Playing with fire
by Kevin D. Hendricks

The lights were low and the concert hall was empty. Two or three hundred would have been a packed house. A total of twenty stood uneasily at the edge of the light. The opening band had finished, with only one well-wisher standing up front. The main act took the stage, and before the lights dimmed again and the music hit the tiny crowd, the trumpet player stepped up to the mic.

"Uh, we don't normally start our shows like this, but I think it's appropriate," he started. He went on to explain the woes besetting the band--on only their first night of a new tour. One of the three scheduled bands on the tour dropped out, with no explanation. The band's saxophone player quit just before the coming tour, his mom recently diagnosed with cancer. Sickness plagued the lead singer, and he could barely talk. And to top it all off, on the first night of a new tour hardly twenty people bothered to show up--for a band that routinely plays for two to three hundred.

"Lord, we come before you and pray…"

But when the music started you'd think they were playing for the world. The lemon tea must have done its thing, because you never would have guessed that the lead singer, John Brown (aka Johnny 'the Ace' Rocketti), was losing his voice. The tight music thrilled the tiny crowd, twenty bodies clumped together before the stage. The rhythmically inclined danced away, others just moved. No one stood still.

The Deluxtone Rockets are a swing/rockabilly band from western Michigan with a little 50's bebop for good measure. Their self-titled debut album came out this summer from Tooth and Nail records. The band's influences include some of the classics: Elvis, Johnny Cash, and Buddy Holly. Their sound is unbelievably tight, stopping on a dime and jumping up for more. If you're not tapping your foot and at least wishing you could dance, you're probably dead.

And the stage antics never quit. The Deluxtone Rockets don't just play music. They perform. The upright bass player, Jimmy VanBoxel (aka Dicey), hardly ever stood still. If he wasn't spinning the gigantic bass--sending the red fuzzy die flying--he was standing on the darn thing. At one point Johnny (the lead singer and guitar player) and Jimmy began playing each other's chords. During another break down the drummer, Jason Sorn (aka J.J.), beat the rhythm on the upright bass with his sticks, while Jimmy played the chords with one hand and filled in on drums with the other. Trumpet player Tim Harvell (aka Tahoe) came in to be the other drum hand--all with J.J. awkwardly balanced atop his drum kit. For the big finale Jimmy laid down on the floor and lifted the bass high in the air with his feet, and Tim Tahoe's horn went up in a lighter fluid flame, finally extinguished in a ring of fire as he spun his trumpet around a finger.

"We're just trying to get people going," Johnny explains. Well it worked. The humble crowd loved it. Most of Jimmy's bass tricks are standard swing band numbers, but the flaming horn, as far as anyone can tell, is an original. But what does the "controlled flame" do to the horn? "It's getting out of tune," Tim laments--but he doesn't seem too worried. The bell of the horn is charred black, and getting slightly warped. But somehow Tim manages to keep it finely tuned. As Johnny says, "We haven't replaced a horn yet."

The Deluxtone Rockets started in 1996 as a hard-edged punk band, but they came in to the current swing sound as members were added. "It just kind of happened," remembers Johnny. The record deal came when Tooth and Nail heard of the band and asked for a demo. "It was really pretty easy. We thought it would be hard," says Johnny.

Since then they've been crisscrossing the nation with the likes of the Insyderz, Miss Angie, the Dingees, Buck, the Atomic Fireballs, and a host of others. Their music also appears to be catching on. You can hear their songs on multiple episodes of MTV's Real World and Road Rules. They've also seen their share of trouble on the road. While visiting the Vietnam Veteran's memorial in Washington DC the band walked in on a dead body--just as the police came in. They also managed to set off an alarm at the U.S. Treasury. They were also accused of urinating on the White House lawn, which, as they reiterate, "Never happened." A Texas cop glared Jimmy down for picking up a rock at the Alamo, their van broke down in the middle of the desert, and Tim woke up one morning to an empty hotel--he was left behind and had to take the Amtrak to the next show.

And what keeps them playing despite tiny crowds, lost voices, and White House mishaps? Jesus Christ. "We're Christians. We believe in Christ and try to live life right. We try to bring it across in our music--and have fun," explains Johnny. They certainly do have their fun. You'll rarely see such an energetic and engaging live show. My girlfriend commented that she's been in orchestra for twelve years--and never seen anyone who could do that with a bass before.

They're one of the best live bands on Tooth and Nail's roster, if not any roster, and the CD isn't bad either. The Deluxtone Rockets are a fun band, stellar musicians, and definitely deserving of more attention.