Turning up the Heat
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By MATT ELLIOTT World Scene Writer
Rev. Horton Heat's frontman rejects that 'snobabilly' attitutde
Jim Heath, the Reverend Horton Heat's fire-breathing guitar slinger/front man, might just hang it up after more than 20 years if people don't stop throwing stuff at him during his gigs.
I mean, come on. You're up there on stage. You're flailing the psychobilly out of your guitar and some drunk idiot hits you with a glass bottle. It's not cool. Whatever happened to the days when people simply drank their beers?
"People throw stuff in general," said the gritty-voiced Texan, who has been nailed with everything from shot glasses to beer bottles. "Sometimes it hits me. Sometimes it hits our fans. People throwing beer and stuff, it's just stupid and infantile and ridiculous. But I don't know. I've put up with it for 20 years. I guess I could put with it for another 20 years."
Heath's band plays the Cain's Ballroom Friday on the heels of a few years of touring, a Christmas album and taking care of his family. He's got a 23-year-old daughter just out of college and a second child on the way, he said.
When his older daughter came along, Heath didn't do what most musicians would've done. He started his trio in
Most musicians would've quit once they had kids.
At the time, "I was working full time and doing the band and then the Reverend Horton Heat thing started," said Heath.
The band made more money than his fulltime job, typing up checks for a place called Manpower Temporary Services, so he quit and took to music 100 percent.
The band has released at least nine albums on five different labels (from Sub Pop to Interscope) since 1991. Those discs are filled with songs about cars, fights, women and booze performed with a martini-fueled, guitar-driven style rockabilly. The band's last album was a Christmas CD called "We Three Kings," released in 2005
He's been asked just about every possible question about his music. Ask him about his 1932 Ford Coupe, though, and Heath lights up.
He's been restoring the coupe, painted a gray-purple, for 10 years and will get it upholstered soon. It's got a small-block Chevrolet engine in it, instead of the Flathead Ford V8, which most purists would demand.
But Heath does what he can afford, saying "I'm not a snob. I'm not snobabilly.
"My thing lately is to just you know . . . be the cool contrarian. Like you know, think of something that's not cool to collect, like stamps. Stamps don't take up any room at all. You can have a million dollar-stamp collection and fit it in a desk drawer."
His '32 Ford will be his final car, an expense that otherwise would be hard for him to justify with another child coming into his life.
He doesn't sound like he'll hang up the music any time soon.
"I just love to do it, you know. I love to play music and it's still cool to be able to get out there and play some cool licks."
Matt Elliott 581-8366
matt.elliott@tulsaworld.com
REVEREND HORTON HEAT
When:
7 p.m. Friday, with openers Murder by Death and the Tossers
Where:
Cain's Ballroom, 423 N. Main St.
Tickets:
$17 in advance, $19 day of show, available at Starship Records & Tapes, Reasor's, www.Gettix.net, Cain's box office, 584-2306
By MATT ELLIOTT World Scene Writer
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