The Reverend Peyton, as he is better known, and his Big Damn Band played an in-store show at Landlocked Music on Sunday afternoon. The show kicked off a week of the band’s in-store performances around the Midwest in support of their upcoming album “So Delicious!,” which is set for widespread release ?Tuesday.
Country blues is the genre Peyton said best fits the type of music the band plays. However, people who expect to hear imitations of the iconic musicians from the genre such as Robert Johnson or Charlie Patton will be disappointed, ?he said.
“I’m trying to make music that is alive, that is evolving, living, breathing, that doesn’t just belong in a museum, that belongs to now,” Peyton said.
Charlie Fultz, a fan who drove from Oxford, Ind., for the show, said he first heard the band eight years ago and has kept listening because of their original sound.
“They’re not like any other group I’ve heard ?before,” he said.
On one song from the album, Peyton sings that he “never took one lesson from anyone famous or cool,” but he taught himself to play guitar and calls himself “front porch trained.” Rural elements like this run throughout the album, from “Pot Roast & Kisses” to “Pickin’ Pawpaws.” Peyton said telling “real rural stories” is one of his goals ?in writing.
“Modern country music, it’s like this bro-country sort of caricature of what it’s like to be living in American rural culture,” he said. “I try to write songs that are very personal so that we don’t get caught up in some lame cliché like that.”
The band’s dedication to the rural lifestyle native to their home in Southern Indiana doesn’t go unnoticed by their fans.
People were tightly packed in between album racks at Landlocked. The crowd even extended out the door. Dedicated fans brought their children, some dressed in “Big Damn Band” sweatshirts and newsboy caps, and several people bought the new album both on vinyl and CD.
Fans came for the show from the band’s home of Brown County, Ind., including Alex Voils, who said he had seen the band three or four times already. Voils said the band are ?“hometown heroes.”
After their stint of record store shows are over, Peyton said the band’s tour schedule is the most dense they have ever had. The band plays about 250 tour dates every year, and he said they are going to be pushing that number in support of their new album.
“It’s not for everybody, and with a tour like this, you find out who can handle it and who can’t,” Peyton said, “But it’s like everything else in life; it is what you make it. You can let it wear you out and it can destroy you, or you can embrace it and love it for what it is — an opportunity to experience things the vast majority of the planet will never get to experience.”
