Shack Shakers baptized the Earl with spit, snot and majesty
This group wields the kind of energy and intensity that’s usually reserved for snake handlers, crazy preachers and the likes...
It was a rowdy and grotesque scene at The Earl on Saturday night as Nashville's country punk tormentors Th' Legendary Shack Shakers showed off songs from their latest masterpiece, Agri•Dustrial - an album based on the rhythmic, industrial plod of tractors, motors and the mechanical sounds of farm land industry, butted against the traditions of agrarian Americana rock and roll. Live, the album's abstract moments were slurred into an explosive set of motorik drumming, and jitters. The group's front man, Col. J.D. Wilkes' stage presence meshes the awkward spectacle of Joy Division's Ian Curtis, the spastic energy of Jerry Lee Lewis and the skulk and assault of the Jesus Lizard's David Yow, channeled into a scarecrow of a man. Wilkes would fit the mold of a Southern gentleman, if he didn't baptize his audience in a spray of spit and snot from farmer snorts fired at will. But no one in the room seemed to mind getting slimed by him.