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"You guys sound great, just like we did forty years ago.”
- Johnny Cash, at a Belmont Playboys gig, Charlotte Motor Speedway, 1990

When the Man in Black speaks like that, you best listen. And when Little Richard buttonholes you in the hallway of a New York City club just to tell you how much he likes your sound, you’ve gotta figure you’re doing something right. The Belmont Playboys come smoking out of Charlotte, North Carolina with twice-pipes and cheater slicks, leaving a trail of rabid fans behind them like Burma-Shave signs. Featuring Mike Hendrix on guitar and vocals, Jeff Hendrix on upright bass, Chipps Baker on guitar, vocals, and sax, and Mark Painter on drums, the Belmont Playboys deliver the goods without confusing the issue with any kind of cornball retro bullshit.

The Belmont Playboys are probably the single hottest thing to come blazing out of the punk/rockabilly scene. With chart success (nine weeks on the CMJ Top 200, peaking at 84), national radio play on over 200 stations (both college and commercial), strong national sales of their three independently-released CD’s, and a large fan base on both the East and West coasts, the Playboys have established themselves as a powerful musical force poised for even greater future success. They have played almost every major rockabilly festival, including the mammoth Hemsby weekender on the North Sea coast of England, as well as festivals in the States in Pittsburgh, New Jersey/New York, Indianapolis, Atlanta, and New Orleans. Touring constantly, they have supported acts as diverse as Carl Perkins, Little Richard, Wanda Jackson, the Scofflaws, Reo Speeddealer, Social Distortion, Southern Culture on the Skids, the Pietasters, Royal Crown Revue, Hepcat, and the Mavericks. Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, June Carter, Jessi Colter, and Robert Duvall joined them onstage for an extended jam session at a private party thrown by actor Tom Cruise, who selected the Playboys after reviewing material submitted by over two hundred bands. Strong credentials indeed. But this ain’t your father’s rockabilly band. The Belmont Playboys manage to rise far above the run-of-the-mill rockabilly traditionalists and Fifties-cover-band types with strong original material that fuses traditional rockabilly instrumentation (i.e., upright bass, bare-bones drum kit) with punk-era energy and intensity. Their sweat-drenched, over-the-top live shows are the stuff of legend everywhere they’ve appeared, and the more shows they do, the more their reputation as one of the country’s top live acts grows.