“ I’m hear to testify that Hank Williams’ Lost Highway and AC/DC’s Highway to Hell are the same roads,” snarls frontman, Barley Scotch. “And I’m hear to testify that the journey is still no joke”, say I. Not even after three rebel rousing albums and a full-length DVD of their poop spreading shenanigans.
You may have thought the joke was likely to have worn off by now, but the first live DVD ‘No Sleep ‘Til Liverpool’ proves the punchline extends well beyond the remits defined by the the band’s groundbreaking, trillion-selling 2000 album, ‘A Hillbilly Tribute to AC/DC’ which combined the flatpickin’, banjo duelling hillbilly-chic of bluegrass with the dirty, sleazy, rock-terror of AC/DC to barnstorming effect. In fact there have been a couple of follow-up records that have performed just as robustly. Are these the guys that terrorised the trains and tracks of post–Civil War Indiana, I hear you ask? No, that was the Reno Gang. This is the Reno brothers; Don Wayne Reno Jnr and Dale Reno – sons of the legendary, Don Wayne Reno Snr, famous Nashville stalwhart, cable network host and banjo-pioneering composer of ‘Duelling Banjos’ – the song made eerily famous by John Boorman’s 1972 film, ‘Deliverance’. And in all the jobs they’ve pulled, and all the trains and banks they’ve robbed, they’ve never shot anyone; but they have along with fellow shit-hot Nashville musicians, John Wheeler and ex-Supergrit Cowboy, Jason D Smith concocted one of the most enduring novelty acts this side of Spinal Tap.
Naturally the Dukes Of Hazzard cover-story they’ve concocted is a lot more satisfying than the reality, and the fact that the tongue-in-cheek cartoonery of the ‘Dixie has significantly outshone the band’s more ‘serious’ alter-ego, ‘The Kerosene Brothers’ suggests the comic whole is much greater than the sum of it’s small, prosaic parts, but it would be too churlish by half to object. And who could blame them playing up to it all with the faintly embarrassing mock-u-mentary, ‘The Story Of Rockgrass’ commissioned specially for this release?
Anyway, here it is in all it’s loosely amusing, dungaree-daring entirety; the main body of the DVD featuring concert footage recorded at Liverpool Academy on 16th September 2005 in the wake of their ‘A Hot Piece Of Grass’ release and including such toe-tapping, bandana-curling crowd pleasers as ‘Walk This Way’, ‘Ace Of Spades’, ‘Whole Lotta Rosie’, ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ and ‘Ticket To Ride’ – all mocked-up in that delightful fiddle-thrusting, bottle-necking, banjo-beating bluegrass we’ve come to know and (kind of) love.
Sure beats the 60-minute video and tab book (Level 4) put together by Don Wayne Reno Jnr. previously. Although naturally it includes everything you wanted to know about flatpickin’.
Special Features: Music Videos, The Story Of Rockgrass Movie, Cambridge Folk Festival & Interview, Fan Galleries.