Texas Alien Abducts O'Hooley's

by Jay Boehmer
For The Post

Sharing the bill with O'Hooley's microbrews this Saturday night is the comedic hillbilly music of Joe Bob Billy and The Texas Alien.

The four-piece "alternative country bluegrass" ensemble will take O'Hooley's, 24 W. Union St., collapsible stage at 11 p.m., then play through a handful of cover songs and a variety of quirky original music with the assurance there won't be a dry seat left in the house.

"We're a whimsical band," said Steve "Joe Bob" Carlson, singer/songwriter/guitarist. "If you're coming to a Joe Bob Billy and The Texas Alien show, you're coming to a party where the audience is involved."

The band formed in 1995 and recorded its first independent album, Alien Sugar Daddy, in early '96. Since the band's incarnation, members have come and gone, but the core of the group has continued to stay strong.

That group's core lies in the strong musical kinship among Steve Carlson, multi-instrumentalist John "Catfish" Juliano and upright bass player Eric "Junebug" Leighton. Joining the band for Saturday's show is drummer Bryan Gibson.

"They're my best friends and we all have the same attitude about life, and that comes through in our music," Carlson said. "We'd rather joke about things than cry about them."

With song titles such as "Have I Fell on Hard Luck or Was it Hard Liquor" and "Drunken Trailer of Romance," the bands laugh-out-loud sense of humor is guaranteed to shine through in their music and infect the audience.

Although the band utilizes the traditional instrumentation of the bluegrass genre, this is not your grandpa's music. With sarcastic humor, odd story telling and a punk music sensibility, the band transcends the traditional confines of bluegrass.

Joe Bob Billy and the Texas Alien continue to play music around Athens, but they have completed eight songs for their upcoming summer release and still are hard at work for other music.

Wiener Moore, an acoustic/electric guitar duo, will take the stage and warm up the audience with a sort of indoor campfire sing-along at 10 p.m. Cover charge is $3 for those 21 and over. An additional charge will be added for those under 21 years old.