Reverend Horton Heat Setlist

Bullet
Baddest of the Bad
Rock ‘N’ Roll Is Now
Where in the Hell Did You Go With My Toothbrush
Let Me Teach You How to Eat
Crazy Crazy Lovin’ (Johnny Carroll cover)
Galaxy 500
Big Red Rocket of Love
Jimbo Song
“D” for Dangerous
I Can’t Surf
I Found Blue
400 Bucks
Psychobilly Freakout

— Encore —
Gravel Farmer
Bales of Cocaine
Ace of Spades (Motörhead cover)

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■ Reverend Horton Heat
The Reverend Horton Heat is the stage name of American musician James C. Heath (born 1959) as well as the name of his psychobilly trio from Dallas. Heath is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist. A reviewer for the magazine Prick called Heath the “godfather of modern rockabilly and psychobilly”

It’s funny how patterns can emerge from the random. It turned out to be another day, another concert in Minneapolis featuring bands from Texas. Though it might have been a bit on the cold side for our southern visitors, it was going to get very hot inside as rockabilly champions the Reverend Horton Heat were playing at First Avenue.

Piñata Protest got things kicked off. You know I love band self-descriptors, and “an accordion fronted punk rock band from Texas” and a “fusion of Tex Mex and punk” were a big promise. And boy, did they ever deliver. The quartet (vocals/accordion/trumpet, guitar/backing vocals, bass, and drums) largely played those two very distinct genres into a cohesive thing. The trumpet came out for Chinga la Migra, which we were playfully told translated to…chinga la migra. With a little dancing from our front man, it was back to accordion and also back to Spanish lyrics. Piñata Protest had plenty of flair and energy (our drummer was sweating), we got a choice (but not really?) on the next song, and the long instrumental lead in moved fast. A mid song switch from accordion to trumpet put a big hit on the end of the song. A goofy interlude with a beer led into the next flying song. This was definitely in its own lane and when our lead singer grabbed a new percussion instrument, it led down a different alley of this Mexican infused punk. Another silly “setting up division” over red or green salsa had the main floor split (“sir, you can’t stand in the middle, it’s a two party system”) and was a a ridiculous as it sounds. Finishing their thirty minute set, Piñata Protest had been a unique start to the evening.

Black Joe Lewis plays at the nexus of blues, soul, and funk. Based in Austin, he’s been on the scene since the mid 2000’s, with a half dozen albums, including 2018’s The Difference Between Me & You. The trio (vocals/guitar, bass, and drums) was centered on Lewis, a dynamic singer and guitarist. He sang, screamed, and hollered his way in that blues funk, and while that was pretty great, he absolutely shredded on guitar. On a repeated lyric of “it’s alright” with bassist and drummer yelling that refrain, it popped into a stellar guitar solo. Lewis commanded attention, but also found ways to give his band mates their moments as well (the drummer was a machine throughout). But it all came back to that exquisite guitar. PTP was pure funk and Lewis easily slid through those related genres while mixing it in his own thing. A James Brown vocal style and intro had Black Joe Lewis with the fastest lyrical flow and the lightning speed of the guitar solo was wildly impressive. Did I mention that Lewis is a magician on the guitar? It feels like that should be noted. Anyway, I lost track for a bit while simply being mesmerized by his playing, but the songs were flying by. A very blues song was a good complement for the set and let Lewis show off his lung capacity and they simply rolled along. Lewis closed on a flurry of nearly continuous songs and left the stage to a hugely appreciative crowd.

The Reverend Horton Heat, a trio led by James Heath, is a long time band and one of the stalwarts of modern rockabilly. Formed in the mid 1980’s, the band has always kept things moving forward with a mix of humor and proper rockabilly sensibility. From their debut album Smoke ‘Em if You Got ‘Em (1990) to 2018’s Roots of the Rev (their first covers album), the band has made their own path in the weird plexus of country-infused rock with punk overtones and topped with some crude humor. The trio (Heath on vocals/guitar, Jimbo Wallace on stand up bass, and Jonathan Jeter on drums) came out and the opening instrumental felt a little like a warm up song for the audience, not for the band. Where in the Hell Did You Go with My Toothbrush was an early example of the mix of humor and solid musicianship of Reverend Horton Heat, recalling those classic early rock & roll numbers, but playing just enough with the themes. Heath’s purposefully gravelly singing was a perfect cherry on the “my baby left me” number. Let Me Teach You How to Eat continued the silly fun, with the other two band members yelling back the lyrics. Heath had the crowd where he wanted them, and when he yelled “Minneapolis, raise your hands”, the response rate was right around 100%. Galaxy 500 was a bizarrely hilarious break up song and had a great Heath guitar solo. A fake ending had Wallace and Jeter playing the part of straight men in bringing Heath back to the music. Wallace was plucking away in another instrumental section while Heath ran his guitar through its paces before finishing up the song.

Heath constantly made his way around the sparse stage, but it was a sight as he climbed up onto Wallace’s bass that had been laid across the stage (with Wallace still playing it!). Safely back on terra firma, Heath shed off his sequin jacket and an extended and began a beyond silly introduction of the band. Stand up over, they headed back into the music with Jimbo Song, which was short and to the point, though the following bit of fake band turmoil went on quite a while. I realized that the instrumentals, this time D for Dangerous, served as good palette cleansers, as they would transition into a new section and it let Heath really work the guitar in that surf rock sound. That it literally was followed by I Can’t Surf felt pretty tongue in cheek, but that’s part and parcel with the Reverend. Playing some newer music, I Found Blue was featured on the recent TV show Landman. It wouldn’t have felt right without the song Psychobilly Freakout being played and Reverend Horton Heat crushed that nearly lyric free number with some excellent distortion as we raced towards the end. On encore, Heath headed to the drums (but still sang) while Jeter came out on guitar and they played a “prospective” song title from the Covid period called Gravel Farmer. They ended with their cover of Motörhead’s Ace of Spades, with a standard, but still funny story about Lemmy and Reverend Horton Heat had given the crowd their fill of rockabilly good times.