Rockabilly vets bring humor, music to Skipper's

When Kevin Smith saw the film 'Slackers,' he had an epiphany. "I said to myself, 'If that's a movie, I could make a movie and I did make movies."

Southern Culture on the Skids vocalist-guitarist Rick Miller had a similar experience when he saw quirky psychobilly artists The Cramps back in the early 1980s.

"When I saw the Cramps, I thought, 'I can do this,' " Miller said. "I can be in a band and make it work."

Miller formed the amusing and idiosyncratic Southern Culture on the Skids in 1985 and the group rolls on. The trio, which also includes bassist Mary Huff and drummer Dave Hartman, doesn't just parody white trash culture. Southern Culture on the Skids, which will perform Saturday at Skipper's Smokehouse, crafts well-constructed roots/rockabilly tunes.

"We're not just some novelty act," Miller said while calling from his rural home in the Raleigh area. "Just because you might have some funny lyrics doesn't mean you're just some kind of off-the-wall act. We're a solid group."

But the band, which has written such amusing but rockin' tunes as "Too Much Pork For Just One Fork" and "Daddy Was a Preacher But Mama Was a Go-Go Girl," stands out in a world of serious rock bands.

"I don't mean to sound like I'm slamming that Americana scene, but I call the people involved in that world, 'Beardos," Miller said. "It seems like everyone in an Americana band has a beard and is so, ah, not funny.

"Whatever happened to the humor in rock? What happened to all the funny punk and new wave bands? The Beatles even had some humorous songs. Man, what would Ringo do today if the Beatles were a young band?"

SCOTS is touring behind "Zombified," which was originally released as an eight-song EP in Australia in 1998. A full-length version is full of visceral, provocative and yes, amusing songs.

"It's such a fun album that I actually listen to 'Zombified,' " Miller said. "There's a song on it, 'Bloodsuckers,' which people ask if it were written about all of the banks, which are sucking everyone dry today. That was written during the mid-'90s when Geffen, which we were a part of, got bought out by MCA/Universal. They lied to us and the music business started to go down the tube."

SCOTS scored a minor hit in 1996 with the catchy, funky 'Camel Walk,' which is featured on its first Geffen album, "Dirt Track Date," and on the "Flirting With Disaster" soundtrack.

While touring behind "Dirt Track Date," SCOTS was slated to play a concert at the NASA Space Center in Cape Canaveral 15-years ago. However, a NASA official put the kibosh on the show since one of the "Dirt Track Date" songs includes a slang word for penis, which is also an outdated nickname for Richard.

"It was ironic that that show was moved for that reason because we had to play on the beach in Cocoa Beach in between strip clubs," Miller said.

Miller and Co. haven't had such trouble playing Skippers. "We've had some issues in Florida," Miller said. "We've had the NASA thing. Some record stores in Florida wouldn't stock 'Dirt Track Date' because there was a condom on the cover. But Skippers has always been fabulous to us. We love it and we'll always go back there."