Music
Playing Thursday, 24th at Opry Mills’ Gibson Showcase
It was the peak of the roots-rock revival, when Jason & the Scorchers, the Georgia Satellites and others seemed ready to repel a horde of MTV sweetmeats. After successful European gigs, lucrative endorsements and plum tour slots such as opening for John Lee Hooker and the Satellites, The Dusters were primed to mop up. Alas, the band members parted ways in the early 1990s before briefly rejoining a few years ago for a tour and a CD.
This Thursday’s reunion show amounts to a summit meeting of heavy hitters from Nashville’s roots-rock scene, including Scorchers guitarist Warner Hodges, the Satellites’ Dan Baird, ex-Maverick Nick Kane and blues rocker Dean Hall—joined by Bombshell Crush’s Joey O, Mike Scaccia from Ministry, former Mick Taylor sideman John Ripley and David Lee Roth bandmate Bart Walsh.
To commemorate the occasion, we compiled this band history from interviews with Barnette, McMahan and drummer Jeffrey Perkins.
Ken McMahan: We started in 1986, and there was all this synergy back then between 91 Rock and Cat’s Records and the music scene. You had all these [DJs] like Regina [Gee], Adam Dread and Clark Parsons at 91, and the music was getting out there.
J. David Barnette: We played several gigs as PJ & the Dusters. We had Jerry Dale McFadden on keyboards, and the “PJ” was Paul J. Niehaus [now with Lambchop and Calexico]. He drove an old gold Duster, and that’s how the name came about. It was almost like we were four bands in one, because all of us were writing songs. When we did his songs, it was more alt-country. Kenny’s was more blues, and I was more cowpunk meets hard rock. We were kinda flip-floppin’ between styles. Jerry Dale ended up leaving and getting his solo gig.
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McMahan: Our very first gig [as The Dusters] was at the Alt Writers Night on Wednesdays at Elliston Square that Jerry Dale hosted. I remember it well, ’cause we rehearsed for about two months. But we came off sounding more rockabilly than Edgar Winter-type stuff. This girl I knew told me afterward I should turn it loose—and when I turned it loose, out came this thing that we are (laughs).
Jeffrey Perkins: Leo Overtoom was the original drummer, the one who went to Belmont with Kenny and Barney. Then he split, and it was Chris Sherlock. He did the one record, This Ain’t No Jukebox—this sounds so Spinal Tap-ish, it’s incredible.
Barnette: It was hard back then getting gigs. There were not a lot of places to play, and definitely not for a blues-rock trio. There was Cantrell’s, there was Roosters, which I guess is where the Mercy Lounge is now. I think that was still when Tommy Smith’s dad owned Elliston Square, and we played there a lot. We played lots of weird gigs. Prison gigs. There was this one show in Carbondale, Ill., where the entire dance floor was filled with people in hospital beds.
Perkins: Barney had this old Dodge Ram van, and I think he’d had it since day one, when [Reptile Records chief] Scott Tutt was kind of their Svengali. It was the biggest piece of shit you’ve ever seen. It was like a peep booth in a porn shop on wheels. Haul a peep booth out of the Purple Onion, stick some Bridgestone tires on it, and that was this van.
Hair to Stay The Dusters in their heyday
McMahan: The Gold Rush was the center of the scene. There’d be the guys from Walk the West in there, the Questionnaires, the Royal Court of China. They made us feel accepted. The corner booth—that was the key spot. When you got to the corner booth, you knew you’d made it.
Barnette: It was a nightly occurrence to see what band got that booth. The Scorchers were king daddies back then, and they had it whenever they were in town.
Perkins: Imagine what the Gold Rush was like in 1991. There was always some real knucklehead stuff going on. I remember Kenny and me going into the bathroom one time to take a whiz, and there’s Steve Earle passed out in the shitter.
McMahan: No, he was talking to me from under the stall, telling me how much he loved the band.
Perkins: I moved to town in July 1991 from Chicago, and after living in town for a week I heard from a friend of a friend there was this band with a buzz going called The Dusters. The rest is rock history!
McMahan: When Jeff hit the band, we were at a new plateau. We tended to go in cycles: we were up in ’87, cooled off a little, then picked back up in ’90. Our best crowd was the Vandy crowd. But every few years they’d leave, and we’d have to win over a whole new bunch of students.
Perkins: I’d say the Rock Block had peaked by 1991.
McMahan: When we moved across the street from Elliston Place to the Exit/In, I kinda felt it was over for us. Then it just became about filling the room. We missed the intimacy you get when you pack 200 people into a tiny room. I don’t know if it was the Seattle scene that did it in, but the roots-rock explosion just kind of fizzled.
McMahan: Dave was moving to Florida, and Jeff was getting better gigs—better paying gigs. After seven years of beating our heads against a wall, it seemed like a good time to try something else. Our last show was New Year’s Eve 1992-93 at the Exit/In, and I remember it being very anticlimactic. We didn’t fill the room, and it just made us feel we were doing the right thing.
Perkins: Everyone’s habit is pretty much gone, and we look back and laugh about all the knucklehead things we did. Now it’s like we’re growing old gracefully. And we can still rock.
Barnette: I hope this is the beginning of a new chapter. Let’s face it: I hate to say, but we’re full-grown men now, and it would be great just to go out a few times a month and put on a rock show.
McMahan: We used to have “Legends in Our Spare Time” written in lipstick on a mirror in the living room of the Duster house on Beechwood Avenue. Sums it all up!
More is available at the Scene’s music blog, nashvillecream.com