Candlelight to Sunshine: Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band Fires Up Summer Tour at City Winery

It’s the kind of thump a bluesman at heart wants to hear in the air, beckoning from a Nashville winery. That thump, punching louder and harder every step taken through the parking lot towards its source, not only had a relieving effect to shots of sprained ankle pain, but once reached, serendipitously revealed itself to be the thunderous bass drums of Southern Indiana’s acclaimed rockabilly-toned Delta-grass blues outfit The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, thudding from Nashville’s City Winery on April 15.

Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band kicked off its summer tour that evening to promote the group’s eleventh full-length album, a pandemic-inspired Dance Songs for Hard Times, which happened to top Billboard’s Blues Albums chart a couple of weeks following the album’s release on April 9, through Thirty Tigers Publishing.

Comprised of Reverend Peyton on stage in his flat-hatted, train conductor fashion, clawhammer-picking both the bass and melody runs on a connoisseur’s selection of gorgeous, vintage guitars; wife and percussionist Breezy Peyton, showing out a black, floral pinup dress, scratching the wash-bourine (her pimped-out washboard has a tambourine sidekick attached at the bottom); and drummer Max Senteney, just looking cool, The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band showed the neatly packed, safely spaced venue just how their pandemic time was spent. During this time the band wisely holed-up, penning Depression-era sounding lyrics of woeful hope and observational despair by candlelight while, musically, channeling and amplifying inspiration from blues guitar pioneers Charley Patton—as heard in that night’s rendition of “Mississippi Boweavil Blues,” seemingly played on Jack White steroids—as well as their bass drum-heavy rendition of Jessie Mae Hemphill’s comforting traditional gospel “Old Time Religion.” They used the latter for a mid-performance stage show climax as every bass drum and crash ride within reach was beaten senseless and every light, including the Death Cadillac’s headlights behind them, rapidly flashed in bombardment as Breezy’s wash-bourine spontaneously burst into flames at the side of the stage, while the Rev got into hammering pinkie slide riffs so hard he boot-kicked Senteney’s crash cymbal across the stage, leaving Senteney wandering crash-less for the song’s closing. It was great.

*Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band, photos by Tyler Zoller*

Comparing those two-decade-old Rev. Peyton crowd-rousers to the 11 new originals of 2021’s Dance Songs for Hard Times, it’s noticeable there’s been a long-running dichotomy in Rev. Peyton’s bluesy compositional tact still utilized throughout the new album’s entirety. That potentially awkward dichotomy between lyric and music can halt listeners in a realization they’re cheerfully dancing to some cleverly placed, desperate content tailored by COVID experiences. The track titles alone (“No Tellin’ When,” “Crime to Be Poor,” “Til We Die,”) are enough of a giveaway, but the Big Damn Band is good at festive trickery. They make them hand-clappin’ blues.

“This song, in my opinion, is the saddest song on the record,” said Reverend Peyton before playing the set out with “Come Down Angels,” the Dance Songs for Hard Times closer, “but, it sounds like the happiest song on the record.

“I love doing that. I love writing really sad songs that sound happy,” Peyton continued. “It’s a pitifully sad song if you listen to the words. If you don’t want to feel really sad and pessimistic, then don’t listen to the words. Just listen to the music and you’ll be uplifted . . . You’ll feel uplifted, but it’s not uplifting. It’s sad,” he said as the crowd’s laughter soon turned to dancing. Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band is all about that dichotomy.

After the set closer, to an unrelenting applause, Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band gratefully reappeared from the wings for a democratically chosen encore, “Two Bottles of Wine,” from their album The Wages. It was mandated by Rev. Peyton to be played as Zydeco, though, and he led the crowd in a few call-and-response warm-ups. It was a brilliant idea as folks lightly jigged back into the parking lot, afterwards, feeling the Big Damn Band blues for the better.

Find more dates for The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band’s Dance Songs for Hard Times tour, along with band information, links to the entire catalogue, live-stream concerts and more, at bigdamnband.com. The band plans to return to Middle Tennessee for a Oct. 2 and 3 stop at The Caverns. The videos for three singles from Dance Songs for Hard Times are encouraged to be seen on Youtube, especially, “Dirty Hustlin’.”