 "Photo: Caleb Miller")
Troy Dillinger was a mere pup of 17 when he first encountered the White Trash Revue, the wild show band that dominated the Austin club scene in the mid-1980s. From moment one, he knew he had to get in on the fun - and he wasn't even supposed to be there.
"I snuck into the Continental Club - I looked like I was legal. Dino was up on stage, and the place was packed, and he'd only done three shows. It was crazy," recalled Dillinger. "He was on stage, and the whole band was dressed up, and he was swinging raw meat around and singing about tits, and the whole thing was insane, so I decided I had to play for them."
And play he did, joining the White Trash Revue as a bass player after approaching frontman Dino Lee. Dillinger's first gigs with the band came on tour, serving as a baptism by fire for the barely-of-age local musician.
"I was 18 when we went out on tour," Dillinger said. "My first night we were playing a total crazy-ass bar in Louisville, Kentucky. People were spitting and throwing shit. I got hit with a quarter-full bottle of Michelob and didn't see it coming. I think I had a hard time drinking Michelob from then on."
Precisely that kind of madness was par for the course in the shows of the White Trash Revue. Led by singer Lee, who sported a distinctive pompadour, the 15-member-strong band played in costume, with elaborate stage routines and rowdy, booze-and-sex-focused lyrics. After more than a 20-year hiatus, the legendary local group reunites with a one-night-only show at Antone's with all the old hijinks and energy intact.
"It's pandemonium. We've got big foam rubber dicks, and it's just like a sideshow exploding. It's a really musical experience, but it's also a really intense visual experience," Dillinger said. "It's not just a bunch of idiots running around. I've seen a lot of folks that can put on a big show and run around, like GWAR, - they put on a hell of a show, but their music sucks. This stuff, the songs are really good, they're fun. The whole thing is pretty tight."
The White Trash Revue began when rockabilly and punk musician Dino Lee found his way to Austin in the early 1980s. Enamored with the city, he attempted to transplant his popular Los Angeles-based band, The Whirlybirds, in Texas. But Lee developed a vision in his head for an entirely different kind of band.
"Well, what I wanted to do was take different people that had never played together from different walks of life, different genres of music, put them in the same room together and see what kind of music would come out of it," Lee said. "I wanted to see if the sparks would ignite, and they did."
And so the White Trash Revue grew to incorporate a vast array of musical talents and styles, and, as a veritable "who's who" of Austin, artists were drawn to the band. Chris Gates, bassist for popular local punk act The Big Boys, signed on. So did Ponty Bone, accordion player for country artist Joe Ely's band. A guitar player from an Indiana surf band also joined. Before long, the star of Dino Lee had brought Austin's finest into his orbit, creating a band whose unusual sound - a mixture of Latin grooves, horns, punk rock, country and rockabilly - was wholly unlike anything else to be found in the Austin music scene.
Further distinguishing the act were the Jam and Jelly Girls, an all-female entourage of shimmying and singing, costumed backing vocalists. Inseparable from the rest of the band, they were a crucial component of all the shows and accompanied the White Trash Revue on tours.
"Dino came up with it. He readily admits that he had heard it somewhere, some obscure soul review in L.A., and he just thought it was such a good name that he took it with him," said Margaret Moser, longtime music journalist for the Austin Chronicle and the lead Jam and Jelly Girl, who headed up the outfit and trained the girls. "Having been a child of the '60s, I watched a lot of 'Shindig!' and 'Hullabloo,' and that was what I brought into it."
Austin responded warmly. The White Trash Revue routinely sold out popular local venues, such as Steamboat, Liberty Lunch and the Ritz - venues they ultimately outlived. The band swept the Austin Music Awards, defying more obviously popular musicians, such as Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Johnson. Their album brought them considerable acclaim in Europe, where they played to thousands. They figured prominently in the famous MTV special on Austin that first exposed Daniel Johnston to the nation at large.
While the band's name may not be readily recalled to a generation raised on Bob Schneider, the White Trash Revue left an indelible impact on Austin's live music scene, encouraging the existence of future show bands, such as the Scabs, the White Ghost Shivers and the Flametrick Subs with Satan's Cheerleaders.
Meanwhile, its various players drifted elsewhere, establishing their own footholds in Austin's scene. Lee developed a new persona, Mr. Fabulous. White Trash alumnus Harry Munoz went on to play with Alejandro Escovedo and the True Believers, while Dillinger became a local fixture with his Austin Swim performances and his "Dirty and Hairy Film Festival" DVD release. Moser remained a force in her own way. For two decades, a reunion looked unlikely.
Fortunately, the stars aligned just right.
"I didn't really want to do it," Lee said. "Some of the ex band members talked me into it and offered to help me promote and put it together. In the old days, it was pretty much myself riding around on a bicycle and putting flyers on telephone poles. This time around, I had some help. The other band-mates talked me into it, and that got me enthusiastic - it was more of a group effort. It just didn't feel right if it was me as the cheerleader."
"What was funny was, back then, we were all young, we were all just f***** out of our brains most of the times," said Dillinger. "The band was kind of an excuse for us to just party. So we've had all this time to get better as musicians, and now it's pretty awesome, because, before, the music was an afterthought. Now, the music's pretty tight."
The 1980s saw the White Trash Revue marking a sharp contrast from the rest of the Austin scene with the grubby jeans, greasy-haired punk rock thrashers dominating the day. Today, with a scene focused heavily on bespectacled middle-class indie hipsters, they stand out just as distinctively. Obviously, the time was right for a reunion. If the rollicking rehearsals and performances for local TV are to be believed, the band has never been better.
"The second time around people are receiving it. They're getting it this time around," Lee said. "The band sounds better now than it did 20 years ago - I'm not exaggerating. So, for me, that's exciting, because the music is more important to me then anything else. Even though the shows were nuts, the music was always the most important to me."
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