Scott H. Biram at the Double Door

The other night I had a real nice experience at the Double Door. A singer/songwriter Scott H. Biram played a show. I discovered him just in the last few months and was hoping he would come through. His new album called Bad Ingredients is truly great. The song Broke Ass is a song about dating a stripper that Mike Cooley wishes he had written.

Biram is hard to describe. You can call it rock and roll, country, blues, shit kicking metal or all of that at once. He did all these with an honesty, ferocity, knowledge and skill that was impressive. He reminds me of Mojo Nixon, Bog Log and the Drive-by Truckers. He mixed it up a lot. He covered a Wood Guthrie song. He played I be's Troubled by Muddy Waters which is one of Muddy's first recordings. He played some Jimmie Rodgers. He bullshitted his way halfway through two Butthole Surfers songs that someone was bugging him for. That was fun for me when I finally figured out what he was playing. He closed the show by playing the full Am I Evil by Diamondhead, which was amazing. He also played a slew of his own material, all of it of very high quality. I was wondering if he could pull Victory Song off live and he nailed it.

One thing he does real well is drive a song. He can get that stomp board going and he can put an intensity into a song that is infectious. This was one of the few shows at the Double Door I have been to where the audience crowded the stage and really became part of the show. Biram fed off the intimacy and we all got sweaty and enjoyed the groove.

Biram has a bit of a reputation as a hell raiser and a few of the younger attendees were, well, drunken fuckwads. It was interesting to see Biram play this brilliant set of music and see several of these kids pound PBRs and generally act like asses. The songs he writes and the music he plays are so much more than that. The majority of the crowd was into what Biram was laying down and were with him but the idiot fucks were a distraction. After the show one of them was in the parking lot puking his guts out. It's the little things sometimes that make life fun. As this kid, who was wearing a jean jacket vest with a patch on the back that said "Wooly Wood," was hurling a friend of his hollered at him to go find a corner to hurl in. He said, "It's OK, (spew!), I'm almost done." This rocket scientist also spent a lot of the evening punching himself in the face in time with the beat. He also got tossed out.

Scott H. Biram at the Double Door by me.


A better photographer than me was there and you can view her pictures of the night here. She doesn't allow embedding so I can't post them. I don't understand why some photographers choose not to allow embedding. Do you not want people to see your work? Oh well.