Return of the chicken

Tyrannosaurus Chicken revisits Little Rock for Riverfest show.

Tyrannosaurus Chicken performs at 6 p.m. Sunday on Riverfest's Stickyz Music Stage.
Tyrannosaurus Chicken performs at 6 p.m. Sunday on Riverfest's Stickyz Music Stage.

The name of the band is weird yet memorable: Tyrannosaurus Chicken. And the music that the Fort Smith duo of Rachel Ammons and Smilin’ Bob Lewis play is also weird … at least in its description: Delta blues trance freestyle.

What those four words — Delta blues trance freestyle — mean are a fun-loving, high-energy mix of the Delta blues (of course), along with folk and psychedelic rock ’n’ roll that begs for a little barely contained boogieing from the crowd. Tyrannosaurus Chicken’s sets include mutated covers of tunes from greats such as Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Mississippi Fred McDowell and more, and originals channeling those same artists. Music created with an arsenal of instruments: slide guitar, mandolin, banjo, fiddle, jew’s harp, drums, cello and a few more.

With Tyrannosaurus Chicken taking the stage this weekend at Riverfest, Ammons answered some questions via email.

Q: What’s the story of Tyrannosaurus Chicken?

A: We started about four years ago. Way before that, Bob was friends with my parents, playing in a blues band with them when I was almost too young to recall, and he is my godfather. I didn’t get to know him well, though, until after I came back from college and my dad pressured me to sit in with Bob’s bluegrass band. The bluegrass band fell apart, but by then I had started accompanying his one-man-band blues act anyway, … so we started booking gigs as Smilin Bob & Rachel.

Q: How did the name Tyrannosaurus Chicken come about?

A: It became apparent that what we were doing was totally different from what he’d started with, and that we needed a name, which came when he was telling me about a special he saw on PBS about scientists manipulating chicken embryos’ DNA so they would express teeth and scaly tails, from their ancestors the dinosaurs. He said they showed pictures, and it looked just like a little tyrannosaurus chicken, and I said, “That’s our name!” And it stuck. It works on a number of levels. We’re taking new beats and bringing out the old Delta blues with a sometimes-psychedelic, most always danceable twist, and you could always look at it like he’s the dinosaur and I’m the chicken. At least Bob calls himself a dinosaur.

Q: What are the band’s influences?

A: When I asked Bob what his influences are, he said, “All bad.” But seriously, early Delta blues and Piedmont blues, bluegrass, Western swing, gospel, rock ’n’ roll, the British invasion, Southern rock and metal all influenced Bob. His circumstances probably had the largest hand in Bob’s development, though. He grew up in a coal mining town, and his father and grandfather, who were sharecroppers and then coal miners, used to take him to house parties where old black Delta blues players and white blues musicians were jamming together, and this was at a time when segregation was thick. … We both love artists like Robert Johnson, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Junior Kimbrough, Howlin’ Wolf, Mississippi Fred McDowell and such a wide variety of genres it would be hard to list. Lots of different influences.

Q: What’s it like playing a large festival such as Riverfest?

A: We have played some other festivals like Riverfest, and it is sometimes a challenge. There is just a short time to get all the gear up there, and we use a different setup than anyone I’ve ever seen, which throws sound engineers for a loop sometimes. We don’t typically keep a set list, but when we have such a short time like this, we’ll have to pick a few songs that we know we want to include, or we might do it by instruments we want to play because there won’t be time to do it all. We’re looking forward to Riverfest because we know it will be great. Little Rock fans are so enthusiastic and have supported us from the very beginning when absolutely nobody knew who we were. We appreciate everybody who comes out and just gets out on the dance floor.

Tyrannosaurus Chicken performs at 6 p.m. Sunday on Riverfest’s Stickyz Music Stage at the Clinton Presidential Center.

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