Courtesy Southern Culture on the Skids
MUSIC
ROAD WARRIORS After nearly four decades on tour, Southern Culture on the Skids creates an album that’s all about home by DAVID MENCONI
T
hrough nearly four decades of existence, Chapel Hill’s Southern Culture on the Skids have been road warriors, keeping a relentless touring regimen. It has periodically been a family affair, too. When frontman/guitarist/svengali Rick Miller’s son was born 15 years ago, they just 32 | WALTER
put a car seat in the van and took him along. The kid saw pretty much the entire country by the time he was 3 years old, one raucous barroom crowd at a time. But even S.C.O.T.S. were no match for the pandemic. That’s what it took to get them off the road last year. Undeterred, they documented the novel experience
of not being on the road with their new album, At Home With Southern Culture on the Skids, released in March. As befits the surroundings, it’s a decidedly more down-home version of their usual surfguitar rockabilly madness. “When everything shut down last year, we had to decide what to do with all this time on our hands,” Miller says.
