How to Be a Good Cover Band

All that held until I ran into the King Bucks. Via covers and (gasp!) the occasional original tune, the King Bucks will take you (or me, specifically) back to Dad teaching how to pop a beer top, sitting in Granny's kitchen at that cool metal table and insisting that brown cowboy boots needed to be worn with an Easter dress. Somehow those blasts aren't as offensive when done with reverence for the original musicians such as Buck Owens (hence the name), the Louvin Brothers, the Everly Brothers, Waylon Jennings, Hank Thompson, David Allan Coe, Dylan and the like. As King Buck Chad Stockslager says, "It's not a tribute to a band as much as a style or genre. It's a time-honored sound."

Before there's any question as to why the Bucks break the cover band mold, let's get the history out of the way. Those of you aware of Dallas/Denton music from the last decade will remember a little outfit called Budapest One. After the demise of that group came the Drams—who play packed houses (such as New Year's Eve with the Old 97's) and claim a couple of the same members as Budapest One. Said Drams—Keith Killoren and Stockslager—began a weekly Wednesday night set at the Barley House.

Between the two of them, Killoren and Stockslager have been in about 1,279 bands. Not really, of course, but their studio-quality skills are often borrowed and loaned out for friends' recordings and live performances. In the same vein, Killoren & Stockslager started hosting some regular guests at their performances: Joseph Butcher (UFOFU, Pleasant Grove, Polyphonic Spree and 917 other bands), Danny Balis (Sorta, Sparrows, 313 others) and Chris Carmichael (Airline, Sorta, 189 others).

The King Bucks were made official in September of last year. "We played our first gig as a full band at Mesquite Rodeo. People there thought we were too loud. We were," says Butcher after the Bucks performed during the Boys Named Sue's "House of Sues" night to a healthy crowd at House of Blues...an audience probably a bit more prepared for the decibels than the God and Garth Brooks-fearing rodeo folk.

The Bucks' performances include an impressive yet tried and true honky-tonk-style rotation of Stockslager, Killoren, Balis and Butcher on main vocals in addition to their normal duties on keys, guitar, bass and pedal steel, respectively. All members contribute to the playlist of originals and covers.

Stockslager says the simplicity of the honky-tonk song structure makes it both a pleasure to cover and an inspiration from which to craft original tunes. "Think of Ernest Tubb. The structure of his songs is so simple...you can't listen to that stuff and not be affected by it. It's as simple as that," he says. "Keith and I were working on a song the other day, and the structure is so bare-bones you can hang anything off it and just go for broke."

The Bucks toss in three or four original songs per set. Some of them have been around since Budapest One; others are new inventions that Butcher describes as "rip-offs of other songs we like, albeit obscure ones."

"We've had these songs we've been wanting to play, but we needed a proper outfit for them, so we've been working them in piece by piece," Stockslager says. "I think there's a growing need for these original songs," he adds, before making an observation that pretty much sums up my entire point about the Bucks.