CRITIC'S PICK: ASYLUM STREET SPANKERS
By Barry
Gilbert
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
February 2, 2006
9 p.m. Friday at Off Broadway, 3511 Lemp Avenue. $12 advance, $14 at the door. 314-773-3363 or www.offbroadwaystl.com; 21 and over
Do you like a good spanking?
How about old-timey country, bluegrass, jazz, blues and acoustic
music in general? Then be at Off Broadway on Friday night for
Austin, Texas, eccentrics the Asylum Street Spankers. Think Cab
Calloway, Earl Scruggs and Southern Gothic voodoo, but be
prepared for a side trip to B-52's territory ("Dance This
Mess Around"), "Green Acres" ("TV
Party") and, uh, rap ("Hick Hop"). It's all fed
through some delightfully warped personalities -- the fiddle
player, for example, sports a spiky Mohawk and answers to the
name of Sick. Led by Christina Marrs, Wammo and Guy Forsyth, who
met while busking in Austin in 1994, the seven Spankers offer
spectacular musicianship without, as they say, the use of
"demon electricity." They're touring behind
"Re-Assembly," their 10th-anniversary reunion concert
DVD. But a beer-soaked club is the place to hear about characters
such as "Jerry the Junker," "Man From
Harlem," "Paul Revere" and "Lee Harvey"
-- yeah, Oswald.