When Hillstomp singer-guitarist Henry Kammerer picked up his love of North Mississippi hill-country music, it didn’t come from any romantic, Crossroads-style pilgrimage to the southern mecca of the blues. He discovered his passion via the bizarre on-stage antics of one-man-band and freakazoid slide-guitar specialist Bob Log III.

“I kinda came into it through the back door, man,” explains Kammerer, on the line from his home in Portland, Oregon. “I was a big fan of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion in the late ’90s, so I went to see them play, and for the opening act this guy comes out in a blue spandex suit wearing a motorcycle helmet with a telephone soldered to the front of it. It looked like a freak show, but as soon as he started playing my ears just perked right up, and I was like, ”˜Whoa, I need to find out more about this!’

“So I bought his record,” continues Kammerer, “and loved it so much that I did some research into the label that put it out, and that led me to R. L. Burnside and Junior [Kimbrough] and all those Fat Possum Records guys. I don’t know if I like the electronic R. L. stuff they did, but if you go back to Mr. Wizard or especially Too Bad Jim, those are my favourite records ever.”

The hypnotic brand of blues that Log inspired Kammerer with is well represented on Hillstomp’s new album, Darker the Night. Kammerer and drummer John Johnson concoct a down-home batch of banjo-driven stompers and slide-laced hillbilly ditties just perfect for your next moonshine bender. Among the rowdier tracks is “Cardiac Arrest in D”, which pays tribute to one of the two keys most favoured by hill-country greats.

“All those guys are playing in D or G,” asserts Kammerer. “And if you’re Junior Kimbrough and you’re playing a song in G, for instance, you won’t leave G once in seven-and-a-half minutes. We’re trying to get that kinda trance and drone going too, but we’re not quite that good yet. We’re workin’ on it.”

Hillstomp’s efforts toward such lofty goals have not gone unnoticed by the tastemakers in its hometown. The duo’s 2005 release, The Woman That Ended the World, was voted best local album of the year by Portland’s largest weekly, Willamette Week, ahead of indie favourites the Decemberists and Sleater-Kinney. Kammerer is quick to rave about the city’s vibrant music scene, which he says stems from the fact that it rains so much there that folks like him have no choice but to stay inside and practise.

“Portland is really chock full of whatever you’re into,” he claims. “I’m not a metal fan, personally, but I can go see a metal show here and get blown away by the quality of the band. There’s a really awesome hip-hop scene here, a world-renowned old-time scene. The debate is whether Portland or Austin is the best music city in the U.S.”

Hillstomp is currently delivering its Portland-grown sound on a West Coast tour with Dallas psychobilly vet the Reverend Horton Heat, but it’s not the show’s headliner that Kammerer is most psyched about seeing.

“We like the Reverend,” he notes, “he’s a wonderful performer, but the other act on the bill happens to be one of my favourite bands of all time—Split Lip Rayfield. They’re a three-piece bluegrass band from Kansas which has guitar, banjo, and a bass made out of a 40-gallon gas tank, so it’s gonna be a hell of a show. Trust me, don’t miss Split Lip.”

Hillstomp plays the Commodore Ballroom next Thursday (August 5).