God Bless Our Mobile Home and the Supersuckers

UPDATE: 

The Supersuckers and God Bless Our Mobile Home concert, scheduled for Tuesday night at The Depot, has been cancelled due to snow.

The headliner announced in a tweet (below) Tuesday afternoon that The Supersuckers are stranded in Buffalo, N.Y.  and will not make it to York for the 8 p.m. show.

God Bless Our Mobile Home has rescheduled the concert without The Supersuckers for Black Friday (Nov. 28), according to lead singer Dom Sciortino. The doors will open at 7 p.m., and tickets will cost $5 at the door.

The Supersuckers was on the list of bands that local band God Bless Our Mobile Home most wanted to open for, Sciortino said. He was expecting between 100 to 150 people to attend Tuesday night's show.

"I'm just thrilled that that many people supported a Tuesday night show in York," he said. "It makes me feel very positive about the music scene locally."

Full refunds will be available to everyone, according to The Depot owner Kimon Kanellakis.  Those who purchased tickets online through Missiontix.com will receive an email with refund information within the next few business days, he said.  Everyone else can receive a full refund from the person they bought tickets from.

SHOW IS CANCELLED TONIGHT @TheDepotYork@flipsidepa . We're stranded in Buffalo due to snowstorm. — SUPERSUCKERS (@SupersuckersRnR) November 18, 2014

Previously reported

Not long ago, Domenic Sciortino ran into the owner of The Depot who told him that he was thinking of bring The Supersuckers to town and was wondering whether Sciortino's band, the psychobilly trio God Bless Our Mobile Home, would be interested in opening for them.

God Bless Our Mobile Home hadn't gigged more than two years. When it was playing regularly, it called The Depot its home base, one of the few venues able to provide a home for the band's high-energy, and high volume, act.

Sciortino, the band's guitarist who goes by the stage name Floyd Vegas, didn't have to think about it. He immediately texted his bandmates, bassist Mark "Whitey" Gutekunst and drummer Reese "Cletus Coltrane" Harlacker, and their responses were immediate. They were all in.

"When we were playing, we had a list of bands we'd like to open for," Sciortino said, "and the Supersuckers were high on that list, with Southern Culture on the Skids and the Rev. Horton Heat."

So the band got back together and started rehearsing for the Nov. 18 show. It was as if they had never taken a break.

"We just fell right in," Sciortino said.

That's to be expected. The band members are veteran musicians and getting their act together was, as musicians like to say, like falling off a bike.

The band — at least Sciortino and Gutekunst — have been playing together for 20 years. Harlacker is its second drummer. They started out as a blues band, but soon, united by their love of country and rockabilly, and the southern culture, changed direction. Their love of Southern Culture on the Skids and its unique brand of hillbilly rock-n-roll led them down a deeper path, to discovering the music that served as that band's roots.

"We started exploring older (music), bands from 50 years ago, like Hank Sr. and that stuff," Sciortino said. "There's so much passion in that music. It's real music."

The band's formation story gives an indication of how they approach their music. The story goes that Floyd Vegas was playing his guitar on the porch of his mobile home when Whitey and Cletus, attracted by the aroma of a still out back, stopped by and the rest is history. The band used to play a song about its mythical creation sung to the tune of the Brady Bunch theme.

The creation myth has also caused some disconcerting moments, Sciortino said. "People come up to my wife and say, 'I didn't know you lived in a trailer,'" he said. "Well, we don't."

The band never really officially disbanded. It took a break when Harlacker entered barber school. The other band members also had careers — coincidentally, Sciortino is a barber — and families and they all decided to take a break for a while.

Opening for the Supersuckers, though, was motivation enough to get back at it. Like God Bless Our Mobile Home, The Supersuckers play high-energy rock-n-roll and don't take themselves too seriously. For instance, the frontman's stage name is Eddie Spaghetti.

"We love those guys," Sciortino said. "It's just pure rock-n-roll — guitar, bass and drums. It's punch your fist in the air rock-n-roll."

It was just a good fit, he said.

"It's so similar to what we do," he said. "How could we say no?"