BbyMutha, Starcrawler and More Cast a Spell at Third Man

There are lots of things you’ve come to expect when the end of October rolls around. Kids of all ages turn pumpkins into glowing jack-o’-lanterns. People debate the merits of candy corn. Black cats, vampires and the faces of the previous summer’s blockbuster heroes and villains grin fiendishly from the aisles of your local drug store. And if you’re a music fan, it’s a good bet that something interesting will be happening at the Nashville headquarters of Jack White’s Third Man Records around All Hallow’s Eve. 

The building’s Blue Room venue has a history of treating fans to some far-out nights of spooky wackiness in service of the season. Past participants in the festivities — usually tied to Devil’s Night on Oct. 30, a nod to White’s native Detroit — have included horror hostess extraordinaire Elvira, psychobilly champ Unknown Hinson, TMR’s resident goth-garage ace Olivia Jean and Runaways singer Cherie Currie. Perhaps the strangest happening involved watching Kid Rock watch his fellow Michiganders, industrial noise merchants and meme aggregators Wolf Eyes, freak out everyone in the place back in 2014. The 2019 incarnation of TMR’s creeptastic haunt — a two-night shindig dubbed Season of the Witch with a Devil’s Night party Wednesday in Detroit and a Halloween show Thursday in Nashville — was yet another occasion for bending genres and melding the musical with the macabre.

I forgot to set my watch to Rock Standard Time and arrived a little early. Noisy soundscapes set the mood in the courtyard, which was lit mostly by the eerie glow of blacklight-reactive paint. The temperature was already headed for the 30s, so my desire to give it a closer inspection fell by the wayside as I headed in to get warm. About half-an-hour later, around 8 p.m., Illinois poppy punkers The Heat Tape set the show in motion. Their music features lots of Phil Spector drumbeats and sounds like all the Ramones’ songs about going to the beach. They set the bar high for costumes, with getups including a really good Bad Santa, a Cobra Kai skeleton and a lanky bug who kept getting his antennae caught in the decorations overhead. 

Local rapper Kent Osborne was second at bat. I’d last caught his impressive buck-wild set at Drkmttr during Nameless Fest. If the boring, sad emcees of the internet are all being dubbed “emo rap,” Osborne is hip-hop's answer to the punk subgenre powerviolence. He barks and shouts, occasionally accompanied by gang vocals as he flings himself into the crowd of slam-dancers. My only experience with the hardcore matinees held at CBGB in the ’80s is from old photos, but the energy radiating from those pics and from Osborne’s set feels very similar. Lest we praise nostalgia too much, it has to be said that Osborne’s music earns high marks on its own merit. He’s raw and vital, with a kinetic force rare in rappers who aren’t Method Man.

It’s rare to see someone going less than all-in on their costume at a TMR Halloween party. There were a lot of duos out there this year: a flower and a bee, Lloyd and Harry from Dumb and Dumber, Slash and Axl, and even a pair decked out as The White Stripes. Some of the more obtuse ones were good entertainment while Jacuzzi Boys set up on the stage. There was a woman dressed like Eddie Van Halen’s guitar, a very large baby doll, even someone dressed up as a frog’s head … I think? Fog-machine fog rolled across the Blue Room from the stage, and I turned toward it to see an oversized Gandalf emerge from the haze with a guitar. It was Jacuzzi Boys frontman Gabriel Alcala. 

The Miami trio has been a frequent presence on the local scene over the past decade, playing shows at fabled DIY hangout Glenn Danzig’s House, defunct punk fest Freakin’ Weekend and beyond. The band still reliably fuses surfy garage punk with heavy bass lines and blurred guitar fuzz. The most intriguing part of their set this time out was a rowdy cover of Sam the Sham’s “Wooly Bully,” featuring a retro-futuristic go-go dancer who somehow appeared from thin air.

By this point, the show was creeping up on the three-hour mark. Rumors were floating around that Chattanooga rapper BbyMutha wasn’t in the building yet, and some of her fans seemed a bit anxious that the East Tennessee mom and MC might not show. Meanwhile, L.A. rockers Starcrawler were setting up to record their set for a future release. The Californians just released their second LP on the Rough Trade label: Devour You, a 40-minute serving of glammed-out riff rock. They’re the kind of band that gets pegged as “retro” just because they have distorted electric guitar solos and hooky choruses. While Starcrawler might focus a good bit on influences from the ’70s, they go well beyond a paint-by-numbers rehash. 

The group tested its sound levels for the recording with a cover of the Ramones’ classic “Pet Sematary” (the band's version was featured in the recent reboot of the 1989 movie). With the sonics all sorted, Starcrawler blasted off into what’s likely to be one of the rowdiest Blue Series recordings you’re ever going to hear. Guitar slinger Henri Cash has chops that nod to a whole host of precursors: The short solos of early Black Flag are there, alongside screaming Ace Frehley licks and an occasional descent into the buzzing din of PiL. Singer Arrow de Wilde’s sassy sway towers over her audience, occasionally recalling the manic contortions of Iggy Pop. The whole thing rides on a foundation built by the rumbling swagger of drummer Austin Smith and bassist Tim Franco.

When the stardust cleared, label honcho Ben Swank came out to announce the costume-contest winner (which went to the weird frog-head thing) and tell folks to stick around to catch BbyMutha. Unfortunately, the witching hour of midnight was approaching and the crowd was thinning. The room was only about a third full when she and three of her four children took the stage, but that didn’t seem to bother anyone. In a recent Washington Post interview, BbyMutha, real name Brittnee Moore, said that she saw her kids as an extension of her art. On Thursday, they served as able backup dancers (and pretty adorable ones, at that). There were some dope bars — including a song from an album that’s set to be released in 2020 — on tap for those who stuck it out. Among that number were some adoring fans who had driven three hours just to see her play. Even a set that felt abbreviated was a big treat for them.

After nearly five hours of spooky hangs, exhaustion was apparent pretty much everywhere as the loyal remainder of the crowd headed out into temperatures just above freezing. All the same, the experience of catching a talented rapper on the rise and some stellar rock sets (one of which will be available on vinyl soon) seemed to have left a little magic glow over the whole affair.

See our slideshow for more photos.