Bottle Rockets

Before the Drive-By Truckers and the North Mississippi Allstars, there was the Bottle Rockets, a new Southern-rock band before there was a "new Southern rock." And before the Rockets existed, there were Skynyrd and Neil Young, the latter a musical son of the South by choice, not birth. The same could be said of founding members Brian Henneman and Mark Ortmann, who took to the dirty boogie, the overdriven blues and the twangy hooks of the Van Zant brothers and ZZ Top, and found their own way of telling angry, poignant and true-to-life rock & roll stories. The band has recently finished recording a new album (which is currently untitled but due out in the spring) with Eric Ambel in New York. They've also completed their fifteenth-anniversary tour, and to mark the occasion, they'll be drawing names at the Duck Room for a custom guitar and a "Bottle Rockets for Life" eternal guest-list package.