Garçon! Another beer, please, for this over-rockin’ Thunder Eagle

“Whiskey + Pills = Lady Shake,” by Thunder Eagle, from Whiskey + Pills = Lady Shake (self-released):

It’s a sticky, humid Friday night at the Westport Beach Club. Women in sports bras and shorts struggle to overpower one another in a slippery pool of whitish mud set up in the middle of the volleyball court. Every so often, a female referee sprays the contenders’ faces with a garden hose. Jake Gleason watches, transfixed, from the bar’s wooden deck.

The singer and guitarist for Thunder Eagle tells me that, in his two decades of life, he has sledded off his own roof in Satanta, Kansas, perched on a bull and attended cheerleading camp. But mud wrestling is one “redneck activity” in which he’s never taken part.

Gleason, who wears a V-neck, supertight black jeans and a conductor hat, isn’t about to start rolling in the mud tonight, though. His band is playing later, following Old Black, Waiting for Signal and Paper Cities.

There’s a downside to performing at a charity event like this fundraiser for the Kansas City Jazz Women’s Rugby Club, however — no free drinks for the bands. As soon as he learns this, Gleason, who is broke, starts yelling for friends to buy him beers. “I need to have at least six,” he explains.

Partying down is what Thunder Eagle is all about. “It’s pretty much what inspires us to write our music,” says drummer Mike Buchholtz. Songs such as “Whiskey + Pills = Lady Shake” attest to this.

Among the band’s favorite stories: drinking a Warrensburg club clean out of PBR and then getting bribed with two six-packs of something else to leave; Buchholtz’s birthday, when Gleason accidentally knocked a woman in the face with a beer bottle; the time guitarist Dane Harris spent three hours driving between KC and Lawrence. “Mike and Dane are the orneriest guys I’ve ever drank with,” Gleason says. “They’ll drink till the sun comes up. And for Mike, that’s not an ending — that’s a restart!”

At his audition, the rest of Thunder Eagle knew right away that bassist Ryan Gee would fit in when he regaled them with the drunken logic that got him beat up and arrested one night in Lawrence. “A guy that gets drunk enough to steal a car sounds like a good guy to have in our band,” Gleason says, laughing.

As it turns out, Gee works as hard as he parties. Gleason credits Gee’s enthusiasm for “putting a fire under the band’s ass” in recent months, resulting in a plan to record an EP at Black Lodge studios later this month.

Thunder Eagle has been flapping around this scene for about a year, since the bands Starboard Side and Vena Amori deteriorated. Gleason and Eagle singer and guitarist Zach Brotherton played in the former; Harris, Buchholtz, and original Thunder Eagle bassist Tim Buchholtz played in the latter. “The metal scene just got way too big in Kansas City,” Gleason says. “We all wanted to play kind of old rock and put a new style to it.”

They have succeeded. Thunder Eagle’s brash sound — fast, dense guitars; pounding drums; and the combination of Brotherton’s melodic vocals and Gleason’s growls — marries Southern rock and hardcore. The band says the old-school tinge is why Thunder Eagle went over a little too well at a Winger concert a few months back. “I can talk to a 16-, 17-year-old girl better than I can a drunk 45-year-old man,” Gleason complains.

Buchholtz, the pretty boy of the band, drinks with a fan club of older women in sundresses this night, including his mother and godmother. The rest of the band members float around the Beach Club, cheering on the other bands (a member of Old Black gives a shout out to “Thunder Beagle”) and pounding beers with friends. Around 11 p.m., Gleason looks on as the rugby team tears down its mud-wrestling setup. He’s about four beers in. “I made sure to not to eat dinner,” he says. “If you don’t eat, the beer counts for more.”

And he has more than two hours left before Thunder Eagle goes on.

When that finally happens at 1:30 a.m., Buchholtz’s family and Gee’s girlfriend are long gone. But about 50 other people remain, scattered throughout the bar area. Brotherton lets his long blond hair out of the bun it’s been suspended in all night. Gee and Gleason remove their caps.

“I’m not gonna lie,” Gleason says with a slight twang, “this mic feels good on my lips.” The band busts into “Whiskey + Pills = Lady Shake,” and a late-night mosh pit erupts.