River Of Snakes sees Magic Dirt guitarist Raul Sanchez leading a three-piece outfit playing fairly predictable noisy riffs through heavily overdriven stacks. It isn’t particularly inspired stuff, each song blending into the next without much variation, though it’s not completely offensive and lays a firm enough foundation for the main event to a room now quickly filling.
Tex Perkins, Stephen P.Jones, Tony Pola, Charlie Owen and Brian Henry Hooper emerge for the finale to their three night stand at The Factory Theatre. Having traversed the original and The Low Road line-ups the two consecutive evenings previous, this was to be a showcase ofBeasts Of Bourbon in their current formation. From the very outset Perkins’ unmistakable bluesy growl and commanding onstage swagger captivates the room.
A well-placed fan ensured that enough shirt and hair are blown around to keep the ladies in a state of narcosis each time the frontman leans down to deliver something about being “Hard For You,” or gruffly declares how it fits in “Just Right”. The pheromone count in the room grows about as high and as rapidly as the number of ladies undergarments collecting in piles on the stage.
There are probably only two people on earth who play guitar just like Keith Richards; the man himself and Charlie Owen. Owen’s style is a notable addition to the group, his intricate augmentations and swooning yet stabbing layers of sound are at the same time unnoticeable and unmistakeable.
Most punters agreed that this was the Beasts’ tightest performance of their three night run, and much of this is likely owed to Owen. While Jones and Perkins share a kindred understanding borne of thirty years of camaraderie, it is Owen who applies the spit-polish to this worn pair of boots.
It is everything a Beasts Of Bourbon show should be. It is swampy, it is gritty, it is sexy. It is “Bad Revisited”, it is “Cocksucker Blues”, it is “Told You So”. It is Black Milk, it is Sour Mash, it is The Axeman’s Jazz. It is rock’n’roll played well and played loud and it is glorious.
While obviously an imposing figure of dirty bravado and machismo, this was not purely to be ‘the Sexy Texy show’. In between wetting his whistle with whatever he was keeping in an ever-growing collection of coffee thermoses at his feet, Perkins could be seen tapping subtly away with Pola on drum, or attempting to catch some breath and soak up some atmosphere behind a bass rig that isn’t quite up to the task of masking his hulking frame.
“I’m almost done…my task is complete…” muses Perkins as the group take their final bows after treating the adoring crowd to a brief encore featuring “Drop Out” and a blistering “New Day Of The Dead”.
If ever there were such thing as a side-project-super-group, Beasts oO Bourbon are it. 30 years on, this mix of (among many others) Surrealists, Hoodoos, Scientists, Johnny’s, and Divinyls proved that they’ve still got it, and they’ve got it in spades.
