Tour of the West Coast
Stoned Evergreen Travelers hail from the Pacific Northwest, turning bar rooms and club stages everywhere they play into boot stompin’, hootin’ hollerin’, get down and get dirty if you wanna party parties that put hands together, smiles on faces, and fists in the air. Their unique brand of hellbilly metal combines elements of outlaw country and honky tonk with those of stoner rock, heavy metal, gypsy punk, and thrash… you could describe it as sounding something like Hank Williams meets early Metallica with a touch of Eyehategod and bit of a Gogol Bordello flavor to it. With their name in the billing alongside a veritable smorgasbord of different types of bands, from sludge metal masters like Crowbar to acts like Hayseed Dixie, The Goddamn Gallows and Bob Wayne, their audience is as diverse as the influences present in their music and the wide range of styles among the bands they’re known to play with.
Vocalist and lead guitar player Kevin Pfefferle, aka “Handsome Pepper,” channels the wizardry of his long white beard through his fingertips, to the strings of steel, as he shreds his way through blistering guitar solos and riffs that make you want to move as much as they make you want to rock the most ferocious air guitar you’ve got. At the same time, his vocals go from moody renderings of dark poetry and haunting stories of murder, to powerful rants and angst-fueled tirades both the working man and the anarchist can get behind.
Quite likely the most badass chick you’ll ever see on the upright bass, TJ Demots pounds out the low end with exceptional skill – hard, solid and heavy, whether she’s beating the strings with her hand or shaking the ground below as she pulls the bow across ’em. While she has your bones rattling from the inside, drummer Jeff Greer, a.k.a Frey McGregor, keeps your ride interesting, injecting dynamics and thoughtfulness into the high-octane fury of the power he pours into this psycho-driven, hellfire guzzling hot rod’s engine.
Like the siren wailing atop this Mad Max movie soundtrack-worthy machine, Mischa Kianne saws the hell out of her fiddle like she took it from the devil himself when he went down to Georgia, right after she cut him off at the crossroads, distracted him with a kiss, and then kicked his ass and snatched it right out of his hands. From fast, furious shredding to beautiful, emotion filled, soulful singing on the strings, plunging into dark and chilling sonic landscapes that make the hair on the arms of even those with the blackest of hearts stand on end, she takes a far less than traditional approach to the instrument. Infusing her no-rules fiddle action style with a variety of influences, she draws inspiration from her love for living legends like Charlie Daniels and Tony Iommi to that which she holds for dead legends like Johnny Cash, and younger dead legends like Randy Rhoads and Dimebag Darrell.
Stoned Evergreen Travelers want to show you a world where tales of the evil, the murderous, the scorned, the angry, the lonely and the stonedly, all screaming, brooding, stalking, pounding and destroying, while bringing general mayhem and vengeance, are vividly told against a backdrop of ass whoopin’ rock n’ roll hellbilly metal to melt your brain… and they want to make sure you enjoy your journey through it with ’em, just before they help you smoke all your weed.
Their new album ‘Memoirs From the Dying’ was released in the spring of 2016 via Ruckus Records and is also available for stream at https://stonedevergreentravelers.bandcamp.com/releases
They’ve just completed a tour of the west coast this summer, ending in Seattle at the 99.9FM KISW Men’s Room RedFest in Georgetown, and are continuing to bring their hellfire and flames of fury to every stage they hit, with many more on their list.