As watering holes go, the Latch String is among
the more unassuming you’re likely to find.
Squatting in the middle of the Northrop/Coldwater
Road diversion, the place looks like it blew in
on the tail of a tornado, basement and all. Or
maybe it just grew there, like a mushroom. There
is scarcely a change in elevation from the
parking lot to the center of the dance floor. The
signs announcing its existence are hand-lettered.
So are the matchbooks available at the bar. One
of the urinals has the added benefits of duct
tape and a padlock.
Despite its humble appearance, the Latch String
is legendary for the raucous live music it
features with regularity. And it doesn’t get any
more raucous than on Tuesday nights when Kenny
Taylor and Patrick Borton, as Deuce, fill the air
with rockabilly, that pristine rock n’ roll
progenitor. Deuce recently celebrated their first
year at the Latch String on a night that saw the
crowd swell steadily till way past midnight. Just
an electric guitar and upright bass, two vocal
mics and a whole lot of sound. And $2 imports.
It’s a hell of a great way to spend a Tuesday
night.
to run into. Taylor tends to draw people from all
over when he plays. At 45, after playing in some
of the great bands Fort Wayne has produced – The
Feel, Red Belly Boys, Blue Moon Boys, not to
mention his ongoing round of solo gigs and a busy
schedule with the exceptional Chris Shaffer Band
– Taylor seems to know everyone. People seek him
out. “Old friends come into town and find out
where I’m playing,” he says, more with
fascination than braggadocio. “I see people from
Texas, Denver, all over.”
A few years ago Taylor and the Blue Moon Boys,
which at that time saw Borton handling upright
bass duties, hosted Sunday night rockabilly at
the doomed Ernie’s in Riviera Plaza. (Ernie’s
burned down in July 2004.) The Blue Moon Boys
usually opened the night and were followed by
kick-ass bands from all over the country that
Taylor and the boys met while on the road
themselves. Between sets he’d pull up a chair,
crack a PBR and launch into a story about how one
of the guys he had lined up knew his father, a
fiddle player from Virginia with family ties to
the Carter family. Yeah, that Carter family. “I
got relatives buried next to A.P. Carter,” Taylor
says.
Taylor got his first guitar at age nine and soon
after took lessons – four lessons, to be exact.
His teacher told his parents he’d never learn to
play. Which may explain why Taylor tends to look
surprised by some of the things his fingers do
while he’s playing. It’s as though his hands
belong to someone else and his brain is
desperately trying to figure out what the hell is
going on. It’s a condition he’s well aware of.
“I’ll learn a riff or chord progression from a
particular song, but it won’t show up when we
play that song,” he says. “I’ll play it in other
songs. Then all of a sudden I’ll play it during
the right song, the song I learned it for
originally. Sometimes it’s years later. I can’t
figure it out.”
Neither can Borton. Despite touring briefly with
the Blue Moon Boys, including about a year at the
Ernie’s gigs, and another year at the Latch
String in Deuce, the inner workings of Taylor’s
brain remain a mystery. “His brain is different
than anybody I’ve known,” Borton says. “He’s
ahead of himself. He’s in the future.”
Borton first met Taylor through original Blue
Moon Boys bassist Keith Brewer. Taylor and Brewer
were in the Feel together, and when Brewer
answered a newspaper ad seeking players for a
rockabilly band, an ad placed by the incomparable
Nic Roulette, late of Nashville-based Hillbilly
Casino, he brought Taylor along. But Brewer got
sick and passed away in 1998, just as the Blue
Moon Boys began taking off on a run that would
take them across the country and through Europe.
Before Brewer passed away, he willed Borton his
bass. “He said, I want you to have this when I
go,'” Borton says. Borton is putting it to good
use.
At 28, Borton has been playing for just eight
years. But Taylor says he’s world class on the
instrument. That’s a tough point to argue
against. When Taylor and Borton get rolling at
the Latch String, their individual output more
than doubles. It sounds like there’s about five
guys on stage. Borton assaults his bass with a
slapping technique so percussive a drum kit would
be superfluous. Taylor works overtime to subdue
his 1964 Guild, which he says has neck problems,
occasionally breaking into an exaggerated
hillbilly hop, a look of amazement on his face,
while Borton hammers away at the bass wedged
sideways between his legs, rolls his eyes and
slides into the persona of aslightly deranged
aw-shucks country boy. The effect is spot on.
“I definitely mock the hillbilly origins,”
Borton says, “but the show wouldn’t be as fun
without a bit of humor. I have an affection for
the honky-tonk and rockabilly music. It’s like an
old friend you can get away with making fun of
and he won’t kick your ass for saying it.”
Borton’s got his own band as well, the Ton-Up
Boys, with Jon Hartman on drums and Joshua Wade
on guitar. They’re playing more frequently and
recently opened for Hillbilly Casino. The project
lets Borton try his hand at being a band
leader.
With Deuce, such formalities are moot. It’s pure
anarchy from the get-go. “This is happy time for
Kenny,” Borton says of Deuce’s Tuesday night
gigs. “This is his release.” And what a release
it is. Instead of playing meticulous slide behind
Chris Shaffer’s sometimes heart-wrenching lyrics
and always soulful vocals, Taylor in Deuce gets
to unwind with songs like George Jones’ “White
Lightning,” and his own songs, some co-written
with Nic Roulette, of which “Meet Mr. Fist,” is
sure to become a classic.
“It’s the saddest song I’ve ever heard,” Taylor
says, without a hint of irony. Deuce bounce
through a playlist that includes Johnny Cash,
Eddie Rabbit, Golden Earring, Red Hot Chili
Peppers, Blue Oyster Cult, The Beatles, Steve
Earle, Doc Watson, Carl Perkins and on and on. It
would be easy to name the covers of Chili Peppers
and BOC songs, but it’s much more fun to figure
out what they are as they unfold in Deuce’s
quirky rockabilly arrangements.
The Latch String and Deuce are simpatico,
especially this time of year when both Latch
String doors are open to the world and
interesting, sometimes bizarre characters blow in
with the wind, which in turn carries the
audacious sounds of this experimental rockabilly
band to a world in need of a
break.