Southern Culture on the Skids

Trash culture in all its myriad low-rent varieties has seldom had a better musical friend than North Carolina's Southern Culture on the Skids. Since forming in the basketball-obsessed burg of Chapel Hill in 1985 — that's right, 23 whole years ago, though the current roster of guitarist/vocalist Rick Miller, bassist/vocalist Mary Huff and drummer-of-sorts Dave Hartman dates to 1991 — the trio has focused its laser-like twangabilly on fried chicken ("Eight Piece Box"), gaudy gas-guzzlers ("Voodoo Cadillac"), hard labor ("Ditch Diggin'"), various dances ("New Cooter Boogie," "Camel Walk") and inebriation ("Liquored Up and Lacquered Down"). Their long-standing fondness for covers at last came to the fore on last year's delightful Plays Countrypolitan Favorites! (Yep Roc), as the trio took on the Kinks ("Muswell Hillbilly"), Lynn Anderson ("Rose Garden"), Slim Harpo ("Te Ni Nee Ni Nu") and Wilson Pickett ("Engine Engine No. 9") in their own po-faced, gap-toothed fashion. SCOTS' two-night stand kicks off its annual week-plus Texas residency that also includes one night in Dallas and five in Austin.