The Reverend Horton Heat’s Jim Heath hears all kinds of things

Jim Heath is full of stories. As the frontman for the Reverend Horton Heat, he has been witness to — or had a role in — plenty of roadhouse antics over the band’s two decades plus. And like any good songwriter, Heath catalogs his stories on disc.

So the Reverend Horton Heat’s latest full-length, Rev, is full of tragic characters (the heartbroken Santa Fe man of “Spooky Boots”), tough-as-nails matriarchs (“Hardscrabble Woman”) and the occasional odd health nut (“Let Me Teach You How to Eat”). It’s a brawling, riotous, rock-heavy follow-up to the old-fashioned country of 2009’s Laughin’ and Cryin’ With the Reverend Horton Heat, and one that puts dancing neck and neck with listening.

Friday, April 11, the Reverend Horton Heat headlines Knuckleheads’ annual Rock N Roll Prom. We phoned Heath, the Rev himself, to talk about his latest tales.

The Pitch: I can’t decide if “Let Me Teach You How to Eat” is supposed to make the listener hungry or horny. Where is that song from?

Heath: So, the guy that actually named us Reverend Horton Heat was this kind of hippie club-owner guy, and he was always going around telling people what they should be eating and not be eating. And one day, he came up to me and he said, “Jim, let me teach you how to eat.” And I thought, “Well, OK, if I didn’t know how to eat already, I’d be dead.” [Laughs.] But he was talking about vegan and macrobiotic or something, and I’m sure it was all good, but him saying that to me never left me, and so now, 25 years later, it’s a song about sex.

Speaking of sex, is the woman in “Hardscrabble Woman” based on anyone specific?

Not really. I got the idea for the song from this girl that I know who is always doing this wild stuff. Like, the sewage line from her house to the city sewage line busted, and she knew it would cost thousands of dollars to have a crew come out and bust up her backyard and fix it, and she didn’t want to pay thousands of dollars, so she went to Home Depot and rented a jackhammer and all this stuff and started tearing up her backyard. She actually took the jackhammer and got her whole patio broken up to find the sewage leak. And for a girl to just go, “No, I’m gonna fix this” — I mean, that’s one of those deals where you’ve got a crew of 10 guys out there to fix it. It’s not an easy job. And you know what? She did it. It was incredible.

Another time, there was — she lives out in the country, and there was some drugged-looking guy who comes up to her house, and he was asking for gas money, and he scared her nieces. So she got a gun and went out there, and the guy started walking toward her, and she said, “You better stop or I’m gonna shoot you.” And the guy didn’t stop. So she shot past him. And I was thinking, “Man, she’s a hardscrabble woman.” But she’s actually a lot cuter and funnier than the girl in the song.

And there’s a little of my grandmother in that song, too. My grandmother was this super-sweet lady, and she was a ton of fun. When I was 12 years old, she let me drive her car on the highway. When she was a little girl, they were so poor that during her summer vacation, they drove by covered wagon for four days straight to get to an area that is now Arlington, Texas, where they made money picking cotton. And that’s what she did for her summer vacations. That’s pretty hardscrabble, too.

It has been four years since Laughin’ and Cryin’. What has filled your days between your last record and this one?

Well, we’re on the road at least a third of a year, and that’s quite a lot already. But on the other hand, Reverend Horton Heat is a small business — a successful small business. And that’s great on one hand, but on the other, it’s really become an overwhelming thing to have to deal with the tax-compliance issues, filing bookkeeping, just general business stuff. It’s really amazing how much of that I do. It’s pretty intense. I could pull 10-hour days in my office in my house very easily, all the time. I try my best to practice my guitar and my singing and do it, but I really wish my life could be more of that and less of being a tax complier.

You’ve been playing with bassist Jimbo Wallace and drummer Scott Churilla for more than 20 years. What’s the glue that keeps you interested in playing with these guys?

Well, you know, we love to play music. We’ve taken this band from being just three guys driving around in a band, all the way up to this whole thing with a crew and tax compliance and all that stuff. All that being said, we just love playing music. One thing that I really like about my life right now is that playing gigs is actually easier than it’s ever been. When we were starting out, it was nerve-racking. Now we can go out in front of 20,000 people and say, “Well, it’s just another gig. Just like we did last night.” And we just let it rip.