REVEREND HORTON HEAT
Irving Plaza – New York, NY – 15 December 2017
Horton’s Holiday Hayride
As the snow fell on Friday night, Reverend Horton Heat brought their Holiday Hayride to New York City’s Irving Plaza. Along with lots of smiles and tons of holiday joy, they also brought with them a few special guests to help celebrate the holidays with us.
The Blasters would warm things up at the beginning of the night with their Rockabilly Cowpunk style all the way from Downey, CA. The band played an hour-long set that would include such classic hits as “Dark Night”, “American Music”, and “Marie Marie”. The Blasters have a very distinctive sound that can be described as Country, Blues, and Punk all mashed into one great ball of energy.
Reverend Horton Heat took the stage opening with “Big Sky”, a tease of various Christmas melodies, followed up with “Baddest of the Bad” and “Psychobilly Freakout”, before going into Gene Autry’s cover of “Rudolf The Red-Nosed Reindeer”. Frontman Jim Heath shared various stories and played holiday covers from Chuck Berry and George Jones while being joined by special guest Big Sandy of Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys. The band also covered Harry Reser and His Orchestra’s cover of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” – a mash-up of the classic Batman theme song and “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”. Jim Heath would then continue telling a story about the time they had jammed with Lemmy before dedicating the next song to him, a cover of Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades”. With chants of ‘One More Song!’ were being yelled by the crowd, the band would then take the stage with Big Sandy to play a two song encore before ending their two-hour long set.
All photos © Mark “Smitty” Neal – Nightcap Studios
