Chris Shiflett and the Dead Peasants are coming to Stagecoach 2013. (Contributed Image)
I’ve been a Chris Shiflett fan for a long time–I’ve seen him with No Use for a Name, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes and the Foo Fighters over the years.
I recently talked to him about his upcoming gigs with his side project the Dead Peasants at the Stagecoach Country Music Festival at the Empire Polo Club in Indio on Saturday as well as a show at Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace on Friday night.
It was a really fun interview. I really liked the first Americana roots rock album he did with the Dead Peasants and I’m happy to hear there’s another one in the works. But before that, Shiflett will release “All Hat and No Cattle,” a collection of honky tonk covers which will make up the core of the sets this weekend.
Having grown up listening to KISS and Aerosmith, it was the late, great Tony Sly, frontman for No Use for a Name, who got Shiflett interested in country music. (Side note: I totally thought it might have something to do with Me First and the Gimme Gimmes “Love Their Country” record. I was wrong.)
“Tony turned me on to all of the alt-country stuff that was happening at that point,” Shiflett said in a recent telephone interview.
He started with bands like Wilco, Sun Volt and Whiskeytown and another friend suggested he pick up some Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.
Those classics ended up inspiring the new record. Shiflett said the playing style is different than what he has done in the past.
“I’m used to a big wall of sound and really loud guitars and lots of distortion,” he said. “So to go from that to playing a single coil Telecaster with a pretty clean amp tone, that alone took a lot of getting used to. That’s just not what my ear is used to at all. It took awhile to get comfortable with that. Now I really like it, I love that sound.”
And there is another bonus to playing that way– during a recent Dead Peasants practice session, he just grabbed what gear he had in the garage.
“It makes me feel happy that I can plug in any guitar into any old amp,” he said, laughing.
Read the story behind the new record “All Hat and No Cattle” (FYI, Shiflett said he does have a couple of fancy hats. I asked.) and how many years it took him to play a club with a mechanical bull over at the iGuide.
8 p.m. Friday, Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, 53688 Pioneertown Road, Pioneertown, 760-365-5956, $10, www.pappyandharriets.com.
12:45 p.m.-1:25 p.m. Saturday, Stagecoach Country Music Festival, Empire Polo Club, Indio, www.stagecoachfestival.com
For more Stagecoach news, photos, interviews and information, visit the iGuide Stagecoach page. If you want to follow me on social media, I’m at @vanessafranko on Twitter, the Audio File on Facebook and on Google+.