Episode 3: Daddy? You Wish

Dog and Pony Episode 3 - Daddy? You Wish
1/23/09 - Episode 2 left out for respect of the Lost Session.

The Band: Highway Jackson
Kris: Vox and Guitar
Tyler: Guitar and backing vox
(not pictured)
Corey: Bass
Brandon: Guitar
Mike: Drums




The Scene:
The basement is oppressive. It's a mess, and as you come down the stairs, you see a couch that was built during the fashionably worst part of the Carter administration. And it's beat to hell, to boot.

Beyond the couch, bags of trash lie helter-skelter among empty cardboard boxes, ramshackle furniture decays in heaps, a menacing barrel sits on a homebrew sawhorse. It looks to be full of oil. Rags and boxes lead an incendiary trail to the oil burner. The oil tank stands across from that. The place is a tinder-keg. The slightest spark will send the whole building up like Pompeii.

And yet it still smells like someone smokes cigarettes here regularly.

The band sits at the far end of the basement in a pool of orange and white light. The walls around them shed bricks into piles on the floor. "The band" in this case is a loose interpretation. Two members of a five person band play acoustic guitars in a thoroughly dank basement. Generally the band, Highway Jackson, is absolutely plowing through some Classic Rock shit in a dingy bar. But when they do it, they positively blow it out. It's the garage band you wanted to hear in the Seventies. Highway Jackson brings back the oldest meaning of "Rock." The band is energetic and effective. Their music, while brutal, is finely rehearsed, well practiced. It's an effective weapon of localized intensity. The sonic wall strikes powerful and precise like a heavyweight's jab.

But tonight it's just Kris and Tyler, sitting in a fire hazard and playing acoustic music. To each other. It's like bringing a tyrannosaurus to a flower show. Completely emasculating.

But they still Rock. It's like trying to take away all that raw power just makes it stronger. Or maybe it's just that these guys just Rock.

And we're talking about Rock with a capital 'R' here. We're not talking about rock like the word has been bandied about lately. We're talking about the music that made your grandparents cringe. We're talking about the music that was burned in vinyl bonfires in front of Baptist churches.

We're talking about Rock.

And they say "Rock is dead." They say the scene has moved on. They say "Rock? Isn't that, like, so 1970s?"

Well... yes. In a way they're right. But Highway Jackson - these guys - these guys make you pine for when Rock wasn't a dirty word. These guys bleed Rock. When you hear this music, just about anyone can acknowledge a new desire... a desire to actually Rock.

Hearing the music over the radio your whole life, you associate the term "Rock" with your parents and what they listened to. You don't understand its hugeness. So when contemporary musicians re-examine it, Rock becomes so much more powerful. It's an epiphany. It's the mythology happening again. All those things you'd heard about... they're happening in front of you.

Highway Jackson brings back the meaning of rock. You can't help but think, "Yeah... I'm rocking." Don't hide it! It's nothing to be ashamed of! Highway Jackson can be that release you need. You don't have to restrain the Rock when you're listening to Highway. You just let this music take you to that raw, primal place.

Highway Jackson represents the past of rock and roll in a lot of ways. When you hear the covers, for instance, they're spot on. HJ gives a show where you can call for "Freebird!" unironically and where you can feel comfortable rocking out to it.

A True Story: Highway Jackson was playing a show I was attending. They started playing Freebird and the house went crazy. It was the driving power behind the song that infected everyone... foot stamping, wild thrashing, jumping and headbanging were reinvented in the living room that night. I was pounding away to the beat in the back of the room with a bottle against a counter. The bottle smashed and I was so into the crazy frenzy Highway had created in that living room, I kept pounding.

Highway Jackson makes music that will cut your knuckles.

And there's good news for those about to Rock. Highway Jackson has an album set to drop this winter. The Dirty Bar Campaign. The title is a tribute to how they raised the money to record the album. Highway Jackson played shitty, dirty bar after shitty, dirty bar to raise the funds.

Maybe that's why Tyler and Kris didn't look so out of place in that arsonist's paradise.

And now, what's more impressive is that they've vowed to never play a cover gig again. They are focusing now on their music, on Highway Jackson. This album is their Rubicon and they're crossing it. The phrase 'Point of No Return' is a bit cliche, but it's true in this case. If TDBC tanks, that's it. You won't get a chance to truly Rock again.

That's such a Rock statement, too. Paying tribute to their Dirty Bar Campaign... and promising to leave it.