Southern Discomfort Sounds Pretty Good

Album: House of Freaks, Tantilla, 1989

Best Track: "Big Houses"

Lasting Memory: I taped Tantilla from a friend of a friend named Steve. I got to know Steve pretty well even though he never became an actual friend of mine. You see, Steve and I and my very good friend Dave all shared a bed at a Panama City, Florida, Day's Inn for a week in late March 1991.

It was Spring Break. A total of six people were official residents of the room. I believe the highest occupancy of sleeping/passed-out college kids was 10.

It was a fun trip because of its extracurricular nature, but Panama City -- the "Redneck Riviera" immortalized in song by the inimitable Tom T. Hall -- is the very opposite of a place you'd want to spend a week even if you have your own bed.

I've always gotten the impression that House of Freaks felt this way about their hometown of Richmond, Virginia. Certainly on Tantilla, guitarist Bryan Harvey and drummer Johnny Hott give repeated voice to the mixed blessing of being the latest bearers of and contributors to the heritage of the Old Dominion.

As you can hear here, Harvey and Hott sway in the breeze like the "Family Tree" while being unable to decide whether they or you-know-Who actually deserves to lay claim to the title of the "King of Kings." They question the exact value of "White Folks' Blood" and warn about "When the Hammer Comes Down," which will mean "The Righteous Will Fall." And even as "The World of Tomorrow" looms, threatening to destroy everything they have come to know, they scream into the gathering clouds, "I Want Answers" -- mostly about the past and why they know everything they currently know.

All of these threads come together in the campfire Confederacy sing-along "Big Houses":

Through the tears and smoke I remember
The fields of green where I'm bound
How peaceful and blessed was this great white home
'Til the bluecoats burned it to the ground

Master, mistress, sons and daughters
Field hands and foremen gather 'round
Together, we sang of love and peace
While the walls of our world came tumbling down

[Chorus]
Living in the shadow of big houses
From the cradle to the grave, I'll bravely stand
All across this land
Every woman, every man
Like pillars of stone, brother stand

....

Look away, look away
To the place of our big houses
Their burning walls of fire
Look away, look away
To the place of our big houses
Look away, look away

....

A band I pull from my finger
For the cause of fools never dies
The face of glory lies down in the mud
And the casket train's a'rolling by

All us Virginians are at the House of Freaks' campfire whether we want to be or not.

The duo's Wikipedia entry places House of Freaks in the Southern Gothic tradition of artists like Flannery O'Connor. I wholeheartedly endorse this categorization, and I will add that a lot of the songs on Tantilla sound like long-lost first British Invasion gems played by Guadalcanal Diary.

While definitely underappreciated in their day, House of Freaks played a seminal role in the alt-country movement that hit its full stride in the mid-1990s. Drive by Truckers were both friends and fans, and they recorded 'Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife" as a tribute to Harvey and his family, who were murdered on new Year's Day 2006. Legacies are what the South is all about.

Up Next: House of Pain, House of Pain (Fine Malt Lyrics), 1992