MUSIC

Blues Explosion detonates

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (from left) Judah Bauer, Jon Spencer and Russell Simins play the Rev Room in Little Rock on Thursday.
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (from left) Judah Bauer, Jon Spencer and Russell Simins play the Rev Room in Little Rock on Thursday.

— It’s hard to believe that Jon Spencer ever gets nervous about anything. This is the guy who starting melding art-damaged punk rock, blues, twisted rockabilly and warped soul into a wonderfully liberating, cacophonous mess back in the late ’80s; the guy who fronted abrasive and provocative bands like Pussy Galore and Boss Hog before blowing it all up with The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion; the guy who looks and sounds like Elvis’ illegitimate son on a Robitussin jag.

But it’s true.

Spencer is talking from his New York home, where he and Blues Explosion bandmates Russell Simins and Judah Bauer have taped a performance the night before on The Late Show With David Letterman.

“It seemed to go down OK. The people there were really nice, but I found it was a nerve-wracking experience,” Spencer admits.

Really?

“Oh, yeah. I still get nervous before shows,” he says, adding that he’d never performed on Letterman before, or on American TV much at all, for that matter.

There was no need to worry. The Blues Explosion’s performance of “Strange Baby,” from its latest album Meat and Bone, was a triumph, with Spencer in full-on rock ’n’ roll evangelist mode, hiccuping, preaching and screeching his way through the vocals, stabbing at his guitar and playing a theremin while drummer Simins and guitarist Bauer wailed away.

“That was tremendous,” Letterman exclaimed.

Spencer and the Blues Explosion will play the Rev Room on Thursday, with opening band The Jam Messengers, who record for Little Rock label Thick Syrup Records and feature Spencer’s old New York pal Rob Kennedy.

“The Jam Messengers put on a great show,” Spencer says.

It has been nine years since the last Blues Explosion album, 2004’s Damage, and Meat and Bone is a welcome reintroduction to a band that paved the way for groups like The Black Keys and The White Stripes.The album continues the Explosion’s funky and sometimes aggressive reworking of blues, country, soul and rock into something guttural, fuzzy and, at its best, trashily transcendent (the title cut is a perfect example, as is “Get Your Pants Off” and “Bottle Baby”).

Spencer, 47, attended Brown University in Rhode Island before moving to Washington and forming Pussy Galore in the mid-’80s. It was around this time that he became fascinated with the blues: “Between Pussy Galore and The Blues Explosion, I played with the Gibson Bros. Jeffrey Evans and Don Howland really taught me about blues and rockabilly and country and soul.”

The first Blues Explosion album, A Reverse Willie Horton, was a bootleg that appeared in 1991. When the band signed its first label deal with Caroline Records, it had a specific request.

“We put in our contract that we would get the Bear Family Records Jerry Lee Lewis boxed set,” Spencer says. Later, when the group signed to Matador, it asked for The Complete Stax/ Volt Singles: 1959-1968.

Among the band’s highlights are Extra Width, Orange and Now I Got Worry. The band also collaborated with north Mississippi blues legend R.L. Burnside on the album A Ass Pocket Full of Whiskey, and has recorded with Dan the Automator, Rufus Thomas, Dub Narcotic Sound System and others.

And that’s the Explosion in the theme song to Anthony Bourdain’s show No Reservations.

“We draw from a lot of influences. What is unique about the Blues Explosion is we play in the spirit of rock ’n’ roll, which is this kind of mongrel music. We are combining things that don’t fit into something with our own style.”

Opening for the Blues Explosion at the Rev Room, and headlining their own show tonight at Maxine’s in Hot Springs, is garage-punk-blues duo The Jam Messengers, perhaps the only band you’ll see this week with a drummer-guitarist from Sao Paulo, Brazil, and a singer from Hawaii who record for a label in Arkansas.

The Messengers are vocalist Rob (“Rob K”) Kennedy and Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Marco (“Uncle”) Butcher. Kennedy started playing music in the mid-’70s around Washington in a band called Da Chumps, who were forerunners of a sort to the District of Columbia punk scene.

“We got The Bad Brains their first gigs,” Kennedy says from his home in Volcano, Hawaii.

Kennedy would later become the bass-playing half of The Workdogs, a rhythm section to the offbeat stars (Velvet Monkeys, Half Japanese, Maureen Tucker, etc.), which also featured his pal Scott Jarvis on drums.

After years of playing music in New York, where he met Spencer, Kennedy and his wife, Caki, left the East Coast for Hawaii, where their artist/activist/politician friend Keiko Bonk lived.

It was while visiting and working with Bonk in Hawaii that Kennedy and his wife “fell in love with the place,” and decided to move there in 1999.

Realizing that there wasn’t much of a music scene in Volcano, a rural community on the Big Island, Kennedy reluctantly lapsed into semi-retirement from music.

“Then the Brazilian showed up,” he says with a laugh.

The Brazilian, Butcher, was well known in the Sao Paulo rock scene for his band Thee Butcher’s Orchestra and had tracked Kennedy down through the Internet. Soon, the two were recording together.

“He sent me a song over the Net and I figured out some words and recorded the vocals and then I sent it back,” Kennedy says. “He freaked out and sent me so many songs it crashed my computer! And they were all great! Marco is so prolific. He’s a riffmeister.”

The unlikely pair recorded and pieced together a few tours, and Kennedy began to notice something: Many of his old friends - Jad Fair of Half Japanese, the Chrome Cranks, Don Fleming of Velvet Monkeys and others - were recording for Thick Syrup, and they all had nothing but good things to say about the imprint.

“This was getting ridiculous,” Kennedy says. “Finally, I wrote Travis [McElroy, Thick Syrup’s owner] and said, ‘How come you’re putting out all my friends’ records and not mine?’ And he said, ‘Send me what you’ve got.’”

The result is the latest from The Jam Messengers, Kick Out (get it? Kick Out The Jam Messengers, like Kick Out the Jams by the MC5?). The album is a funky collage of garage, rockabilly, blues and greasy rawk that oozes attitude and booty-shakin’ good times.

“I love the label,” Kennedy says of Thick Syrup. “It’s so rare in this business that someone actually follows through with what they say they are going to do. He does that. And he’s got great taste in music.”

The Jon Spencer

Blues Explosion 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Rev Room, 300 President Clinton Ave.

Opening act: The Jam Messengers Tickets: $15 (501) 823-0090 revroom.com

The Jam Messengers 8 p.m. today, Maxine’s, 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs

Opening act: The White Glove Test, Bloodless Cooties, Slate Dump Tickets: $5 advance, $7 at the door (501) 321-0909 maxineslive.com

Style, Pages 21 on 01/22/2013

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