Southern Culture on the Skids

The Chapel Hill, NC trio Southern Culture On The Skids has been spreading the rock and roll gospel since 1983. Rick Miller – guitar/vox, Mary Huff – bass/vox and Dave Hartman – drums, play a greasy mix of surf, rockabilly, R&B and country fried garage with a side of psych. It’s a musical gumbo Miller calls, “Americana from the wrong side of the tracks.” For over 30 years, the band have toured everywhere from the NC Prison System to Mt. Fuji, Japan, delivering what Rolling Stone calls “a hell raising rock and roll party.”
Since 1983, when they formed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, SCOTS have played their unique hybrid of Americana, surf, R&B, rockabilly, and swamp pop (the band describes their sound as “toe sucking geek rock – kinda weird, but it feels good when you’re doing it”), all the while driving fans into ecstatic, sweat-drenched paroxysms of joy. Assisted by his cohorts in chaos – drummer Dave Hartman and bassist/singer/heartbreaker Mary Huff – Miller and crew have been prolific and ubiquitous for over twenty years.

New for 2015, Southern Culture On The Skids and Fred Schneider of the B-52’s announced their first-ever collaborative 12″ remix EP, Party At My Trouse on YepRoc records! This 12″ nugget of colored vinyl, also available as a digital download, features remixes by THE UPTOWN EXPLOSION (Alap Momin and Jon Spencer) and DJ King Smoothie.

SCOTS have done almost everything in their 30-year career, except this – a 12″ Dance Mix single with Fred Schneider. One hot week in August Fred, Rick, Mary and Dave met up at The Kudzu Ranch in rural NC to record an ode to butt shakin’ – “PARTY AT MY TROUSE” B/W the slinky chaser “HEY MARY” which was released for Record Store Day 2014 as a 7″ single. Millions of fans missed out on the 2014 limited edition, so by popular demand the band and Fred decided to extend the boogie into the night with a 12″ EP featuring 5 brand new booty-shakin’, southern-fried, jukin’ remixes!

In 2013 Southern Culture on the Skids re-recorded and updated every SCOTS original song from 1994’s classic Ditch Diggin’ and released Dig This on CD/LP/digital through the band’s own Kudzu Records.

Singer/guitarist, Rick Miller recalls the inspiration, “We have a drainage ditch that runs by the Kudzu Ranch that had been left unattended for so long it was not doing its job. I decided to dig a new ditch or at least upgrade the old ditch. I was dragging tree limbs, shoveling the muck, looking for turtles and watching for snakes and humming the riff to “Ditch Diggin’.” That is when it dawned on me that it had been almost 20 years since we recorded the album of the same name, and all those songs could use an upgrade to 2013 specs just like this ditch I am sweating over right now, but instead of a shovel – I’d use a guitar. Easier on the back!”

From their 1985 debut Voodoo Beach Party, to the international smash, 1998’s Dirt Track Date (featuring the hit single “Camel Walk”), and on to the shake-a-butt dance party of Party At My Trouse Southern Culture on the Skids have continued to throw what Rolling Stone dubbed “a hell raising rock and roll party.” Their 2005 live outing, Doublewide and Live!, captured all of this on tape, dirty, rough, wild and above all fun!! 2010 saw the band’s first self-release, The Kudzu Ranch, plus the reissue of their classic 1991 album, Too Much Pork For Just One Fork. In 2011 the band released the out of print 1996 Santo Swings EP digitally for the first time ever on Cinco de Mayo. And in fall 2011 Zombified, Southern Culture On The Skids’ tribute to the horror and exploitation movies that populated Southern theaters and drive-ins during the 60s and 70s, was re-released. Originally released in Australia as an eight song EP in 1998, the Zombified Extended Release is now a full LP with the addition of five new tunes.