The Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band will celebrate New Year’s Eve at the Brown County Music Center.
Republic file photos
If you’re unfamiliar with the celebratory, party-time concert atmosphere of The Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band and you’re miserably slogging through the challenge of the pandemic and more, make a note of the title of the country-blues trio’s new album: “Dance Songs for Hard Times.”
You say you haven’t got a prayer?
Well, you haven’t raised your hands and gloriously grooved at one of Rev. Peyton’s shows, where he is worshipped as a budding, fingerstyle guitar god and wife Breezy Peyton wins praise for playing wonderful washboard. And, just in time to help you kick off 2022 with rockin’ optimism, the group is staging a New Year’s Eve celebration at 8 p.m. Dec. 31 at Brown County Music Center in Nashville.
You say you need light at the end of your tunnel?
Well, it just so happens that 40-year-old band leader Jayme Peyton wrote most of the disc’s 11 tunes by literal candlelight in spring 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic when the power went out at the couple’s 150-year-old cabin.
For multiple days. Hello darkness, his old friend.
Out came a record that “conveys the hopes and fears of pandemic living,” according to promotional material.
You say you want that hope?
Crank up “Too Cool to Dance” and see if your feet don’t kick your own darkness to the curb, especially when you hear the exuberant lead singer remind us all in the unforgettable chorus: “We may not get another chance/Please don’t tell me you’re too cool to dance.”
The rollicking, high-energy song opens with what one online fan called “blistering guitar” — so much so that it’s hard to fathom that doctors told Peyton a number of years ago that a fret-hand ailment would end his playing days.
Other people also have told he and his wife and drummer Max Senteney that they cannot remain so rural and get big-city famous.
“Over the years, there have been different people in the music industry try to convince us to move to Austin (Texas) or Nashville (Tennessee), but I just refuse, buddy,” Peyton said, speaking by phone from Brown County. “One, this is home. And two, I could smell which way the wind was blowing by then, anyway.
“I already knew that it didn’t really matter where you were at because everything was really taking place on the Internet. It wasn’t in any of those towns anymore.
“But I do often think that people in Indiana generally are underrated.”
So Peyton need not apologize for a recent tour in which the threesome opened for Rock and Roll Hall of Famers ZZ Top.
The group has long pushed for such success and such visibility. The band has performed in 38 countries.
“I’m passionate,” Peyton said. “I’ve always been intense. And I’m also relentless.”
He figures this next gig will be big no matter the total crowd size.
“Our New Year’s Eve shows have taken on a life of their own,” Peyton said. “We know that they get people fired up. People fly in from all over the world for these shows, including some coming this time from Germany and other places in Europe.”
He broke into laughter after a lengthy pause when asked if he saw this kind of popularity coming.
“What if I told you yes?” he asked. “We always have believed in our ourselves.”
