RSS Feeds

Get your real-time updates here...
feed image
feed image
feed image
feed image
feed image
feed image

Search

Poll

How's your job situation?

(27 votes)

  • 48.1%
  • 18.5%
  • 18.5%
  • 7.4%
  • 3.7%
  • 3.7%
Please wait...

News Ticker

Parking tickets soon to be payable online

Wednesday, November 19

The City of Santa Cruz has a new Parking Citation Processing Software System that will allow people with parking tickets to pay or request administrative review of their citation...

more...

20 Cats, One Dog Confiscated From Davenport Home

Wednesday, November 12

Animal Services rescued 20 cats and one dog from a home on Whitehouse Creek Road on Sunday after receiving a tip from a concerned neighbor. Horrendously unsanitary conditions inside...

more...

Local Fellowship Joins Interfaith Effort to End Torture

Tuesday, November 11

The National Religious Campaign Against Torture, a coalition of 300 religious institutions across the nation, has declared Nov. 12 National Day of Witness for a Presidential Order to Ban Torture....

more...

More in: The Ticker

100%
-
+
3
Show options

Sudoku

Sponsored Links

Giving a Damn | Print |  E-mail
Written by Chris J. Magyar   
Wednesday, 16 January 2008

The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band stomps and hollers like nobody else

Image
WHAT HAPPENS IN THE WOODS ... Something about the Rev’s rural blues makes people want to get naked.
 

Josh “Rev” Peyton can sing and play guitar, and maybe play some harmonica if the mood strikes. His brother Jayme can bang on the drums, or the bucket if that’s more handy. Rev’s wife Washboard Breezy, well, she plays the washboard. It doesn’t sound like much, but when all three family members are on stage making their special brand of rural blues—what a decrepit old-timer in a rocking chair might shake his cane at while yelling, “Quit that confounded racket!”—the Big Damn Band is every bit as large as the name indicates.   

Based in Indianapolis, the trio became full-time touring musicians only within the last few years, when demand for their raucous performances started putting an impossible strain on their day jobs. It wasn’t destined to be a musical life for Rev, however. He grew up in rural Indiana—his father split time making concrete and trapping animal furs—to the sounds of blues-oriented rock, and played guitar from the age of 13. But a strange condition in his hand locked it up, and he had to drop out of music, working in a hotel, barely able to turn a doorknob, much less finger a fret.

“I spent a year and a half trying to fix it,” Rev says, “going to different doctors, and basically ran out of options. Then I met this fella from the Indiana Hand Center who just felt my hand and said he thought he could fix it. But the only way he could tell for sure was to cut my hand open. I said let’s do it.” The surgery was a success, not only restoring his mobility, but granting his hand newfound flexibility that allowed him to play finger-style guitar on a six-string—basically picking out the bass and lead guitar lines at the same time. “It’s very old school,” he says of his technique. “Not many people do it anymore. Everybody plays with a pick. It ain’t done with pedals or effects.”

During his re-emergence as a musician, he met Breezy, and the two found they had an enormous amount of unusual tastes in common. Now, the trio plays rip-roaring shows all over the United States and Europe. Rev Peyton has been appointed a Kentucky Colonel by the governor of that state—the highest civilian honor available—and audiences are even starting to a pay a strange, if just as moving, tribute.

“The craziest show we ever did was this time in North Carolina, where everybody got naked,” Rev says. “It was outdoors, in the mud. They just started taking their clothes off. Must have been 400 or 500 kids, men and women, just buck naked. We still have people come up and tell us they were at the Naked Show. I’m so glad someone was there to see it. I thought I dreamed it.” Rev says he told that story to a college crowd in Wisconsin, and damned if they didn’t get naked there, too. “Maybe I ought to tell that story more often,” he says.

 Rev’s bellowing singing style is a perfect match for his astounding beard—which is no calculated put on, as the man has been shaving since the fifth grade—but it has been perhaps the last piece of the puzzle to lock into place. “Nobody ever taught me anything about how to sing, I just did it,” Rev says. “I just pull deep in my chest and sing from my gut. I’m not trying to sound like anybody else.”

The songs themselves spring from the place where good blues songs can only emerge: authentic experience. “I don’t write songs that I just make up. They all happen to me or are something I’ve seen,” he says. The band hasn’t stepped into full-time musicianhood gingerly; Rev estimates they played more than 250 shows last year, and hope to do more in 2008. “It ain’t for everybody,” he says, “but it’s for us.”

Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band plays at 9 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 20, at Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Way in Santa Cruz. Tickets are $10/adv. and $12/door. For more information, call 479-1854.

Trackback(0)

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Write comment

smaller | bigger
security image
Write the displayed characters

busy


Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites
 

Most Recent Comments

Does Obama Do Yoga?
If the past 4 years of yoga in Santa Cruz with Mark Stephens has any indication of the next 4 years of an Obama Administration, our country has a major crisis we better begin to prepare for. I took a...

Los Dryheavers head to Mexico
the cranks de califaztlan are the best

Does Obama Do Yoga?
Does Obama do yoga? I think that this is a good question. If he doesn't, he sure had me fooled. If he does, how "cool" would that be! And not just for all of us yoga junkies, here in santa cruz, who...

Student Activists Flyer at Chamber of Commerce Dinner
Thank you Elizabeth for exposing this on going struggle up on the hill. It is sad that the University of California received an award for organization of the year while it has continuously failed to ...

Neighbors concerned about Neary Lagoon
Didn't I see something about psychically affecting the water in that Santa Cruz hit movie, "What the @#$%^ Do We Know Anyway?" Answer: not very bleeping much! It's swampy water, it's natural. Don't b...

From Our Archives

Latest Forum Posts
TopicsByCategoryDate
2009 NEWPORT BEACH FILM FESTIVAL-THANKS...NewportCommunity Bulletin Board11-06-08
Re:the latest lie prop 8 promotesanonymousNews10-30-08
Re:the latest lie prop 8 promoteswere all equalNews10-27-08
Re:the latest lie prop 8 promotescmagyarNews10-19-08
Re:the latest lie prop 8 promotesScottNews10-19-08
Generated in 1.42401 Seconds