homer henderson

phil bennison, aka homer henderson, is a richland hills native, currently living in exile in dallas, who attempts to answer the musical question, "can the spirits of link wray, jimmy reed, bo diddley, and george jones coexist inside the body of an eccentric 50something white man with under-eye pouches that make him look like one of the undead from a '50s zombie flick?" i first laid eyes on him at the ass-end of 1998, at the keys lounge, where he was playing thumping one-note bass for robin syler. i subsequently learned that he's actually cut rekkids with nick tosches, maybe the greatest american writer of his generation: biographer of jerry lee lewis, dean martin, and sonny liston; author of country and unsung heroes of rock and roll, two of the most disturbing music books you can find the next time you're perusing the shelves at half price; equally adept at fiction -- his mafia novel trinities is as stunning a depiction of pure evil as you'll read anywhere, while i need to give in the hand of dante, which the author considers his best work but i abandoned after reading 30 pages of nick bitching about his agent, a second chance. but i digress.

i recently connected with phil when i got the idea of writing a bio of syler, which i'm gonna do as soon as i get unbusy with teen a go go stuff); he also gave me loads of good info for the flick, which makes sense, as he first caught the rockaroll bug around the time the beatles played on sullivan in '64. he adopted his homer persona 20 yrs later, taking the name from a dallas street sign, played bass with the original teddy and the talltops, and cut a series of singles documenting his own left-of-center compositions with titles like "pickin' up beer cans on the highway" and "lee harvey was a friend of mine" (collected in digital form on his greatest flops and golden filler ceedee, with liner notes by tosches, no less). what homer's not: a total nutball like the legendary stardust cowboy; phil's much too self-aware for that. rather, he's one of those guys who's swallowed a few different musical traditions (redneck rockabilly, blues sleaze, honky tonk country) whole and spews 'em out at will with skewed, un-p.c. lyrics on top. (at a recent wreck room stand, his maraca-shaking accomplice, a petite combination of bo diddley's accompanists jerome and the duchess, minus the bass, sang a song about "my bald, hot, wet, aching pussy...what a friendly little cat." you get the idea.)

these days, phil/homer performs as a one-man band, exemplifying the "less-is-more" aesthetic like a mofo. he plays a battered telecaster through an octave box into two different amps, triggers a snare, kick drum and attached cymbal with pedals, and blows a harp that's duct-taped to his vocal mic. the resultant racket is _huge_ and driving and otherwordly in the same way as howlin' wolf's memphis sides, and he's been doing this since before local h, bob log III, the immortal lee county killers, the white stripes, the black keys, or any of those rockaroll minimalists ever hit the boards. playing to a diverse crowd at the bottom of an eclectic bill headlined by shtick-rawkers honchie, he introduced "death of an angel" (on obscuro kingsmen b-side) as "a teenage suicide song," perhaps as a sop to fans of new kids stella rose, who followed homer and proved to be a pretty good little rock'n'roll band with a female bassplayer who kicked much ass and a drummer whose black gloves prompted phil to comment, "like the music machine!" (but those guys only wore _one_ black glove, no?)