Brothers, Sons and Pearl Snaps

About three years ago on a Friday night I sat down and sent this e-mail to a handful of people after going out to hear a band:
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I left work early today to pick my son up at school and move him home for the summer. After loading up the van with a dorm room's worth of goods and unloading it at home, I checked my work e-mail to see if anything important came in after I left. There was a note from Diamond Dan, which he'd sent to a few of us in the office:

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"Subject: Bastard Sons Of Johnny Cash......
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...........tonight at Milestone's @ 8:00. I can't remember who's opening but they are also a fine act. I will see you all there, and I've got your first two beers."
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I had never heard these guys, but remembered reading about them, and I thought their name was so cool. So I cleaned up and hit the road.

The crowd was sparse when I walked in and there was no sign of Dan or anyone else. The opening act, The Dead String Brothers, a six-piece from Detroit, were already in gear. The frontman was a thin guitar player who brought to mind Beck. The Brothers also had a sister, a big black-haired beauty in very tight jeans who sang harmony. They were firmly entrenched in the alternative country genre, a Wilco/Uncle Tupelo/Whiskeytown amalgam, but still with their own sound. The pedal steel player gave them a nice feel - it was music to drink beer by.

Pearl snaps were prevalent on stage, what with everyone wearing western shirts. As I looked around, I saw there were a bunch of them offstage as well. A tall, thin guy standing next to me had a really gaudy western shirt with all kinds of embroidery that would have been at home underneath one of those Nudie western suits. A long-haired fella, he looked like a graying Jesus ready for line dancing. He was already pretty wound up, hooting and hollering even during the ballads.

After a few tunes the Beck look-alike said the next song was dedicated to a guy they met last night in Buffalo named Ernie, who apparently had gotten pretty excited when they played what Beck called "a relatively obscure cover tune", and they were going to do it again tonight. They broke into the Band's "Get Up Jake." The long-haired guy just about lost it, raising his hooting and hollering to a new level. I figured he must be Ernie. I had to interview him, so after the band was done, we had a chat. He was indeed the aforementioned Ernie from Buffalo, and it as it turns out a personal friend of Levon Helm and Rick Danko. Or so he said. He had come from Buffalo with a bunch of his buddies, who were also starting to hoot and holler, God bless 'em.

The Bastard Sons took the stage after a quick equipment change. They were a four-piece band, and each sported a western shirt, complete with snaps. The frontman played acoustic guitar and sang all of the songs, and the lead guitar player worked the same telecaster all night. This guy was good. Really good. He was the only easterner in the band, hailing from Connecticut; the rest are from California. They did what seemed to be mostly original tunes, with a smattering of Johnny Cash (Long Black Veil & a hepped-up, ska-based Ring Of Fire), Waylon Jennings & the like. I found it to be very satisfying music, and the more they played, the better they got. That improvement was partially fueled by a line up of whiskey shots on the edge of the stage that slowly disappeared one-by-one.

The opening band came out and sat next to me at the bar during the Bastard Sons' set, and had a few shots of their own. After a while, the black-haired beauty had unsnapped her top three pearl snaps to reveal a black bra, and she and Beck got more and more friendly toward each other after each beer chaser. The Buffalo boys hooted, the Bastards rocked, the pearl snaps shone, but Dan never showed. They closed with a rousing version of Viva Las Vegas that would have made Doc Pomus proud.