Check out what folks are saying about SCOTS and Zombified!
From
RedandBlack.com:
WAY DOWN SOUTH: Southern Culture on the Skids keeps promise of ranged rockabilly, Americana alive By CASEY ECHOLS on December 1, 2011
Nothing is more Southern than Southern Culture on the Skids.
Formed in 1983, the Chapel Hill, N.C.-based hillbilly surf-rockers formed their image on the concept of everything so wonderfully south of the Mason-Dixon — with songs like, “Banana Pudding.”
“We just started writing about things we grew up with and Southern things,” guitarist Rick Miller said. “It really evolved around food and geography — and we indulged our sense of humor and licked some musical inspiration from the ’50s and ’60s. Anything from classic country to rockabilly to swamp pop. Southern forms of music is a very rich field to mine, so we’ve made own brand and we do our own thing.”
Within this musical mine-field, the band has concocted a melting pot of blended Americana.
“We used to just call it ‘toe-sucking geek rock.’ It’s kinda weird but once you try it, you probably like it … it’s pure Americana from the other side of the tracks,” Miller said. “It’s not your typical Americana band, but everything we do is so American. It’s all about growing up and living in the South, but it’s kind on of the wrong side of the tracks.”
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read the rest of the interview)
From
Tampa Bay Online:
Rockabilly vets bring humor, music to Skipper's By ED CONDRAN | Tribune correspondent
When Kevin Smith saw the film 'Slackers,' he had an epiphany. "I said to myself, 'If that's a movie, I could make a movie and I did make movies."
Southern Culture on the Skids vocalist-guitarist Rick Miller had a similar experience when he saw quirky psychobilly artists The Cramps back in the early 1980s.
"When I saw the Cramps, I thought, 'I can do this,' " Miller said. "I can be in a band and make it work."
Miller formed the amusing and idiosyncratic Southern Culture on the Skids in 1985 and the group rolls on. The trio, which also includes bassist Mary Huff and drummer Dave Hartman, doesn't just parody white trash culture. Southern Culture on the Skids, which will perform Saturday at Skipper's Smokehouse, crafts well-constructed roots/rockabilly tunes.
"We're not just some novelty act," Miller said while calling from his rural home in the Raleigh area. "Just because you might have some funny lyrics doesn't mean you're just some kind of off-the-wall act. We're a solid group."
But the band, which has written such amusing but rockin' tunes as "Too Much Pork For Just One Fork" and "Daddy Was a Preacher But Mama Was a Go-Go Girl," stands out in a world of serious rock bands.
"I don't mean to sound like I'm slamming that Americana scene, but I call the people involved in that world, 'Beardos," Miller said. "It seems like everyone in an Americana band has a beard and is so, ah, not funny.
"Whatever happened to the humor in rock? What happened to all the funny punk and new wave bands? The Beatles even had some humorous songs. Man, what would Ringo do today if the Beatles were a young band?"
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read the rest of the interview)
From Magnet:
Q&A With Southern Culture On The Skids’ Rick Miller
Anyone have any idea how long Southern Culture On The Skids has been around? Would you believe since 1983? Time flies. (Clever response: You cannot, they’re too erratic.) The current lineup of SCOTS features Rick Miller (the one constant since its inception) on guitar and vocals, bassist Mary Huff and drummer Dave Hartman. If you haven’t heard what they sound like, an educated guess that included Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Cramps, Tav Falco’s Panther Burns and Man Or Astro-Man? might be pretty close to the bone. The trio’s most recent album, Zombified (Kudzu), came out just in time for graves to open so the dead can have one last stagger around the countryside. Miller dialed MAGNET from behind a weed-choked crypt somewhere in the deep South. He will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week.
MAGNET: What I hear when I play your stuff is, obviously, the Cramps, Tav Falco’s Panther Burns and an old country guy called Jumpin’ Bill Carlisle.
Miller: The first two I can say yes. All the country stuff I just kind of absorbed from my dad. Lots of Roger Miller from when I was a kid. “Kansas City Star,” I think, is my favorite.
I actually saw Roger Miller play with Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, a very long time ago.
Gosh, that must have been awesome. Those are two of my favorite artists. Have you every heard of a guy named Billy Strange?
Sure, he had the first hit with the James Bond theme back in ’64. And the guy I work for at Sundazed Records, Bob Irwin, has an instrumental band called the Pluto Walkers whose two main influences are Billy Strange and Al Caiola.
I just found all the Billy Strange stuff on Amazon. They’ve reissued all his GNP/Crescendo albums. I got his album of Mexican hits and Billy Strange Plays The Hits Of Roger Miller. I love the guy. He’s got the best icepick kinda guitar tone. It sounds so good. George Barnes is great, too, the album called Guitar Galaxies. You used to be able to find all that easy-listening stuff for nothin’ at the thrift stores. Ferrante & Teicher albums, for example.
Yeah, I like a lot of that stuff some misguided hipsters might consider crap. I will go out and pick up some Billy Strange now, because I’ve only got about 20 thousand records here, and that just ain’t enough.
I don’t usually consider myself a completist, but I do for guys like Buddy Merrill, who used to be the guitar player for Lawrence Welk, and Billy Strange and Al Caiola. I love listening to that stuff. The arrangements are killer. You can learn a lot.
Tell me about playing with Loretta Lynn.
Oh, we’re playing with her this Saturday. We play The 9:30 Club up in D.C. a lot; they’re good friends of ours. When they got the offer for Loretta Lynn, they just thought we should get Southern Culture on the bill. Mary can look a lot like a coalminer’s daughter. I’m sure she’ll bring the dresses and the wigs and look like her redheaded stepchild. That’s gonna be fun, man. I think those old-timers will dig us. They’ll know what surf music is, they’ll know the garage stuff. Just give ‘em a double-barrel of everything we’ve got.
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read the rest of the interview)
From Blurt:
HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM... Southern Culture on the Skids
Rick Miller & Co. are getting Zombiefied all over again: Miller examines his life-long horror fetish, with a cameo from The Editor.
BY RANDY HARWARD
Rick Miller's sittin' in his Kudzu Ranch studio trying to fix a fuzz pedal that, when it's workin', "sounds like a 60-pound bee." The reference betrays Miller's fascination with old horror films, an affinity well-known by fans of eclectic hillbilly-rockers Southern Culture on the Skids.
"I always loved Halloween because I could just watch endless streams of horror films," he recalls. "Every Saturday morning there was a double feature of Roger Corman films, some sort of indie 50's sci-fi, or Universal horror films from the 30's. I used to just live for that stuff."
That's one reason SCOTS often draws from the horror/sci-fi well, as on Zombified, a limited-edition horror-themed collection the band self-released in 1998. The eight-song EP featured songs about vampires, zombie babes, the devil, undertakers and more, and fans lusted after it like the shufflin' undead crave guts. It quickly went out of print and was fetchin' big bones on eBay and Amazon until now.
...
BLURT: It's good to see you're reissuing Zombified. I remember picking up the original release in Salt Lake City, like 12 years ago.
RICK MILLER: Oh my gosh. Salt Lake City. What a crazy place, man. We always had fights at Salt Lake City, we - and things got stolen. Go figure, the city of Mormons. [laughs]
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read the rest of the interview)
From Forces of Geek:
SOUTHERN CULTURE ON THE SKIDS: ZOMBIFIED RISES FROM THE VAULT!
The title track "Zombified" kicks off the album with this instant high watermark of garage rock spookarama and is a track that will take its longtime place as an instant crowd pleaser. When I recently performed as Robert Jaz, DJ From The Black Lagoon, playing all sorts of monster and horror themed songs, I added the pre-release of this song to my set list, and the creeps and ghouls in attendance went wild.
From there it's a melding of more really great original tracks like "Undertaker," Idol With The Glowin' Eyes" (an outtake from the Blood Feast II sessions) and "Eyeball You Later."
The band has chosen some fantastic cover song choices for Zombified, such as Kip Tyler's underground classic "She's My Witch," and J.D. Loudermilk's sorrowfully smitten, lovelorn ballad "Torture" (sung woefully tortured by bassist Mary Huff), and a peppering of inspired instrumentals, "Swamp Thing," Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Sinister Purpose," and "The Creeper."
(
read the rest of the review)
From LexGo
Critic's pick: Southern Culture on the Skids, 'Zombified'
By Walter Tunis Contributing Music Writer
A love of low-rent horror flicks — the kind where sex and gore are almost necessary by-products as long as they don't make the movie come in over budget — fits right in with the SCOTS' rural roots music vision. The title track rolls on guitar hooks deep fried in reverb from Miller and a fat, high-carb backbeat courtesy of Hartman. The resulting music is a little surf, a little bit psychobilly and a whole lot of fun when the lyrics sink in ("my girl's more dead than alive").
(Read the rest of the review)
From PopMatters:
Southern Culture on the Skids: Zombified
By Kevin Curtin 14 October 2011
Zombified
Southern Culture on the Skids latest tells of zombies, witches, bats and swamp things, but never stoops to the novelty silliness of the Monster Mash. Instead, it comes off like Link Wray and his Wraymen recording in a haunted house. The title track has the wretched strut of the Stooges and repeats the word “Zombified” until it infects your vocabulary. Vampires catch a shout out too with “Bloodsucker”, an adversarial rant that crosses the dark world of Dracula with a happy-go-lucky island beat.
(go to rest of review)
From Consequence of Sound
Festival Review: CoS at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2011
(pg 2) Southern Culture on the Skids — Arrow Stage
Scrupulous in their live performance, Southern Culture on the Skids has labored long over streamlining every aspect of their set. It’s what rock and roll should be — calculated yet improvisational, evidencing clear skill and creativity, while also being rigorous and animated. Band members Rick Miller, Dave Hartman, and Mary Huff resonated and glowed with effortless style during the entirety of their performance. All husky seduction, Miller wailed and moaned into the microphone, picking fiercely at his electric guitar. His counterpart, Huff, is a red-haired raven who knows how to keep up with the boys; she seduced eardrums during her performance of “You’re a Star”. The band’s music live embodies southern soul mixed with touches of naughty fun; their rendition of “The Wet Spot” — which sounded like Middle Eastern music accentuated with a touch of The Beach Boys’ surfer sound — featured a barely clothed belly dancer. With calls to clap, sing, and dance, their live performance at HSB turned out to be one of the most rallying shows of Friday afternoon.
(click to pg 2 for a great picture of Mary on stage)
From The Aquarian
Southern Culture On The Skids
Zombified
Witches cackle in the darkness of “She’s My Witch,” brewing a melting pot of what this album is about: Funny bone blues with a dash of salty surf rock and slow-cookin’ rockabilly. Songs like “Zombified,” “Undertaker,” “Swamp Thang,” “Bloodsucker” and “Idol With The Glowing Eyes” will get your guests up to boogie on down for a bewitchin’ good time.
(Read the rest of the review)
From Country Standard Time:
Southern Culture on the Skids
Zombified – 2011 (Kudzu)
Reviewed by John Walker
Southern Culture On The Skids is a countrified version of ZZ Top meets Junior Brown. This North Carolina based band reached cult status since it began making its own brand of Americana music in 1983. Their unique sound is a lethal combination of early rock and roll, surf, country western and mountain music. This fun musical hybrid is perfect for their latest release "Zombified". The 13-song collection of songs is dedicated to the horror and exploitation movies across the U.S. in the '60s and '70s.
(read the rest of the review)
From The Charlotte Observer
Ghouls, witches, and zombies populate Southern Culture's pumped up reissue
by Courtney Devores
“Zombified” is surprisingly diversified given its subject matter. There’s the early `80s country rock of “Eyeball You Later,” the timeless girl group softness of “Torture,” the horror movie/rockabilly marriage of the title track and “Primitive," and the sad, retro feel of “Undertaker.” It makes me think about the possibilities if Hank Williams, Alice Cooper, and Buddy Holly hung out together.
(read the rest of the review)
From Twangville
Southern Culture On the Skids – Zombified
by Shawn Underwood in Americana, Reviews, Rock, Roots
The disc starts off with the title cut that’s a double entendre about a girlfriend being an actual zombie and just being in that state of mind, “she’s more dead than alive, she’s got no spark in her eyes.” Next up is Undertaker with a bubbling cauldron intro ala Monster Mash. Then comes Swamp Thang that’s full of Dick Dale and LInk Wray riffs. By this point in the project you remembers that SCOTS has been around 25+ years and they can drop a groove on just about any kind of roots music. The roots review continues with Bloodsucker, a Rastafarian beat to vampire lyrics. One of the most fun songs is Torture, which starts with a woman’s scream, then puts a Shirelles style 50′s spin on the sadistic side of relationships.
(read the rest of the review)
Since the inspiration for Zombified was low-budget horror movies the band has decided to have the first annual SCOTS Halloween Film Festival! Anybody can enter—all you gotta do is make your own low-budget masterpiece based on a SCOTS song. This year the song will be "Zombified", the title track from the expanded reissue album hitting the stores on 9/27. 
Check it out — The Virginia Museum in Richmond VA has an awesome exhibit right now called Virginia Rocks. Virginia Rocks is an in-depth study of all things Rockabilly in the Commonwealth, 50s to present (mostly 50s and early 60s). The show includes lots of great photos, and videos among other things. The exhibit's high point for me was a video of Link Wray playing his hit instro "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" on some teen show from the early 60s. He is looking pretty swank in a suit and tie, playing hilariously out of sync at one point in the song. The Raymen are no where in sight — must have been deemed a bad influence on the teenyboppers by the producers!!! Link was playing his Longhorn guitar in the video — just like the one I'm standin' next to (in the photo at right) — which just happens to be mine. The curator borrowed it for this leg of the show. Link's real one had a date at the Smithsonian in D.C. The plaque behind me told Link's story. Check the Link Wray t-shirt I wore for the photo op!! The Hillbilly Wolf lives on!
HOLD ON......
IT'S COMING.........
IT'S COMING .....
IT'S COMING........
IT'S.........HERE!
