Local 'Geriatric' Punks Team With Filthy Honky Tonk Band In SF
By Dave Pehling
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- The late legendary guitar great, composer and satirist Frank Zappa in the mid-1980s released a live album with the title Does Humor Belong In Music? That question gets answered with a resounding "Yes!" by two stylistically disparate bands that bring their tandem tour to the Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco Tuesday night when local geriatric reprobates The Grannies share the stage with hilariously profane Texas honky-tonk outfit The Beaumonts.
Punk-rock bands built around a gimmick usually focus far more attention on concept than they do songs and execution, but for going on two decades, the cross-dressing rabble rousers behind Bay Area quintet The Grannies has been mixing their love for ridiculous shenanigans with some solid and serious rock and roll. Formed in 1999 when the group first clambered upon a San Francisco stage dressed in thrift-store old lady dresses, masks and wigs, The Grannies deliver a trashy, furious assault that echoes the likes of The New York Dolls, The Dictators and The Dwarves.
Guitarist and main songwriter Lois 'Carmen' DeNominator (aka Sluggo Cawley) and company have been entertaining the masses with their onstage antics and infectious anthems drawn from such fittingly titled efforts as Taste the Walker, the outtakes/demos collection Incontinence and the band's most recent full-length effort -- 2015's Ballsier -- for Texas-based imprint Saustex Records while playing regular local shows and touring abroad. Last year, the band released Lords & Ladies, a split live album with the Upper Crust, the notable powdered-wig sporting Boston hard rockers who the Grannies have shared stages with in the U.S. and Europe.
For this show at the Bottom of the Hill, the group will be joined by another regular touring partner and label mates, debauched Lubbock, TX-based country outfit The Beaumonts. Dishing out expletive-filled honky-tonk odes to sex, getting wasted and outlandish escapades for the better part of a decade, the band anchored by singer Troy Wayne Delco and lead guitarist Hollywood Steve Vegas issued it's debut album Get Ready For the Beaumonts on Arclight Records in 2010 before finding a new home with Saustex.
A popular regional Texas act with a solid following, this marks the group's first visit to the Bay Area as they tour with the Grannies up the West Coast. For this show at the Bottom of the Hill, the two bands will be joined by Oakland country punks the Year of the Fist.
The Grannies and The Beaumonts
Tuesday, Sept. 12, 8:30 p.m. $10-$12
Bottom of the Hill
