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Lords of the Highway take road trip to grave
By John Benson
Talk about a following. These days, Lords of the Highway is being followed by zombies, literally.
At least that’s the idea for the band’s upcoming video shoot for its new song, “Better Run From the Graveyard,” which is tied into Cleveland’s annual Zombie Walk.
“It’s an event where they have makeup artists turning people into zombies,” band visionary Dennis Bell (guitar, vocals), said, laughing. “So with access to 400 zombies, we thought we’d take full advantage to make a video.”
For the Lords of the Highway’s new CD, “Death Before 2nd Place,” the rockabilly- psychobilly act decided to venture down a scary lane with horror songs such as “Better Run From the Graveyard” and “Graveyard Beyond the Woods.” It’s all part of the fun image portrayed by the Northeast Ohio trio — Bell, “Stompin’” Joe Hissem (drums, vocals) and Jim “Denim Jimbo” Hissem (upright bass, vocals) — that has been playing music for nearly two decades.
As for the horror bent, Bell feels his band’s tunes fit more with Roger Corman B-movies than any of the zeitgeist vehicles such as “The Walking Dead,” “Twilight” or “Vampire Diaries.”
Something else that defines “Death Before 2nd Place” is a newer approach for Lords of the Highway, which recently switched bass players. The shift in the band lineup led Bell and company to overcompensate its sound to make the difference, which oddly enough isn’t musically based but rather visually based.
“The new CD is definitely a harder edge,” Bell said. “Actually, for this album, we have a new bass player. We had Sugar playing bass with us for five years. And with Jimbo, he doesn’t have the eye candy of Sugar, who is very attractive and always wearing a mini skirt. We had to step up the music a notch or two.”
The result is aggressive tracks such as “You Break My Heart, I Break Your Face” and “Get in My Fun,” which Bell said have been well-received by the band’s regional following. The threesome regularly plays in a four-hour radius of Northeast Ohio. This includes a growing fan base in Columbus, Cincinnati and Detroit, as well as in Youngstown where the group returns for a Friday show at Cedars.
Apparently, there’s an audience for the outfit’s old school-influenced-yet-modern sound.
“I’m pretty happy with what we’re doing,” Bell said. “We have our diehard followers, and that’s what we’re looking for. We know rockabilly and psychobilly will never be mainstream rock ’n’ roll or get mainstream attention. Every once in a while we’ll get some older people thinking we’re going to do straight Buddy Holly or Bill Haley and The Comets, which I do like, but we definitely have a much harder edge to us. It’s almost punk rock.”
Finally, regarding the title “Death Before 2nd Place,” Bell said it’s aimed at those machismo guys who like to race hot rods and would rather die than take home the silver medal. When thinking about Lords of the Highway and hot rods, the old Munsters car comes to mind over some newer suped-up car, right?
“Absolutely, it’s old, usually rusty, rotten and put together with bits of pieces of whatever you got lying around the house, but still running well and fast,” Bell said.
When it’s pointed out that description fits Lords of the Highway, Bell said, laughing, “I guess you could say that — put together with junk pieces lying around the house.”