If you remember The Cowslingers, you’ll recall a carousing, careening group of Country-fried, Punkabilly ass kickers from Ohio’s North Shore sporting a wicked sense of humor and a freewheeling allegiance to every genre they touched. When the Slingers called it a day after nine albums in as many years, frontman Greg Miller, his bassist brother Ken Miller and drummer Leo P. Love decided to re-focus their Country and Punk roots and christened the new needle-pegging aggregation Whiskey Daredevils.
What’s changed? New guitarist Gary Siperko adds turbocharged string strangling capabilities, but in most aspects the Daredevils are the distilled essence of the Slingers, expanding their original cause of hammering Country and Punk into a ramshackle yet remarkable sonic roadhouse where the chicken wire protects audience and band equally.
The Whiskey Daredevils are hellbent on redemption with tongues planted firmly in cheeks (they titled their 2004 debut album Greatest Hits and their just-released sixth album is called Introducing) and yet as serious as a four-valve cardiac arrest. Don’t take it from us, three out of four ER medics agree: The best place for your heart to be attacked is right in the middle of a Whiskey Daredevils audience. The band plays a free show Saturday at the Northside Tavern.
