White Cowbell Oklahoma, Paceshifters, Mountaindust at Lee’s Palace

Photographs by Angelo Marchini.

The truth is going to sound a lot stranger than fiction here, folks.

White Cowbell Oklahoma emerged onto the stage at Lee’s Palace on Friday night after a speech from Colonel Sanders. That’s right, Colonel Sanders. He was like the ringleader to the show’s circus, or the barker at a mad carnival. Throughout the show, in between songs, he’d appear and do a little comedy. He played off of another guy doing a parody of Jian Ghomeshi – who they called Jose Gimenez to fit in to the show’s southern theme – that made for a bit of a silly sideshow while the band played songs off of their new album, ‘Buenas Nachas.’

Frontman Clem Clemsen did his thing; he kept the energy up and the show rolling along, but the night was about a lot more than just straight-forward rock and roll songs. It was about the party, the theatrics, the craziness, and the debauchery, so Clem had a lot less of the showmanship burden to carry than most frontmen just because of everything that was happening around him all night long.

The rest of the band were just as tight, and they showed their professionalism too when an amp died mid-song; they had it swapped out in just a minute or two without the show slowing at all. 

The standout moment musically probably had to be the band’s break into Hocus Pocus – by Focus – which is about as strange a song as you’re likely to hear anyway, and White Cowbell Oklahoma doing a cover of it while Colonel Sanders chases Jian Ghomeshi away from lady-devils is just, well, madness.

The madness didn’t stop there, either. Jian Ghomeshi and Santa Claus got into it mid-set. Santa Claus pulled out a three-foot foam dick and started to piss all over Jian as well as the audience, and Jian retaliated by silly stringing Santa Claus from a fake dick of his own. All the while, two she-devil dancers were shaking it either side of the stage, and one of them got herself all sorts of spanked. She seemed totally cool with it.

Then, Santa Claus had had enough of Jian and his sexual deviance, and marched over to him and beat him down with his foam member. Powerful stuff, Saint Nick.

So that’s White Cowbell Oklahoma for you, people. One hell of a way to celebrate Christmas.