How seriously can anyone take the one man band concept? It’s a novelty by design, right? Somebody tapes a tambourine to their foot, strums a guitar, blows harmonica, and bellows “Hello Dolly,” while wearing loud clothes and smiling creepily in a silent bid for spare change. Eventually, sane people get out of the tourist trap pizza parlor and ignore the tip jar.
When it comes to these things, Homer Henderson is a different animal. Homer, who earned eternal hepcat points by collaborating musically with rock writer extraordinaire turned novelist Nick Tosches, takes the concept seriously in a kitschy b-movie kind of way, using his bass drum/snare/guitar/harmonica arrangement to remember fishing with Lee Harvey Oswald or dreaming about dating a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. A Texas eccentric in the vein of Hasil Adkins, it takes you about one millisecond to determine that Homer isn’t a Chamber of Commerce representative. After one peek at the haunting dark circles around his eyes, you want to hand the guy a chainsaw and cast him in a low budget slasher flick.
Henderson, whose real name is Phil Bennison, has been an under the radar cult figure for several decades. In the 1980s, he debuted with a tearjerker country number about love and poverty – “Picking Up Beer Cans on the Highway.” At his Friday night gig in Fort Worth, he played for approximately forty minutes and displayed an uncanny ability to play country, 1950’s style rock ‘n’ roll, garage rock, and psychedelic music. As a vocalist, he’s no great shakes, but his an excellent guitarist, adeptly working over his Telecaster while effortlessly hopping around different genres. He played fast and loud, mean and lean, often serving up a layer of tasty fuzz-tone icing over the barrage of chords.
Homer knows his rock ‘n’ roll history, covering the Kingsmen’s rarity “Death of an Angel,” “Bo Diddley is a Gunslinger,” and ended the evening with a short Elvis medley. Between those numbers, he reminisced about the Texas State Fair and asked a woman to take her pants down (to the cleaners). One of the fun things about rock ‘n’ roll has always been the dark alley element of shock and weirdness, which Henderson has in spades. He’s a junk shop/thrift store treasure.
Grade – B+