prefer our rock ‘n’ roll performed to such specs, Keith continues to lead bands who resemble The Neckbones’ cousins, even dropping the occasional record in our laps. The latest, credited to Tyler Keith & The Apostles (apropos, for someone supposedly sprung from the loins of a Floridian lay preacher), is called Hell To Pay, filled with just-sloppy-enough paeans to sin and redemption, freshly dropped by Memphis’ Black And Wyatt Records. And it’s a doozy.
Keith’s got riffs, the kinda meaty chord progressions Keith Richards or Johnny Thunders would’ve given their left nuts to’ve written. They are so steeped in backcountry blues, you can smell the fatback dripping off them. But he marries them to lyrics of such sensitivity, you wish a lyric sheet were provided so you could bask in them. I mean, who this side of Westerberg writes a Dollsy love song like “Ghost Writer”? “I tried to write my book/All by myself/ I could not find my hook/I need somebody’s help/I need a ghost writer/ I need you.” Then he staples them to hooks straight out of “Lonely Planet Boy,” but played with all the devastating raunch and thrust of “Vietnamese Baby.”
There’s some sort of untutored genius laying at the heart of Tyler Keith’s music, and it’s only been honed over time. Hell To Pay will cure all that ails you. Just don’t be surprised if you find your lip curling and more swagger entering your walk as you listen, and you find yourself with the insatiable urge to hurl a beer bottle against the nearest wall.
Dix Denney of The Weirdos (May 14, 1957 - March 10, 2023)
“Anyone who's ever sat thru an intro level philosophy class is likely well aware of the concept of the ‘Platonic Ideal’ -- that somewhere, out in the grand cosmic ether, there exists the idea of what an ideal spoon (for example) is like, and here on the mortal plane, all our real life spoons are just flawed approximations of the one, perfect, true spoon which exists only as a concept. I think one could make a reasonable case that, if punk rock had a Platonic Ideal (which it probably doesn't, but still), it would probably look and sound a lot like that early WEIRDOS stuff.” — Rev. Norb, Facebook, March 14, 2023
Back in 2011, as Keith Morris enjoyed some pre-gig sushi the night OFF! made their Denver debut, our years-long ongoing conversation about everything under the sun took in L.A. punk pioneers The Weirdos. Brother Keith slammed the table and looked me straight in the eye with no small amount of indignation when I mentioned they could have been “the American Sex Pistols.”
“They were better than the Sex Pistols,” he insisted.
The Weirdos, ca. 1977: Dix Denney standing to singer John Denney’s right.
He may have been right. Your first audit of “We Got The Neutron Bomb,” the 500 megaton Dangerhouse 45 that served as The Weirdos’ 2nd release, could leave you dazed and confused, rubber-legged and staggering, convinced you’d just heard the greatest punk rock song ever written/recorded. It was “Blitzkrieg Bop,” "Anarchy In The UK," and "Search And Destroy" rolled into one solitary, standalone ball of fun.
Dix Denney, the band’s guitarist, younger brother to their singer John Denney, and a huge hulking factor in “Neutron Bomb’s” sonic explosiveness, passed away March 10th. He was 66 years old.
“He passed away peacefully in his sleep last Friday night, only 4 months after the passing of Annick, his beautiful wife of 44 years.” John posted at Facebook three days later. “We’re convinced that he died of a broken heart.”
“They were mind blowing; loud, tight, and extremely powerful,” U-Men/Gas Huffer guitarist Tom Price wrote of seeing The Weirdos when he was “14 or 15” at a 1978 Seattle gig. “
“They were the strangest looking people I'd ever seen - not exactly 'punk', but very ragged and colorful. They had backdrops and hand-painted sheets hanging over their amps, a whole 'look'. Their performance was a high-energy blast unlike anything I'd ever seen in my life. It was wild, but also carefully controlled, delivering maximum power. John Denney, the singer, was super intense - they ALL were! This was one of those shows that entirely altered my understanding of the purpose of music, as well as the fundamental nature of my relationship to the universe.
“The day after the show I cut my hair and wore my straight-legs in public... and got rocks thrown at me at the bus stop.”
Of the guitarist’s contribution, Price wrote, “Dix Denney's sound and guitar attack really impressed me. He didn't really do solos in the classic sense, he ripped out intense polyphonic leads on the middle strings, something that was a huge influence on me. He could also just blast out power chords til the cows came home - a masterful skill.”
Those skills served Denney well during the many gaps in The Weirdos’ long history, as he and brother squabbled in the grand tradition of such rock ‘n’ roll siblings as Don and Phil Everly, Ray and Dave Davies, and Liam and Noel Gallagher. During those intermissions, Dix blasted those power chords and intense polyphonic leads for such orchestras as Lydia Lunch’s 13.13 and Thelonius Monster.
“Like his mother and father before him, he was an artist to his core,” John said of his younger brother. “Besides being a gifted guitar player, Dix was a painter and a luthier as well.” Indeed, the one time I was in the presence of The Weirdos, in Las Vegas in 2005, I asked Dix what he’d been up to.
“I’ve been building ukuleles!” he announced with broadly smiling pride. He reached in the band’s tour van and pulled out a sample of his work, strumming a few chords before handing it over to me, a ukulele non-virtuoso. After stumbling through the changes to “We Got The Neutron Bomb,” making the Denney brothers laugh, I handed it back.
“I want to order one,” I grinned, “just so I can say I own a ukulele built by Dix Denney.” I wish I had followed through on that notion.
“He was a truly gentle soul and a man of few words who channeled his rage through his guitar,” concluded John Denney. “He will always be my little brother, and my guitar hero too.”
Dix Denney’s a guitar hero for many of us, John. We share in your grief. R.I.P.
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