As if to answer my first – and probably your first – question, the press release opens with “Who on earth are DM Bob & The Deficits? It would seem that DM Bob is an American who found himself dislocated into Germany and passed the time between 1995 and 2002 doing the swamp pop thing in downtown Hamburg with two like minded reprobates going by the names of Susie and Tank Top.
As the title of this album would suggest, this is what might be called country music, or at least it would if Nashville had never been invented. Raw and raucous, this is music to drink beer and fall over to and, fuelled with a wry sense of humour, this is the band to lead you down the road to the farm. “I’d Rather Be In Texas” is treated with the deadpan seriousness a traditional song deserves while the title track – written by the misfit cowboy himself Lee Hazelwood – just about falls off its chair on its way to inevitable chaos.
The title track isn’t the only cover here and Lou Reed’s “Satellite of Love” duly gets dragged right out of the city and thrown in a ditch. Better than the original? Actually, yes! More respect is shown to Buck Owens as the smiling insanity takes a short break for a tasteful version of “Yearn’n Burn’n Heart”.
I’ve got a Stetson and a bottle of bourbon and now I’ve got a soundtrack to a drink fuelled barn dance. Whilst rough round the edges, this retrospective of DM Bob & The Deficits ticks all the right boxes. They called them country and they were right.
Available on CD and vinyl from Off Label Records.