Watch Southern Culture On The Skids play The Hi-Fi in Indianapolis and more

Since it's Mary Huff's birthday today, we're celebrating with a few recent SCOTS performances you may have missed. 

Southern Culture On The Skids reissues Liquored Up and Lacquered Down with bonus tracks!

Just in time for their October tour, Southern Culutre are reissuing Liquored Up and Lacquered Down with 3 bonus tracks.

Here's the scoop from SCOTS HQ...

Kudzu Records has re-released the original 13 track Liquored Up and Lacquered Down album from 2000 with 3 bonus tracks all remastered from the original 1/2” master tapes. Also included is a brand new recording, the band’s version of Doug Sahm's “Nitty Gritty”. (Not to be confused with the Shirley Ellis song of the same name that Mary sang on Dirt Track Date.) The new “Nitty Gritty” features Mary on vocals and trumpet courtesy of of Luis Rodriguez! Good stuff y’all!!  Get a copy of the CD right here. Vinyl preorder coming very very soon! Check the track list below followed by a couple of vintage performance clips. 

Southern Culture On The Skids – Liquored Up and Lacquered Down

Liquored Up And Lacquered Down

Hittin’ On Nothing

Pass The Hatchet

Corn Liquor

Drunk And Lonesome (Again)

Cheap Motels

Just How Lonely

I Learned To Dance In Mississippi

King Of The Mountain

The Corn Rocket

Damaged Goods

Over It

Haw River Stomp

Bonus Tracks:

Nitty Gritty

Put Your Shoes Back On

She Bought A Dog

Well Well Well

One For The Weekend: Southern Culture On The Skids

Rick Miller had a good time making the video for "Call Me" off At Home With Southern Culture On The Skids available here.  

Southern Culture's Rick Miller talks about his notorious guitar

Rick Miller spills the greasy details about his well-worn Danelectro followed by a Southern Culture on the Skids performance at Paste Studio ATL.

Southern Culture On The Skids go psychedelic with The Electric Pinecones

Southern Culture switch into The Pinecones for their latest album, The Electric Pinecones – stream below.

Hi Everybody,

Rick here, and I want to let you all know the band has a new record called The Electric Pinecones! Strange name, I know, but it has to do with an old side project we had called “The Pinecones”. The Pinecones was our “country pysch garage band”, or our excuse to induldge our musical crush on everything from the Seeds and the Byrds to Buck Owens and Ricky Nelson.

The Pinecones never went anywhere but practices and maybe a few parties with friends – though I do recall The Pinecones opening a couple local SCOTS shows (yes – we were our own support band at times). But, when it came time to start recording a new SCOTS album I found myself thinking about our old alter ego and how much fun we had playing those tunes and The Pinecones became ground zero for this new record. I hope you all enjoy listening to it as much as we did making it.

Thanks,
Rick Miller


Here's the official press release for The Electric Pinecones...

Southern Culture On The Skids' new studio album, The Electric Pinecones, has just been released on the band’s own label, Kudzu Records. Featuring a dozen original tunes — 11 brand new songs and a whole-lotta NOLA remake of the SCOTS classic, “Swamp Fox”, the record will be available on CD and as a digital download. A limited edition translucent turquoise vinyl LP will be available in November 2016.

“The Pinecones was our folk-a-billy garage band alter ego,” singer-guitarist Rick Miller explains. “In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, we would occasionally open up for ourselves as The Pinecones. What we played was not your typical SCOTS fare; more ‘60s west coast psych, folk and country. Those old set lists became the starting point for this record, The Electric Pinecones.”

The first single off the album, “Grey Skies,” is a minor key mood piece with that folk-a-hill-a-billy psychedelic sound. Listen to how the acoustic 12-string riff slides into the band’s hypnotic rhythms that propel Mary Huff’s vocal into the mind’s eye of times past and love lost.

The lead off track, “Freak Flag,” is more upbeat, but no less tweaked, with modulating guitars riding on pounding drums after the first verse. The song’s message is a good one – it is okay to be different and always respect yourself. The band debuted the song to an auditorium full of rowdy students at Carrboro Elementary School. “I was nervous,” Miller says “if the kids don’t like something they let you know, but when they started singing along with the second chorus and waving their imaginary freak flags in the air, I knew it was a hit!”

“Dirt Road” is Mary’s three-minute ode to séances, thunderstorms and good lovin’ long gone. The song is a backwoods southern gothic ghost story that opens with a big tom fill then twists and turns around a folky strum and a fuzz guitar. Mary’s spooky-good vocal takes it down that dirt road way back into the piney woods.

The album also has some country rock songs that highlight the melodic side of SCOTS, with “Baby I Like You,” “I Ain’t Gonna Hang Around” and “Given To Me” featuring some of the best harmonies Rick and Mary have ever recorded.

“Waiting On You” is the longest song on the album, coming in at 4:22; it’s a folk-garage-rocker with a sing-a-long chorus that segues into a surf raga breakdown before heading back to the big riff and out.  

The album has traditional Southern Culture flavor too. Check out the remake of “Swamp Fox – The Original”. This take goes back to the beginnings of the song and is much closer to capturing the essence of the many all-nighters the band pulled in NOLA with friends and colleagues. The country funk of “Rice and Beans,” is a good humored tale of a cash strapped southern courtship, and “Midnight Caller” is Mary’s slinky R’n’B flavored woman-to-woman warning about bad men looking for good times. 

From their 1985 debut Voodoo Beach Party, to their 1988 international smash, Dirt Track Date, and now to the SCOTS-ified tunes of The Electric Pinecones, 30+ years, 200+ songs and 1,000,000+ road miles in, Southern Culture On The Skids just gets better with time. Stream SCOTS new album right here. Check out the video for the first single Grey Skies below.