This came out in 1999 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Take an old gas tank, strap a stick to it, attach a wire to either end and pull. No, it’s not a bomb — but it is a volatile device.
That’s how you make a gas-tank bass, the low-tech instrument at the swampy bottom of Split Lip Rayfield’s bizarre backwoods sound. One part bluegrass, one part punk, the 16 moonshine-sucking masterworks on the Kansas troublemakers’ sophomore CD In The Mud — you supply the blood and the beer — are devilishly good tales of murder, dismemberment and 3.2 beer, cranked out by a fleet-fingered quartet who flail away at their banjos, mandolins and guitars like metalheads knocking off Van Halen licks. Think I’m kidding? Check out the bassist’s scabbed and blistered hand on the back cover. They’ve suffered for their art — but you won’t have to.
