Deke Dickerson & the Ecco-Fonics,
the Hollisters
Continental Club, November 24
Deke Dickerson may seem like a standard-issue retro-rockabilly cat on the surface, with song titles like "Hot Rod Queen," "Peroxide Blonde," and "Mean Mean Son of a Gun." In a genre that requires one hot guitar player per band as the price of admission, though, the Midwestern Gizzard Mistreater can play circles around the average rockabilly picker. Armed with a fancy custom-made double-neck guitar, Dickerson effortlessly pulls off machine-gun runs à la Gene Vincent's fabled lead man Cliff Gallup. More than once at the Continental, he'd line up with sax man Ron Jubal for a note-for-note rubber-burning drag race to the finish line that would leave the audience's Brylcreemed heads spinning. Better yet, the Ecco-Fonics (who now include ex-Sir Fink skinbeater Damien Lane among their number) aren't above throwing the occasional curveball into the crowd. The Deke-ster put down the double-neck and did some Fender bending for "What's That Cooking," a jazzy ode to poultry that gave everyone a hankerin' for a fowl taste in their mouths. A more surprising twist came when Dickerson put down both guitars and honked on a baritone sax, later joined by the bass player for a three-sax assault that Dickerson himself likened to Skynyrd punishing audiences with triple guitar players. Things crescendoed with "RG2K," an Armenian-flavored instrumental whirlwind that came off like a collision between Dick Dale and Merle Travis, then came back to earth with a cover of Joan Jett's "I Love Rock & Roll." That left some big shoes for the Hollisters to fill, but the one-time Houston band, which recently completed its relocation to Austin, blasted away nicely. Local Tele-twanger and Hollisters producer Casper Rawls sat in with the band as they let it rip on "Little Old You," "Confession Time," "Made for Love," and "Love Rustler," trading licks with the Hollisters' Chris Miller. Rawls' blazing phrases embroider the band's sound nicely, which comes across a hell of a lot harder and louder live than their CDs might suggest. There were no saxophones when the Hollisters hit the boards -- just a lot of loud roots rock from a band that plays full throttle when their time comes. That may have been the only problem with the night's entertainment -- the two bands were a bit of a mismatch style-wise. Not that the audience cared, as the jitterbuggin' and Miller-swillin' crowd kept up till the cows came home. That's a Friday night South By-Gawd Austin-style.
