As the name suggests, Arkansas Killing Time tells tales of murderers, the women (and one man) sent to glory and the spiritual and terrestrial price paid for sin. Lester Raww writes and sings lead for most of the songs, which, he says between numbers, are true stories from the annals of Arkansas crime. The Pine Box Boys are all superb musicians. Possum Carvidi sings and plays banjo, Dr. Timothy Leather plucks and bows a stand-up base, and Your Uncle Dodds maintains a rhythmic back on drums, and whatever else makes a sound when encountering a drumstick.
Together they make a unique hybrid of music best known as "dark grass, " an amalgam of blue grass, country and rock, crossing genre lines with an Irish lilt here and a Latino beat there. There are ballads in the mix, but mostly a rollicking, crowd-moving combination of infectious rhythm and brilliant, black-humored lyrics. The band went through a long set which incorporated many songs from the new CD, as well as others from their extensive repertoire, with the crowd shouting, whistling and clapping wildly from beginning to end.
At the end of the first set, attention was turned to the coffin that contained the body of a dead country girl, produced specifically for this long-awaited CD release party by the fabulously talented Ms. P. The unfortunate Maggie was promptly cut into slices and served to the crowd. Although San Francisco diners have access to almost all the world's cuisines, dead human isn't one they fancy. Consequently, this dead girl had an upper torso sculpted of Monterey Jack (by Raww himself) with baguette arms and fondant hands clutching a bunch of daisies. She wore a cream cheese dress with pepperoni polka dots. Her bottle-blonde head was also made of fondant, a candy made almost entirely of sugar, stuffed with a brain made of dates, nuts and chocolate.
In a side room, there were other things to eat, like appropriate country haystacks fashioned from chocolate and Chinese noodles brought by Mrs. Raww, and trays of cookies shaped like coffins, tombstones, whiskey bottles and bleeding hearts. Beside them, a large hummus hill was covered with turnip tombstones and vegetation of sprouts and nori. At the top, a dead hanging tree had a noose awaiting a Pine Box Boys’ malefactor.
With the food dispatched to its final resting places, The Pine Box Boys returned to the stage to sing another long set that included the three-part saga, Mama had a Third Arm, promised to appear on another upcoming CD. The audience demanded encores. Raww, all black garments, flowing black hair under a black leather Stetson and a luxuriant country beard, with only a patch of gleaming white shirt and warm, twinkling eyes to give away his true character, lead the band in three more songs before they said good-night.
Arkansas Killing Time is now available on Amazon.com, CDuniverse.com, Barnes & Noble, or any of your favorite e-tailers, and in record stores across the country. It's on the infamous Trash Fish Entertainment label, known for a remarkable assortment of the musically unexpected.