Impala was
formed in Memphis, TN in the early 1990s. Their first long
player, El Rancho Reverbo, was co-produced by
the legendary Roland
Janes (Jerry Lee Lewis' guitar player and
session player at Sun
Records) at Sam Phillips Recording Service.
After receiving rave
reviews and gaining exposure playing one-niters
across the South East,
Impala was picked up by West Coast label,
Estrus Records. The band's
first release on Estrus was Kings of the Strip,
recorded at famed
Easley Studio in Memphis. Following the release
of this album, Impala
toured relentlessly, appearing at Garage
festivals such as Garage
Shock, Sleezefest, Crap Out and Dixie Fried and
appearing on shows
with guitar legends Dick Dale and Davie Allen
and the Arrows. Over the
past decade numerous films and television shows
have featured the
band's music. Most notable is Impala's arrangement of Henry Mancini's
"Experiment in Terror" in the George
Clooney's, Chuck Barris biopic,
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.
When Impala surfaced
on the Memphis garage scene in 1993, local
audiences hardly knew what hit them. The group
built a sonic time
machine that, once you paid the cover charge and
crawled on board,
might deposit you in 1955, 1967, or 2239. With
just one song, they
could turn gritty, dumpy Barristers into West
Memphis' time-honored
Plantation Inn, the home of their musical
ancestors like the Mar-Keys,
the Packers, and the Royal Spades. Another tune
would drop you into
Ennio Morricone's wasteland desertscapes; still
another would
transport you to a New Orleans whorehouse, on a
magical night when all
the girls were turning tricks for free.
Instrumentals exploded from the amplifiers with a rumbling guitar, a honking
sax, the type of drumbeat that
liberated strippers from their spangled costumes,
and a
steeped-in-Memphis tradition bass line. The kind
of nervous energy
that could propel a sensible Catholic schoolgirl
into the arms of a
dangerous man, make a sailor catapult off the
mast into a stormy sea,
or cause a veteran gunslinger to fire madly into
the air before
plunging over a rocky cliff. The 'party now,
because we're gonna pay
later' attitude that pervades the Southern
consciousness, from
Tennessee Williams' plays to Jerry Lawler's
ringside antics.
Estrus Records released Kings of the Strip (recorded at
Easley-McCain
Recording Studio) and Square Jungle (cut at Sam
Phillips) soon
followed. Impala proved perfect for then-nascent filmmaker John Michael
McCarthy, who needed a score for his movie
Teenage Tupelo. Several
years later, George Clooney tapped Impala's back catalog for a medley
of Henry Mancini's "Experiment in
Terror" and Duane Eddy's "Stalkin'"
which ended up in the Chuck Barris bio pic Confessions of a Dangerous
Mind. Another song, "Incident on the Tenth
Floor" was used in the
trailer for the indie flick Way of the Gun.
The time spent offstage was never dull, the men
of Impala amused
themselves with genuine Italian switchblades
(purchased, naturally, at
an Arizona truck stop), intra-vehicular
fireworks (Missouri's Boom
Land was a favored stop), and detours to shake
joints, BBQ stands, and
Norman Petty's recording studio (where Buddy
Holly, Roy Orbison, and
the Fireballs laid down infamous tracks) in
Clovis, New Mexico.
A mythology, hammered home with songs like
"Ronnie and the Renegades"
and "Last Tango in Turrell," was
carefully built, then carelessly laid
to waste by beer-fueled gigs and burnt roadmaps,
even as Impala wrote
tunes like "Wild Night at the Bloody
Bucket," an homage to onetime
Carl Perkins' pianist Bill Grantham, who worked
alongside Bomar at
Select-O-Hits, and "King Louie Stomp,"
a salute to fellow musician
King Louie Bankston of New Orleans' Royal
Pendletons. "Choctaw" turned
Jorgen Ingmann's momentous "Apache"
inside out and regionalized it,
while "Cozy Corner" acknowledged the
Bluff City's best pork ribs. The
never-before-released "Amarillo,"
meanwhile, proved to be the final
nail in the coffin – cut at the end of the
session for Impala Play R&B
Favorites, released on Estrus in '99, it
languished in the vaults for
years as the last number Impala ever recorded. Combust or be combusted, these songs instructed. Destroy yourself
before the music destroys you. Praise the
drumbeat, and pass a bottle of booze to
the stage. One final album, an anthology called Night Full of Sirens, was
released on Bomar’s label, Electraphonic, in 2006.
Then
Impala disappeared. The band was put on ice. Members of the group
found other ways to make a living: Bomar, the group’s bassist, began producing
and running his own studio, formed the seminal blues-soul combo the Bo-Keys,
and began composing, creating scores for films such as Hustle & Flow, Black
Snake Moan and Mississippi Grind. Other members turned to bail bonding in
Memphis, doing private detective work, and freelancing for various combos at
honkytonks and “adult-themed” nightclubs across the U.S.
Yet their
muse pursued them like a siren’s call. Unable to resist, Impala reformed in
2017, and after woodshedding with a series of local gigs, returned to the
recording studio to create this brand-new album, aptly titled In
the Late Hours. Recorded at Bomar’s Electraphonic Studios in downtown
Memphis, In the Late Hours features ten intoxicating guitar- and
sax-driven R&B songs, born out of that golden era of Memphis music when
rockabilly, rhythm and blues, jazz, garage and soul music collided. These songs
channel potent ghosts—namely, Packy Axton, Willie Mitchell and Ike Turner, all
pioneers of Memphis’ instrumental scene—but they’re hardly derivative. They
bristle with urgency and make your heart beat fast. They’ll make you wish for a
time long past—when men wore hats in the street and women wore silk stockings
fastened with a sexy garter belt. It’s music that is a remedy for hard times.
Put it on, and let your mind wander. Take refuge in those darker places. Pour
yourself another drink. And make sure the door’s locked—it’s later than you
think.
-Andria Lisle, Memphis, TN
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