Cat scratch fever

Let them eat pussy. Aaaah, the peasants never had it so good.

Mix some deep fried country punk rock, depravity, thundering Chevy engines, copious amounts of alcohol with a sense of humor and you’ve got an old-fashioned trailer park heart attack served with a smile. Better known as the Atlanta-based trash rockers Nashville Pussy, this volatile mixture of Americana’s seedy side is whetting the appropriate lips and appetites of fans everywhere.

“It’s a great message for the kids,” says lead guitarist Ruyter Suys [pronounced rider sighs] of the crotch-themed mantra that was the title of their debut album.

What guy wouldn’t be attracted to that call to arms? “And what girl wouldn’t?” she adds. “And they say we don’t have a message.”

Wrapped in nothing but a pillow, Suys handles her 1 p.m. wake-up call with the kind of verve that could only come following an all-night excursion at the 24-hour bowling alley. She sends her husband, NP singer Blaine Cartwright - whom she calls “a one-night-stand gone wrong” - toddling off so she can wax un-philosophic on the finer points of being in a band named after an infamous Ted Nugent soundbite.

Originally operating as Hell’s Half Acre, as an homage to the location of the first Kentucky Fried Chicken stand, the various members of Nashville Pussy fled their various home states to collect on fly-paper in January 1996. “We got together in a dry county in Kentucky and would play for like three or four days, record stuff, deep fry hamburgers and watch the Simpsons,” Ruyter sighs. “We’d drive to the Wal-Mart for entertainment. There was no choice but to rock.”

Once they realized that Hell’s Half Acre was not an epiphany unique to them, the moniker Nashville Pussy emerged from the bleary-eyed skull of Cartwright. “It was like we’d come to a moment of clarity when Blaine came into the room,” Suys recalls. “We’d been up really late. He said, ‘How about Nashville Pussy?’ We all just cracked up. It’s perfect. And for some reason, with a goofy name like that, we had to become a bit more serious about what we were doing. You’ve got to back that shit up.”

Easier said than done. Very little about Nashville Pussy can be taken too seriously. Songs like the 1999 Grammy nominated(!) “Fried Chicken and Coffee” (from their first CD Let Them Eat Pussy) to tracks such as “Blowjob From a Rattlesnake”, “Piece of Ass” and “Struttin’ Cock” from their brand-new High as Hell leave little doubt as to what this band is about.

One could make the argument that Nashville Pussy is a garage band gone wrong. When stroked, this pussy purrs in garbled strains that sound mainly like Bon Scott-era AC/DC and early Kiss poured into a dirty Deep South fryer. “If you can hear those things in there, good for you” Suys says. “Congratulations. On our first record, everybody was like ‘it’s AC/DC meets Skynyrd.’ Are you out of your mind? This is like total punk rock. It’s as ballistic as it gets.

”[High as Hell] sounds more like what people said our first album sounds like. There’s the big heavy riffs and the Southern twang and there’s definite Kiss references in there. Pretty much everything we listen to is circa 1970 to 1977. We don’t listen to much past that decade.”

Nor do they live much past it. Suys is only one-half of the female contingent living in the depraved white trash version of a “Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry” double feature. Corey Parks, a 6-foot 3-inch fire-breathing bombshell is more than enough to grab attention on her own. Put together with Suys, Cartwright and drummer Jeremy Thompson, Parks completes the frame.

Suys is merely the lightning rod. Named by “hippie Dutch parents” (yes, it’s real), Suys seemed destined for this band. “They didn’t realize half the sexual connotations that they were putting me through,” she says. Her easygoing demeanor flips from informative to funny, to charming and sexual all in a single breathy, inflection-filled sentence. Through her, it’s easy to tell this band is having lots of fun.

Playing live is no different. Exaggerated stories of sexual acts between the members on stage have become legendary. “They’re all true,” Suys admits coquettishly. “We might have used to do that, kinda, sometimes, occasionally. It’s starting to take off Kiss-like stories, like, ‘It’s a cow tongue man.’ It’s just fucking rock. It’s real basic. Our stage show fits in a bucket. Corey breathes fire. That’s her big thing. Other than that, half the shit goes on in people’s minds and in the audience.”

With all but Parks currently living in Atlanta, it’s time to meet your rowdy neighbors. “We’re not from here,” Ruyter says. “But we love Atlanta and we do believe that Atlanta likes us too. It’s a cool town.”

Nashville Pussy opens for Motorhead at the Tabernacle on Sun., June 18. Tickets are $21, available through Ticketmaster. For more information, call 404-659-9022.