Legendary Shack Shakers

Along with certain fellow travelers -- Woodbox Gang from Illinois, Red Swan from Michigan, their sometime tourmates Slim Cessna's Auto Club from Colorado -- the Paducah, Ky.-born Legendary Shack Shakers represent a rarely acknowledged strain of post-hardcore death rock that incorporates all manner of primarily rustic traditional rhythms: pre-bluegrass country, electric blues, tent revival spirituals, surf rock, crazed cat-daddy rockabilly, swirling exotic dances from Mexico and Central Europe. All of these styles pool to give the Shakers a sense of energy and swing that bands from both the goth and Americana worlds very rarely touch -- and that's before you even get to the feral on-stage antics of fire-and-brimstone-breathing frontman J.D. Wilkes, who populates his backwoods freight-yard yarns with headless horsemen and other hellish disreputables. Now based in Nashville, they've released seven albums on nearly as many labels since 1998, sometimes changing their name slightly to confuse people. Their most famous fan is probably either Stephen King (who's written about them) or Robert Plant (whom they've toured with). Their guitarist, Duane Denison, also plays in Jesus Lizard.