A Slice of the Divine

Least you begin to think that Scot turned into some kind of jazz dude, as Alfred Hitchcock used to say (or was it Rod Serling?), I submit the following.

Scot started to get interested in Rockabilly music around the same time as The Stray Cats were first getting going--those sort of pomped-up post-punk days. Scot and I were traveling in Europe in 1981, and our tour followed in time to see the tatters of The Stray Cats’ tour posters. We missed a gig in London, I’m still sorry about.

We got hooked up with some really cool Rockabilly players in Amsterdam. When we walked into this club, we thought for sure the band was made up of Americans, on tour--like us. But no—these were Dutch guys. They could not speak much English, but boy you sure could not tell it when they got going, and could they rock! They loved Scot. He was like a beautiful young Elvis delivered to them.

This recording reflects the culmination of Scot’s exploration into Rockabilly music. We are going to hear quite a lot of Rockabilly here because it was Scot first serious dive into roots music. Scot was what we call an instinctual player. He had to force himself to learn the chords so that he could talk to the other players. Chords are still written on the tops of various guitars here around the house.

“The Story of Johnny B. Goode” is a Scot Halpin original (copyright on file, damn it). This is a demo track Scot created to present to the band, at the time, Funhouse. Funhouse was a morph of T. Scot Bottom and the Rockabiily Funhouse. Scot is playing all the instruments here. He began recording a lot of this exploration, so eventually you’ll hear from wence he came.

Briefly, we ended up living in Iowa for a year, and we did go back into the backwoods and we encountered some amazing players. We had a wonderful time. It was a perfect example of how music brings people together.