From the Wilds of Oregon

What the world needs is more shows like the one Portland's Hillstomp performed at the Tractor on Friday. Ok, we're predisposed to love this band for some reason, but after finally seeing them live we're absolutely sure the South will rise again. Will we be better off when they've transformed us all into dirty rockin hillbillies? Well, it'll be a change, at least.

The Hillstomp premise is this: Two guys on stools. One plays slide guitar, the other plays an approximation of a drum kit. It's actually a bass drum, a few small cymbals and a bunch of buckets and pans arranged where toms would be. On his chest he wears a washboard that's he uses like a snare. They hammer down on a really strong blues-sounding riff for two or three minutes while the guy with the guitar sings something Appalachian-inspired and then they stop and the crowd pisses itself for another minute, and then it happens all over again until finally they walk off with their stools and the Young Sportsmen come on stage. At least that's our experience.

It's an act, of course. They're from Portland, not Eugene. The Hillstomp two look like a reasonable facsimile of down home, squeal like a pig, good ole boys, and the music has some authentic country blues and blues stomp elements mixed in with a more modern rockabilly kind of thing, but the great part is that they play their shit straight up, unlike, say Blitzen Trapper, another Portland band we're trying to love that occasionally mines the same vein. Blitzen Trapper throws one or two really decent country rock songs on an album and surrounds them with forty minutes of hipster bullshit. They wink so grotesquely and so frequently it looks like they're having a seizure. Hillstomp never winks.