The Lights are Getting Dim by The Neckbones
As Tyler Keith sees it, the Neckbones have never really broken up. Like many bands, the Neckbones, who formed in Oxford, Miss., in the early ‘90s, just sort of stopped playing as they became older and had more family obligations and members moved to other towns. But they are back together and back in action Friday night at Last Rites with Spidora and Toadskin. It’s part of a three-show weekender for them that starts in Nashville on Thursday, hits Milwaukee, and then onto Green Bay for the GBUFO (Green Bay UFO Museum Gift Shop and Records) Invasion Fest on Saturday night.
“This set of three shows is probably the most shows we’ve played since 2000 or something, almost 25 years,” he says. “But we’ve always been good friends, no real balling out. I don’t know if we have issues with letting go. For me personally, we’ve always had a real rapport musically. It’s very easy to play together.”
Tom Smith, the man behind the GBUFO Invasion Fest, is responsible for reuniting them this time. Keith played last year’s festival solo with a backing band, the Revelations, and Smith mentioned the idea of the Neckbones playing this year.
Just a Rock ‘n’ Roll Band
Keith hopes this set of shows will lead to more shows because he says he really loves revisiting and playing the Neckbones’ songs with his bandmates, guitarist Dave Boyer and drummer Forrest Hewes.
The band, which also included bassist Rob Alexander, had been going for about a year when Keith joined the band after living with Hewes over one summer. He and Hewes played music together frequently that summer while the others had gone home from college.
“I think they were looking for someone else to, you know, come in and sing and play a little guitar. And I was just happy to do that,” he says. “I’d been playing guitar all my life, and I’d only been in one band (The Sky Pilots), playing bass. These guys have been playing, you know, since high school and were really probably a lot more seasoned than I was, but just I don’t know, there was something about the chemistry. And probably the chemistry of whiskey was helpful.
“It really clicked right, right from the beginning. It just like energy and songs and stuff started coming.”
Keith says the Neckbones already had a following and continued to build more fans and get bigger and bigger crowds at places like Ireland’s in Oxford. The quartet would go on to release three full-length albums together, including two for Fat Possum Records, Souls on Fire and The Lights are Getting Dim, both excellent, pounding records with perfectly realized originals like “Hit Me,” “Crackwhore Blues,” “Love Ya Rock’n’roll,” “Cardiac Suture,” and “Sick Twist.”
“We were the first kind of white group on there, and we were just huge admirers and worshipers of R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough and Paul ‘Wine’ Jones and stuff, so it was like a dream come true. Being on there with those blues heroes. Even though we were we weren’t a blues band, we were just a rock‘n’roll band.”
Making Artifacts
Even though the Neckbones have been quiet in recent years, Keith has been very artistically active, both with his other bands, the Preacher’s Kids, the Apostles, and Teardrop City, as an author (The Mark of Cain was published in 2022), and as a documentary filmmaker (he completed his MFA in Documentary Expression from Ole Miss in 2020).
But Keith says it’s not always easy because of the reality of the costs involved in various creative pursuits, including releasing music. He says there was an initial rise in people buying vinyl records and musicians making money from virtual shows during the pandemic that has somewhat passed.
“I kind of figured I’m making artifacts you know, but at this time, I’m not sure it’s even worth making an artifact so I was thinking of maybe going back to the extreme artifact of the four-track cassette or something,” he says. “I really don't know. I’ve also been working a lot on writing. I put a book out a few years back, and I’m working on a second at the moment. I feel like I’m just kind of floating around. I’ve never been a good plan-maker or been able to see too far in my future. You know, I don't know I don't have a lot of quote, unquote industry interest.”
The Neckbones play Friday night at Last Rites, 625 S. Sixth Street, with Spidora and Toadskin. The show starts at 8 p.m.
