COME TO DADDY

The cover pretty much says it all: Buxom naked chick with devil's tail sitting in flames and holding a pitchfork. It looks like an old sailor's tattoo. You see the cover — red and black, of course — and if you're at all up on the recent trends in music, you can pretty much peg the Trip Daddys' sound: psychobilly. And you're so damn smart you got it right on the first guess. St. Louis' Trip Daddys are a three-piece garage rockabilly band who move from raucous originals to burning covers (Stray Cats, Carl Perkins, Link Wray, Buddy Holly and, lo and behold, the Nuge (doing a frenzied instrumental version of "Stranglehold"). They've been gigging around town for the past few years, and in that time they've perfected the burning Gretsch hollow-body sound; vocalist Craig Straubinger shore cain play that geetar — moving from speeding licks to frenzied panting — and has a rockabilly rhythm section (Jamey Almond on bass, Jeff Kersting on drums) that holds everything solidly in place.

No, the Trip Daddys get no points for originality — they've discovered the template they love and stick to it, from their choice of instrumentation to the CD graphics — but within those restrictive confines they thrive.

They're celebrating the release of their second CD (their first, To Hell and Back in a Cadillac, mined the same terrain), titled The Tripdaddys Made Me Do It ... Live, at the Way Out Club on Saturday, Sept. 25.