Troy Dillinger at Saxon Pub, Austin, TX

    BigJam Records recording artist Troy Dillinger is nothing if not informal.

    After coaxing a roaring sonic soundtrack out of his hollow-bodied guitar (with the help of some effects, admittedly), Dillinger turned to the audience at the Saxon Pub and said with an it-weren't-nothin' grin, "And you thought acoustic guitars were for pussies..." Well...no.

    At least not when someone is giving them the sort of thrashing Dillinger gave his in a performance that featured a three-piece, bass-less lineup of his band, the Del Dragons. The drums-keyboard-guitar setup (including Stewart Cochran on keyboards and Michael Hale on drums) was, Dillinger confessed, experimental. Maybe so, but apart from some feedback difficulties, it didn't seem to affect the music adversely.

    Like a young John Hiatt (with whom he shares some physical and vocal resemblance), Dillinger used deceptively simple instrumentation to concoct a punchy gumbo of Southern-smoked rock, blues and turbo-folk. Other echoes came into the set as it progressed; "Waiting," with its folkish flavor and lines like "(She's a) fallen angel with twigs in her hair," was redolent of John Mellencamp's prairie romances; the slurred bottleneck slide of "Strong Arms" recalled the Dixie voodoo groove of Sonny Landreth.

    And, most explicitly, the aptly-named "Sticks and Stones" copped a classic Keith Richards groove and a Sticky Fingers-era vamp for its "party-'til-she's-pretty" soundtrack. With a cigarette crammed into the corner of his mouth as he sang (shades of Keith again), and loose-limbed, amiable stage presence, Dillinger demonstrated once again why he is such an agreeable performer.

    While his experimental trio format had its rough spots, Dillinger and Del Dragons continue to put hard currency in the honky-tonk bank.

   ----John T Davis