There can’t be too many people in Rock’s vast audience who are scratching their heads and wondering why Nashville Pussy isn’t a household name.
For those who may be baffled by Nashville Pussy’s lack of hot-and-cold-running-champagne success, allow me to paraphrase James Carville: It’s the Pussy, stupid.
Let’s face it, Nashville Pussy has Rock & Roll cred to burn and plays harder than a coke boner. Blaine Cartwright sings with the my-fist/your-face passion of a hillbilly Alice Cooper, while his wife, Ruyter Suys, plays lead guitar with a scorching intensity that would shrivel One Direction’s balls in a microwaved second. Throw in the Thor’s-hammer drumming of Jeremy Thompson and the rotating bass thunder of the leather-chick-du-jour (currently Bonnie Buitrago) and you’ve got a recipe for Motörhead-inspired mayhem that has remained stubbornly underground.
It’s not like Nashville Pussy has been low profile. Forming in Atlanta, Ga., in 1996, the quartet scored a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance with “Fried Chicken and Coffee” from its 1998 debut, Let Them Eat Pussy. How did they read that off the teleprompter? Did it get bleeped? CNN wouldn’t even run the band’s name in their list of nominees, opting for “P——.” Pussies.
Since that noteworthy accomplishment, Nashville Pussy has released just five studio albums, including its latest, the incendiary and fault-line-testing Up the Dosage. When Nashville Pussy does drop an album, it’s packed from ass to eyebrow with songs about dirty sex, drinking, drugging, bar fighting and the kind of opposite-of-radio-friendly language that would make a dockworker blush.
The band is not about to compromise in order to curry favor with the industry for the sake of a few more units sold. It may even be making a case for acceptance of the band on its own terms; its recently-released Up the Dosage, an unrelenting slab of sleazy Hard Rock, features a song that could serve as Nashville Pussy’s tattooed manifesto: “Pussy’s Not a Dirty Word.” You got that fucking right.
NASHVILLE PUSSY plays Southgate House Revival Thursday, Aug. 14. Tickets/more info here .
