A sold-out, disproportionately bearded crowd had to hoedown on the spot – there was certainly no room to square dance – during Canadian bluegrass innovators The Dead South's debut Adelaide show (21 March) in support of their latest release, 2024's 'Chains & Stakes'.
For the Regina, Saskatchewan, four-piece featuring Nate Hilts (vocals, guitar, mandolin), Scott Pringle (guitar, mandolin, vocals), Danny Kenyon (cello, bass, vocals) and Colton Crawford (banjo), the moonshine-soaked mountains of bluegrass were not their first musical destination.Nate and Danny started out in a failed grunge band. Colton is a heavy metal shredder. The outfit's success, like all bands, is partly attributable to their songwriting acumen, their technical proficiency, and their rollicking stage shows.
The secret sauce, though, the bourbon in the brisket, has been their seamless fusion of bluegrass and, arguably, blackgrass tradition with their disparate modern influences.
On new release, 'Chains & Stakes', The Dead South doesn't depart far from the formula used to garner 400 million YouTube views for their signature tune, 'In Hell I'll Be In Good Company', which they played while bathed in demonic red lighting.
Instead of greeting Lucifer in the underworld, there's 'A Little Devil' in the sky. New tracks, which featured heavily in the set, like 'Tiny Wooden Box', 'Yours To Keep', '20 Mile Jump', and 'Blood On The Mind' speak of hard drinkin', lovin' and livin'.
Like the banjo licks and the vocal twang, the band's lyrical themes are drawn from the deep well of tradition; though doing so has, at times, provoked heated debate about whether traditional views, particularly relating to gender norms and sexual conduct, should still be expressed in new works.
Alongside new tracks were hits like 'Black Lung', 'Broken Cowboy' and 'Honey You', which ensured that even on a night without a drummer, there was plenty of stomping.
One of the band's favoured techniques, drawn from the Pixies and Nirvana tradition, was dramatic shifts in tempo – frenetic finger-picking, then sorrowful cello bowing, maybe some silence, then back to the manic energy. It is just one trick in a loaded showmanship arsenal which ensured that, despite the cramped conditions, the crowd went home happy.
ARIA Award-winning Hunter Valley blues musician William Crighton played in support, having joined the band on a previous European tour, with stripped-down versions of tracks from 2022's 'Water And Dust', alongside wife Jules.
Solo acoustic versions of tracks like environmental anthem 'Your Country' unfortunately lost some of the key elements that make the album version so much fun. He will return later in the year for a full band tour though.
On this night, the south was not dead; there's a passionate crowd that will be aching for them to rise again with more tours and new albums.
