Jim Heath, better known by his stage name the Reverend Horton Heat, perks up when he hears that the call is from Vancouver.
“I tell you what, Vancouver is right up there with the best cities we’ve ever played in,” he says. “Some of those gigs we played at the Commodore Ballroom - we’ve played so many good shows there where we headlined, we played there with the Cramps… our history has been nothing but positive with Vancouver. I love that town, I really do.”
There’s no doubt that Heath’s trio has brought his energetic, punk-infused mix of rockabilly, surf, and country to town many times over, for many memorable shows. But it quickly proves complex trying to pin down the date of this Commodore Cramps gig. He’s definitely toured with them, in 1992, and credits a 1979 gig he saw at the Hot Club in Dallas as being one of his formative musical experiences; Poison Ivy Rorschach’s “fuzztone-meets Dwayne-Eddy licks” made him realize that “the punk rock thing was very tied to the ‘50s music that influenced me a lot.”
But a Commodore show opening for the Cramps? It’s not listed on the Reverend’s own website. The desire to be thorough leads to a brief interaction with Aaron Chapman, author of the recent history of the venue, Live at the Commodore: The Story of Vancouver’s Historic Commodore Ballroom.
Chapman’s sources - including Jason Grant, who booked the Commodore in the 2000s - can’t discard the possibility of the gig, but nor can they confirm a date.
It quickly turns out, however, that Chapman, a fan, has a memorable Reverend Horton Heat story from the mid-1990s, at the now defunct Starfish Room.
“It was in the summer and it was unbelievably hot in there that night,” he informs Westender. “The heat and the humidity were so bad that night I remember some people passing out, and the nicotine on the ceiling that had rested there, from when people smoked in bars, liquefied and dripped off the ceiling. I remember a few girls wearing white tops had their clothing stained from the dripping goo.
“I saw Jimbo, his bass player, the next time he came to town and asked him if he remembered it and he laughed and immediately recalled it and said ‘Hey man, I’m from Texas and even I thought it was hot there that night!’”
Another favourite Reverend Horton Heat story - mine - deals with a call-and-response routine Heath engaged the audience with at the Commodore some ten years ago. Between songs, he casually drawled, “How y’all doin’ tonight?”, receiving whoops and cheers as a reply. Then he proceeded to school the audience, telling us that any musician who says that is just looking for a lazy way to get people to applaud. We shouldn’t put up with it, he advised us, so the next time anyone on stage said “How y’all doin’ tonight,” we should all shout back en masse, “fuck you!”
He then invited us to practice with him. “How y’all doin’ tonight?”
Our response was enthusiastic.
Heath – relaxing on a Sunday at his home outside Dallas – chuckles to recall the routine. “It’s crazy,” he says. “I’m under so much pressure to come up with new crowd rap, is what they call it. I think my crowd rap is pretty good, but sometimes I think I’ve gotta hire some kind of comedy writer, y’know – somebody from Jimmy Kimmel or something to come up with new stage routines, because eventually it starts to get old. I will do the same one every time for sometimes years, but I don’t want to overdo it.”
How does it feel to be on the receiving end of 500-odd people screaming “fuck you” all at once?
“Well, when I instigated it, it’s fine!”
Heath’s Vancouver show on May 22 sees him playing his first-ever gig at the Rickshaw Theatre, touring to support Rev, his trio’s newest album. Rev features one of Heath’s oldest songs, “Longest Gonest Man,” which came back to life in part due to punk legend, John “Johnny Rotten” Lydon.
“There was a famous punk rock DJ in Dallas named George Gimarc,” Heath explains. “And George had a really great radio show that was syndicated a lot of places, and he got to be friends with all of the top people – Johnny Rotten and such. We did a whole North American tour with the Sex Pistols [in 2003], and one night they came and said, ‘Hey, Johnny Rotten wants to talk to you.’ And so okay, I went, and they were havin’, like, a campfire, and Johnny Rotten was there. And he said, ‘I know about you from way back. Do you know the librarian, Georgie?’ I was goin’, who? ‘George Gimarc? Well, back in the ‘80s, he sent me your demo tape.’”
“Longest Gonest Man” was the first song on that tape.
“I wish I’d known back then [that Lydon had heard my music],” says Heath. “That’s pretty cool, y’know?”
The song is one of many that have been put to the side over the years, for one reason or another.
“I’ve got others that were good original songs for us back in the ‘80s that never made it to album, because I just kept writing new songs,” says Heath. “Some of my older fans will email and say, ‘remember that song blah-blah-blah?’ Oh, yeah! And of course, people recorded us in the ‘80s and it’s just now getting on to YouTube, so that’s kind of how I’m finding out a lot of my old songs!”
As for the band’s approaching 30-year anniversary, Heath would prefer not to dwell on it.
“It seems like we just got done celebrating the 25th anniversary,” he says. “We have an album called 25 to Life that was a 25-year celebration thing, but frankly, I don’t like to think about that too much. I’m still lookin’ forward – I don’t like to look back.”
Reverend Horton Heat
Friday, May 22 at the Rickshaw Theatre, with guests, Necromantix. Tickets $24.50 advance at Highlife, Neptoon, Red Cat, or online at RickshawTheatre.com. Doors at 8pm.
