Black Diamond Heavies

What has four legs and sounds like Redd Foxx trying to freak up a New Orleans blues bar? The Nashville-based duo Black Diamond Heavies, comprising Van Campbell on drums and founder John Wesley Myers on guitar and blackened throat.

The band was actually born four years ago as a four-piece. In short order the bassist and drummer, a romantically linked couple, left. “That’s when I began playing with the band and John started covering the bass end of things on a keyboard,” Campbell says. Their debut EP, Every Damn Time, released by Alive Records, hit the streets this past January. “Alive was hip enough to sign the Black Keys for their first record,” he says. “It’s all part of the same attitude — blues, punk, soul, garage music.”

This will be the band’s second visit to Churchill’s, and Campbell looks forward to it. “[Playing at] Churchill’s Pub is a truly unique and enjoyable experience. An English pub in Little Haiti is kind of like a Chinese restaurant in Mexico,” he says. “You want to avoid it, you know, but you’re too damn curious not to go there. It’s a great place, which is why we’re coming back there.”