Ray Price, Dale Watson, & Billy Joe Shaver at Knuckleheads

It’s hard to believe that Friday night at Knuckleheads was an actual show. Ray Price, Dale Watson, and Billy Joe Shaver, all in one night, with separate bands, brought together because Frank Hicks apparently can clap his hands and make such things happen. It’s just like the way he hauled Knuckleheads itself up from scrap metal, parking-lot, and so many elements of gutbucket roadhouse genuineness that it exposes the House of Blues as just Blues Brothers 2000 set in an Applebees.

No, this the kind of show you hear about years later from boastful guys at record stores. You never believe guys like that, of course, and fire back something like, “What, Ferlin Husky was unavailable?” or “I’m surprised they didn’t exhume Charlie Rich.”