Jesse Henry and the Spikedrivers

The Spikedrivers love to act up — before, during and after any of their foot-stompin’, crazified country numbers. But the group’s singer-songwriter Jesse Henry, fiendish fiddle player Megan Palmer, guitarists Paul Brown and Steve Sweney, drummer Nate Anders, and ZZ Top-mutton-chops bassist Steven Fox do much more than toss their longhaired, sweaty selves around the sage. Their sound is a reflection of raw musical talent, and it has a distinctive flavor that comes out somewhere between the Wilders and Old Crow Medicine Show. Toss in a few melancholy tunes, the occasional weeping, heaving cello and a general old-timey feel to their jam, and the only conclusion is that the Spikedrivers deliver exactly what they advertise. It’s a boom-funk-chunk, everything-in-the-kitchen, leave-behind-your-order-and-listen country kind of music.