This band plays its own brand of rockabilly
The LeRois launch annual
Folk Festival on Friday
By Paul Sturtz
Of the Emerald
The LeRoi Brothers in full
swing is the sound of true
believers kickin’ out the jams
once church is out. Although
firmly rooted in the rockabilly
tradition, this Texas band
doesn’t stop to kneel at the altar
like the Blasters or Stray Cats.
Instead, they storm the pulpit to
let loose with their brand of
lowdown guitar raveup. In the
process, roots music gets
unrooted.
This five-man rock’n’roll
band made up of only two
brothers and no Lerois will
launch the Willamette Valley
Folk Festival on Friday.
As lead singer J.D. Doerr tells
it, the band is pretty laid back,
with most members usually just
tapping their feet. But every
once in a while.. .well, things
get a bit frantic. Like one night a
while back at one of Austin’s
5th Street clubs, when J.D. got
caught up in the excitement and
went flying, feet-first through a
wall.
“I fell out backwards and
took a big chunk onto the wood
stage,” he says. “The crowd
went nuts — they thought it was
the greatest thing they’d ever
seen.”
The club owners didn’t share
that sentiment — they banned
the LeRois forever from playing
there. (It turns out forever
didn’t last long — the club went
out of business a month later.)
Though 23-year-old J.D. says he
hasn’t broken anything lately,
he does move around quite a bit
especially “when the crowd
starts reacting and getting into
it.”
The LeRois have been getting
into it since 1981 when
Missouri natives Steve Doerr
and Don Leady finally settled
down in Austin after 15 years of
playing guitar together on the
Midwest honky-tonks circuit.
Joining with Fort Worth native,
drummer Mike Buck, they
started gigging sometimes as a
bass-guitarless trio.
They quickly recorded an
E.P. and album on independent
Wherever they go, the LeRoi Brothers
bring a sound that conjures up visions of a
steamroller bulling its way through town
— a steamroller operated by a crazy man
who can’t stop.
“During one song I ran
towards a wall. I didn’t know
what I was going to do once I
got there, maybe flip off the
wall or something. It looked
like it was going to be concrete
or stucco,” J.D. says. “But it
turned out to be dry wall
plastered over. I put both feet
through it and broke through,
hit the bricks on the other side
and ended up hanging out of
the wall up to my knees.
Texas-based labels with a
detour to back up the Legendary
Stardust Cowboy, a performer
known for his bizarre vocal
style.
The experience proved to be
pretty inspiring, Steve Doerr
says. “He came down from Las
Vegas. He’d say ‘this is a coun
try song’ and start singing and
we’d start playing. During the
instrumental sections of the
song he would do this frantic
Courtny photo
The LeRoi Brothers from Texas will perform their punkish version of rockabilly on Friday, at the
Willamette Valley Folk Festival. They will play Max's Tavern at 9 p.m. Saturday.
dancing in the studio like he
was on the stage at Shea
Stadium. Going great guns,
kicking his feet out and
hollering.”
This Texas dance tradition
goes back quite a few years,
reaching back to legendary
bands such as the 13th Floor
Elevators to contemporaries
such as the Big Boys, a hardcore
unit.
“It’s a great tradition to
uphold. The thing is that you
can hear a lot of rock’n’roll at a
normal country dance hall and
everybody dances,” Steve Doerr
says.
Because of this, the LeRois
would not feel libeled if
someone tagged them as a bar
band. ‘‘We do music to dance to
mostly. That term might have
derogatory connotations, but in
one way its basically what we
are,” Doerr says. But modesty
aside, the LeRois are no or
dinary bar band stranded in a
nowhere burg.
In fact they came mighty
close to cracking the big time,
having cut an E.P. called
‘‘Forget about the
Danger.. .Think of the Fun”
for Columbia Records at the
beginning of 1984. Rolling
Stone then spotlighted them by
honoring them as one of the 10
best new bands in March, 1984.
But because the record never
threatened to push Michael
Jackson off the charts, CBS
dropped them shortly
thereafter.
Nevertheless, the LeRois plug
on through personnel changes
— the most recent change oc
curred last year as guitarist ex
traordinaire, Evan Johns
replaced Leady, and J.D. Doerr
became lead vocalist.
The band tours extensively,
usually alternating three weeks
in Texas with three-week forays
into the Midwest or East Coast
and sometimes going to Europe,
where they have a loyal
following.
Wherever they go, the LeRoi
Brothers bring a sound that con
-Ov xsJPar
jures up visions of a steamroller
bulling its way through Main
Street — a steamroller operated
by a crazy man who can't stop.
Instead of the kids being
frightened away, they jump on
top, exhilarated by the most ex
citing thing to hit town in years.
On songs like "Check This
Action” and "Treat Her Right”
the steamroller propulsion of
Buck's flailing drumming and
the guitars grinding away picks
up the listeners right out of their
seats and plants them right into
a sweaty roadhouse.
With a new album entitled
"Lucky, Lucky Me" to be
released on Profile Records in
two weeks, the LeRois are
stretching their stylistic boun
daries. Cajun, country, blues,
garage music and their punkish
version of rockabilly will all be
found, Steve Doerr says. "As far
as music, we do whatever we
feel like anyway. We're just
lucky quite a few people like
it."
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