The Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band comes to State Theatre for rare Indiana performance

It’s been 17 years since The Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band became a fulltime touring band. Friday night, the trio brings their big show to the State Theatre stage.

Seventeen years and Peyton believes the best is yet to come.

“Right now, and this is going to sound crazy, the previous how many years doesn’t matter,” he said. “We are on such another level right now. Our most recent record is on another level. Our shows right now are on another level. For me, it’s all about right now and the future.”

The event is set to start at 7:30 p.m. at the State Theatre, 317 E. Market St.

Touring extensively in support of its latest album “Dance Songs for Hard Times,” the Brown County band has already been across the United States this year playing shows and festivals, and also spent six weeks in Europe. Band members are excited for the opportunity to play some local shows this weekend.

“We’ve had a heck of a year and have been hitting it hard, hard, hard,” Peyton said. “I’ll put it like this, after COVID, it has taken a couple of years for the music business to really get back into the swing of things. It’s finally just really good. But this show in Logansport is pretty cool because we haven’t had that many Indiana shows in the last couple of years so I’m excited to be coming back and playing some Indiana shows. This weekend, we’ve got Logansport up north and the (Southern Indiana Blues Festival in Morgantown) down south. It feels great. It feels really good to come and do some back home stuff. I’m super excited.”

The latest album, released in 2021, captures the mood of those quarantine years. On “No Tellin’ When,” the reverend contemplates when he will get to see his mother, his friends or when he will get to work again. The song is stark with repetitive lyrics and guitars strumming, but it perfectly captures the reoccurring catastrophizing thoughts shared by many across the world during the height of the pandemic.

That’s not to say the album is a bummer. It is called “Dance Songs for Hard Times,” after all. It kicks off with the rocker “Ways and Means,” a song anyone can identify with about knowing you have the ability to do something, but you lack the opportunity or money needed to do it. On “Crime to be Poor,” the band looks at injustices between social classes where millionaires get a slap on the wrist while someone who steals a pack of gum ends up in jail. But, once again, the band tackles the issue with fist-pumping rhythms. When the band closes the album with “Come Down Angels,” a plea to end the suffering, the prayer sounds like the band is going out with a raucous party.

Peyton described the band’s music as front porch blues, a combination of all styles of rural blues from Delta, Piedmont, Appalachian and everything in between.

The Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band began at a time when the Indiana music scene was popping with potential. Margot & The Nuclear So and So’s were the darlings of the scene, signing to Epic Records, playing Conan O’Brien and earning a slot at Lollapalooza. Arrah and the Ferns and This Story brought folk pop out of Muncie while Everthus the Deadbeats created extravagant art rock that was equal parts David Bowie and Broadway musical. In Indianapolis, Jookabox evolved into an international act thanks to their grungy melodies and found a home on the Asthmatic Kitty music label while Neon Love Life brought high energy melodic punk into the mix.

Music fans in Indiana had visions of being the next Seattle, but things didn’t quite turn out that way. By 2010, Margot frontman Richard Edwards moved to Chicago and would eventually leave the Margot name behind, choosing instead to be a solo act. The other bands slowly broke apart, as college kids and recent graduates whose lives moved in different directions that no longer accommodated the rock and roll life.

In the aftermath, there was still the Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band.

“We work harder than everyone else,” Peyton said. “Every single day, we have worked to be better than we were. A lot of bands, they reach a point where they are like ‘ok, this is who we are.’ We have improved on every metric. We are better at writing songs, better performing songs, better playing the guitar, better singing, everything. You have to do that unless you have some big radio hit that you can ride out, which we don’t. So, the reason we have survived is that fans know they can see 25, 30, 50 shows and each show is going to be better than the one they saw before.”

Another factor for the Big Damn Band is family and the band’s size. The Rev. Peyton is married to the band’s washboard player, Breezy Peyton. Max Senteney rounds out the trio on drums.

In 2006, many of the Indiana bands were modeling their line up after Arcade Fire or Sufjan Stevens, creating mini orchestras that barely fit on local stages. There was often infighting in those large line-ups and some bands saw a frequent rotation of members. It’s more difficult to break up the band when it consists of a husband and wife duo and remains small in size.

Happy to be back on the road, Peyton said there is no other way to experience a communal connection through music than during a rock concert.

“No record, no stream, no Youtube video will give you that same experience,” he said. “You can feel it. Vibrationally, on some kind of subatomic level you feel it. You literally release endorphins. For me, I am high off those for a couple days after a good show. And I know when I go see a show it’s the same. There’s no other substitute for a good live music experience.”

What was the last show he saw that made him feel that way?

“Langhorne Slim,” he said. “We got to see him in Bloomington. I think that was the last one that really fired me up.”

Peyton said it was gift to continue to represent Indiana as a successful traveling band after all these years.

“I’ll put it like this,” he said. “Every story about Indiana is an underdog story, right? All the great movies that are about Indiana are underdog stories. Every success that comes out of Indiana is an underdog story in a lot ways because it’s kind of an underdog place. You are not supposed to be able to succeed coming from here if you ask other people. I’m four hours from Nashville and I’ve been told my whole life I should have moved to Nashville. I’m five hours from Chicago and I’ve been told my whole life I should have moved there. I love it here in Southern Indiana. I just feel like in a way it would have been disingenuous for us to go someplace else. I just think there is a lot of good stuff here and that stuff doesn’t get championed. In Indiana, we are our own worst enemy. We don’t champion our stuff. And that’s a shame because other states are better at championing their own things. They make sure their own arts community is first in line and Indiana is not always that way. In some ways, I think our story is one of those damn underdog stories. We were told in the beginning we would never be anything. We were told in the beginning nobody was going to care. We were told in the beginning there was no way we would have a career doing this. And we just believed in ourselves. Didn’t matter if any one else believed in us or not.”

'Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band'

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 25

Where: The State Theatre, 317 E. Market St.

Tickets: $20, available at the door.

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