by Bill Bentley for

Americana Highways

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The Howlers, UNEASY LISTENING: 1974-1978 

There once was a band of mostly Mississippians who decided to head west out of the Magnolia State and head for Texas. It was a group that knew there was action to be found in Austin town, and they started kicking up sand in action in the Lone Star state. It didn’t take long to create a reputation for musical movement and unending excitement. Kent “Omar” Dykes was accompanied with such a richness of musical talent that The Howlers climbed to the head of the night club action in River City right away. They soon were winning awards and making a lifelong reputation for full-tilt excitement  The crew got busy playing and recording big time blues and rock & roll wherever they could, and find live juke joints and theaters to build a blasting reputation. These recordings from the mid-70s have been put together on a collection called UNEASY LISTENING, and after sitting in storage for nearly a lifetime; it’s time they were set loose on The Howlers’ fandom to show the world about an era of live music that was truly one of a kind. A whole range of rock & roll classics like “Honky Tonk,” “You Can’t Catch Me,” “Oh Pretty Woman” and more juke joint perennials join seriously deep-fried origins so that it feels like the clock has been turned back to when rock & rollers were running the streets of Austin with such fervor that it seemed like it would go on forever. UNEASY LISTENING is the kind of music that offers a new life for those seeking the vibrancy of the past and the promise of the future. And while there’s long been a feeling that people can’t go back again, don’t believe it. The Howlers are here, fired up by some of the best players on the planet 40 years ago, and they’re proud for the musical promise they all delivered, and for giving Omar and his jolly band of sonic pirates a place to get started and deliver the mischief to bandstands across the South. Burn baby burn, and do not despair. The cavalry’s arrived.   

- Bill Bentley
Bentley's Bandstand
Americana Highway

I was working with a man named H.E. Reus. He told me he had a friend from back home in Mississippi that was playing in a little bar, and I should come and hear them. I was expecting some country cover band, I couldn’t have been more shocked at what I was hearing.   - James Binzer

They played The Library quite often back in the day before I owned it. I was working there but had yet to buy the business. Those were some wild nights with one of the best bands ever to come out of The Hub City!! - R.T. Thomas 

If you know or love musicians, sometimes you wonder different things about them: ‘Why do they work so hard for so little pay?’  “How do they manage to live a normal life? They play music in nightclubs!”  Night after night, they are on stages everywhere. There is just a natural beauty to it as the room hits that certain vibe.  All cylinders rockin’.  Smiles everywhere. Great times that will become great memories.

Fifty years ago, half a century, it was an exciting time to be a musician.  If you liked wrong hours and wrong pay, you were in heaven. Music was in you, and it had to come out. It was you and your crew against it all. But when you and your mates were in the groove together, the countless hours of hard work seemed worth it.

After drummer Bobby Field put the Howlers together, they settled down in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Playing as much as possible, they made a significant impact there.  Their friends from the Eveready Band (Suzy Elkins, Gerry “Phareaux” Felton, Rick Zachary, and Webb Wilder) had moved to Austin, Texas, and told of the wonderful and exciting music scene there.  So, in 1976, the Howlers decided to move to Austin, lock, stock, and barrel.

My favorite story was being in the car with you and your (2nd) wife driving to Austin for the first time and the excitement on your face upon arrival.                     - Cheryl Thornhill

 As I recall they ALL spent their first night in Austin at the Eveready band house where we ALL lived! Bobby and I made the initial trip to Austin in the Summer of ‘75. After returning to Hattiesburg, we laid the praises on Austin pretty thick. There were a lot of things we liked. The main thing was the musical freedom in evidence all around…..Eveready moved there in January 1976. The Howlers followed in the Spring, began to play out and blow everyone’s minds.              
                          - Webb Wilder, Eveready Band

Before I started Omar and the Howlers, I was the frontman of the original Howlers band from 1974-1978.  The band was formed by drummer Bobby Field, who gathered members from Arkansas and Mississippi to form an extraordinary group of talented artists.  We lived and played in Hattiesburg, MS, and the surrounding area.

The Howlers was a performance band. We were known as a gawdy, crazy party band who would say or do anything. Each member of the Howlers had several nicknames and amusing personas to enhance the drama. I told stories and jokes while the band changed instruments, costumes, and masks. I also did fake commercials during the changes, holding up props (made by Tommy Conner) of the fake products to show the audience.  As Larcene the Dancing Elephant, Tommy would dress up in an elephant mask with a feather boa around his neck to dance around on stage while Hugh Garraway played the strip tease song on his tenor sax.

All six band members wrote original songs, sang, and played multiple instruments. This band is where I developed my skills of being a true performer as opposed to being a singer/songwriter. When we all packed up from Hattiesburg, MS to move to Austin in 1976, we played such legendary venues as the Armadillo World Headquarters, the Paramount Theater, the Rome Inn, the Austin Opry House, Soap Creek, Antones, Bull Creek, and every other significant venue in town. In 1977, we were voted the ‘Best New Band’ by the Sun Readers Music Awards.

It was impossible to sustain that level of intense talent.  In 1978, the band abruptly and amicably dissolved to accommodate different directions the band members wanted to pursue. I had played in bands since I was 13 years old, so it was the only thing I knew how to do.  I asked the band if I could use the name and with their blessings, continued to have a full-time career touring and playing music.  Because of my experience in the Howlers, Omar and the Howlers became the notable band it is to this day. 

My first release, Big Leg Beat, was my attempt to continue the legend of the Howlers as another band.  It was a transition release that captured the sound of the original Howlers.  Hugh Garraway played on that release.  It was hard for me to move on, but Big Leg Beat helped me to use what I learned in the Howlers and adapt those skills into who I was as Omar and the Howlers. 
After 50 years, the original Howlers are still friends. I am extremely grateful for the tremendous influence they each had on the artist and performer I became.  Thank you, my friends, for everything I learned from you and the memories we share that I will always treasure.   - Omar

There were lots of songs that I started out playing one thing and later switched to something else that worked better. It was a learning experience for us all. Hard to believe it’s half a century ago. Bosceaux pointed out the other day, 50 years before we moved to Austin in 1976, it was 1926, about the time Jimmie Rodgers recorded “Jimmie’s Texas Blues”, so that song is right at 100 years old today.  That kinda puts a historical perspective on our music. - Tommy Conner

Hugh Garraway wrote a great song called ‘Chicken Fried Joe’.  People were always coming up to the stage to request ‘The Cotton-Eyed Joe’.   We got so tired of it that Hugh wrote his song.  When the people would yell at us or come up to ask for ‘The Cotton-Eyed Joe’, we would play Hugh’s ‘Chicken Fried Joe’ instead.  At the end of the song I would say, “That was “Chicken Fried Joe,” by request.”  Whoever requested the song would yell back, ‘I didn’t request that song!  Don’t you know what “The Cotton-Eyed Joe” is?!’  It was hilarious.   - Omar

It was a bigger band back then at the Library. I know five or six members. Many different instruments as some played several, and such a great song list covering many different genres of music. I don't think there was an instrument they didn't play. They did rock-n-roll, rock-a-billy, country, western-swing, blues. Shoot, they even threw a little jazz and bluegrass in there, too. (Seems like somebody pulled out a banjo.) Lots of energy and a lot of soul. Whew! It was the best band this side of Heaven & we loved them. Lord bless The Howlers.    - Mick Knight

The Howlers had the opportunity to record a 45 at Malaco Records located in Jackson, MS.  The A side was a song by Bobby Field called “White Man Blue” that had a western swing-style sound.  The B side was a song with a Creedence Clearwater vibe I wrote entitled “Louisiana Belle.”   Jimmy Barnett and Tommy Conner did the caricatures artwork for the cover.  Hugh Garraway’s affiliation with Malaco Records prompted us to use that studio for our recording.    - Omar

I started doing session work at Malaco when they were just starting, around 1968 or 69 and through the early seventies. I also did one or two post 1980 filling in for a missing member of the Muscle Shoals Horns and did some solo work. On one session I sat with a trumpet player from Memphis who started talking about "the plane crash". He was Ben Cauley, the sole survivor of Otis Redding's crash in Madison, Wisconson.    - Hugh Garraway

One of my many memories of playing in the original Howlers was the time we were playing the Maple Leaf in New Orleans. During a break while we were standing outside, the police pulled up to take some people to jail and grabbed Tommy Conner who played every instrument known to man and carried him off. We had to play a couple of sets without him, but he returned before quitting time thanks to some lawyers who were in the crowd.  - Danny Dozier

When I was released from prison and returned, it was so crowded that I was passed overhead by the audience to the stage and set down nearly in my original spot.”
                                                                                               - Tommy Conner

YELLOW COAT AND DEFYING GRAVITY  At the Rome Inn, I defied the odds many times by walking like a tightrope walker down the narrow, curved, waxed rail that went out into the audience.  I wore my slick leather wingtips while singing “Yellow Coat”.  One night while very intoxicated, I did the splits over the rail and severely hurt myself. The band had to stop playing to carry me upstairs. The audience laughed until they cried as I cried in pain!  When I slightly recovered, I had to check to see if I was ever going to be able to have children. I never did that again.  I changed my performance of “Yellow Coat” to walking on my hands instead.” Howler fan Steve Chaney asks Omar “I tell people I saw you do a handstand during a show, and they think I'm nuts. Am I?” Omar responded “No, you’re not nuts. I AM!  I used to tuck the mic in my shirt and walk across the stage on my hands while singing Yellow Coat!     - Omar

HUMAN MOVING PYRAMID Omar would get down on hands and knees. Hugh and I would be on either side. We were the heaviest, I guess, then Crow and Danny climbed on top of us, and Jimmy on top, since he was lightest. Crow may have taken turns on top. He was pretty skinny in those days. Then on Omar’s count, the 3 of us on the bottom would crawl forward until the pile collapsed in a tangle of arms and legs. A few times we made it forward a few feet then backed up. It was something spontaneous we would do when the crowd was really worked up, usually resulting in utter bedlam.    -Tommy Conner

JUST A BAND ENJOYING A PICNIC The classic band photo. We know there is nothing silly going on here.

The sax player playing with the paper doll.   - Mike McLemore

We had those big life-size cutouts of Cher and Dolly Parton. There were holes over the cutouts' mouths so Hugh Garraway could put the mouthpiece of the horn inside to look like the cutout was playing and dancing around.    - Omar

Omar, it's like you said the other day, I feel like I'm in our band again. I keep feeling like I need to get the Howler van, (bought from John Dunnaway for $125 that had a Mustang engine in it) Go haul a ton of amps, gadgets, wires, a trunk of props like gallon cans of collards, pork and beans, chicken box, Nixon and Kissinger masks, Mojo mask made by Blaze Foley, and instrument cases into some dimly lit beer joint out on a two lane highway with a mud hole and gravel parking lot and aluminum foil wallpaper, black lights on the ceiling, pool tables, and 25 cent beer. Sounds familiar, don't it?    - Tommy Conner

The morning after Sparky's bachelor party Omar called and said, "Tee Tot, I went outside and my shirt is up in the top of a pine tree. I'll never forget how you would go out in the backyard in Pinehills and bark and howl till you whipped all the neighborhood dogs into a frenzy, howling back at you.    - Tommy Conner

Congratulations, Men!!!! I feel like I just woke up on the pool table in time for the last set.  What a band y'all had. What dawns on me listening 50 years hence is what a factor Hugh was. The sound y'all got out of those instruments. Everything firing on all cycles. It was almost a street revolt onstage.   Patrick Weathers

Sunshine Collard Greens … One Can Feeds the Whole Band" … Plenty of great memories of The Howlers in Hattiesburg, MS and when I moved with you guys to Austin, TX     Mike Rodgers  - Mike Rodgers

Tucker and I were lucky to have run into the original Howlers in Austin. Crow gave me his hat. Omar became a life-long friend - Doc Miller, C T Tucker and the Blue Sparks from Hell

The first time I ever heard Will the Circle Be Unbroken, along with many other great tunes, was from you & The Howlers. And what a great song list y'all had. I believe it was 1975, back home in Hattiesburg at The Library. The whole place sang along. Mick Knight

We used to have hoedown jam sessions in Hattiesburg at the house where I lived with Phareaux on Brooklane Drive. Sometimes over 100 people there. Everyone played guitars and mandolins. We jammed and drank and sang this song all night! That is where I met Crow Field, Suzy Elkins, and Webb Wilder. I also met my 2nd wife Suzette there. It was a wonderful time! Omar