Joe Buck

If a guy looks like the missing link between Bat Boy and a young Jason Vorhees (in that scene at the end of Friday the 13th where the, um, rather intent-looking lad shoots out of the water) and plays it up, then you know he’s probably got no shame about giving it his all onstage. A lone wolf ever since being deemed too wild for Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers (if you can imagine that), psychobilly guitarist/bassist and Hank III sideman Joe Buck goes for the throat and doesn’t let go with his one-man brand of “evil motherfucker” insanity. For sure, Buck plays psychobilly with an emphasis on the psycho. But when he’s not scratching at the guitar and bass drum like a feral animal, Buck tones it down enough to capture the twiddle-string spirit of mountain country that’s as restrained as it is dirt-raw. Buck sings that he went “from country boy to thrashin’ machine,” which pretty much covers his life story and musical range in a nutshell — give or take a whiskey reference (or two), and an endless stream of lyrics that contain the word “motherfucker.” Be sure to bring Mom to this one, ‘long as she’s a redneck!