Hillstomp: Bucket rock

Hillstomp's Mississippi blues get punk'd

By Mike Prevatt

Never underestimate the fickleness of a genuine music fan. Percussionist/vocalist John Johnson went through a variety of music genres before discovering the one that would lead him to form a band--hill country punk blues, as he and bandmate/guitarist/vocalist Henry Kammerer have dubbed the sound of their Portland, Ore.-based act, Hillstomp. It's hard to imagine a more wayward route to the blues.

"I grew up listening in the early part of junior high to pretty much classic rock--Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, all the basic stuff," says Johnson. "I switched over to a lot of, like, British post-punk stuff and punk in ninth grade or so, a lot of industrial and that kind of thing in college, and a lot of jazz. It wasn't actually until I met [Kammerer] 2 1/2 years ago that I started listening to the kind of music that gave birth to what we're doing."

Johnson is hardly the model of music conventionality, and that suits him just fine. Besides his appreciation for North Mississippi trace blues--a darker, more groove-oriented form of North Mississippi blues, not exactly a buzzing music genre itself--he plays in a two-man band where, for the capper, the drum set is almost entirely made up of items located in most household garages.

However, none of this diminishes the quality of One Word, Hillstomp's debut longplayer, released in January. The album comprises 11 tracks--seven written by the duo--punctuated by one or two acoustic guitars, and sometimes a banjo and/or harmonica, and driven by a steady beat free from bombastic snares and tom-bashing. On one hand, it's a subtle, spare sound that hardly overwhelms. On the other, Kammerer's often-rambunctious guitar playing and Johnson's consistent, unshowy rhythms--along with their penchant for minimal chord changes and lo-fi recording--are rooted in punk. In fact, most of the bands they play with come from a punk background, and their approach tends to win them more new fans than they'd expect.

"[At] our last show at the Double Down, we were sandwiched between four very hardcore bands and, honest to God, we didn't know if we were going to get beer bottles thrown at us, or if people were going to dig it," says Johnson. "And they were really into it. I would say a lot of that comes from, y'know, unlike the practitioners of hill country blues, we're not in our 70s, we're not from Northern Mississippi. So there's a lot of youthful energy in what we're doing, a lot of uptempo stuff, a lot of really driving, rocking beats...you'd get from a punk-type thing."

Another punk-like component to Hillstomp is the drum set-up. Aside from a real kick drum, Johnson has constructed a duct tape-bound kit that includes tin cans, cardboard boxes, plastic tubs and barbecue lids. It seemed apt when the band began, given its limited financial means, its DIY instincts and the rustic nature of the sounds projected when the objects were struck. But Johnson has stuck with the arrangement, and it's the only one he's ever used.

"It was pretty much by necessity," says Johnson. "We didn't know where this would go, and I didn't have a drum set, [or] the money to buy one. I worked in a restaurant chock-full of plastic buckets and tin cans, so I grabbed a bunch of that, some boxes, and started playing. And we found pretty quickly that it was suitable to the sound. At this point, even if someone purchased me a drum set--that I still can't afford--I wouldn't use it. I might use it to learn how to play drums better, but it would not be appropriate for what we do."