 "Photo: Jeb Draper")
The twanging, old-time flat-picking and harmony of Chico’s long-time bar-stool entertainers, Three Fingers Whiskey, brought the full-house audience at Cafe Coda to out-and-out stomping, clapping, hollering and dancing the do-si-do.
Much of the over-30 crowd came to see the opening folk-rock band from San Francisco — Nicki Bluhm and The Gramblers — whose co-founder, Tim Bluhm, is a long-time Chicoan and founder of The Mother Hips, a 1990s indie-rock sensation that is still gigging around the country just under the fame radar.
But when Three Fingers Whiskey took the stage with their down-home blend of beer-driven honky-tonk punk-rock, the audience whooped and hollered to greet them.
“The thing about playing after a really good band like that is you probably end up drinking more beer than you should,” lead guitarist Jason Beltz said drawling into the mic a few songs into the Three Fingers Whiskey set. “Hell yeah!” somebody in the audience shouted back.
With a honeyed voice like that of June Carter, singer Lindsay Beltz belted out a set of songs in the old-time country tradition — odes about being a “whiskey drinkin’ kind of wife,” loving a “black-headed, good lookin’ guitar-pickin’ man” and being a California-raised coal miner’s daughter. Throughout the set, which lasted over an hour, Beltz shook her hips and shoulders, stomping her feet and dancing like a top on the tiny stage.
Drawing on the styles of famed country speed-pickers such as Pete Anderson, Roy Nichols, Redd Volkaert, Danny Gatton combined with a touch of Jerry Garcia, Jason Beltz said he tried to make his smokin’ speed-leads count, bending over his guitar in concentration with his poker face on.
“It’s killer,” said Deren Ney, lead-guitarist for The Gramblers, of Jason Beltz’ guitar-picking.
But even if Jason Beltz didn’t touch the level of guitar greats such as Gatton, called “The Humbler” for his off-the-charts picking skill, he still looked good with his fully customized Fender Telecaster, sporting a homemade star spangled pickguard, “straight out of Michaels art supply,” Jason Beltz said, shimmering in the stage lights.
“I used to treat it like total crap,” Jason Beltz said of his trusty Tele. “I don’t know why.”
At outdoor shows touring the rodeo circuit, he used to throw his guitar 20-feet in to the air like Pete Townshend, running to catch it in a garbage can in a feat of true alcohol-fueled showmanship.
“I mean, we used to get out-of-control drunk,” Jason Beltz said. “Thank God we don’t anymore.”
But playing under the influence helped the band hone their energetic stage presence and keep their audiences hopping, Jason Beltz said.
“By getting drunk for all those years, now it’s like we can just simulate that when we play and keep that same high energy,” he said. “You know, just from the experience of being drunk for like four straight years playing shows.”
But the band’s motivation has been to take down the top 40, kick out new country and take back the bars for live music, giving DJs the shove.
Their song “Up In Flames” describes an out-of-work musician burning down a nightclub after losing his shirt “to some fucking DJ, who gets big cash and doesn’t even scratch.”
Members of Three Fingers Whiskey think new country has stolen the image of country music and, if more people could hear what real country such as Hank Williams Sr. and Waylon Jennings sounded like, they would be on board, rhythm guitarist Jade Hopkins said.
“Honestly, there’s so much shitty country on the radio now,” Hopkins said. “That’s the big thing with us. We’re really trying to get at what traditional, real country sounds like.”
Nathan Collins can be reached at
ncollins@theorion.com
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