"Just the good ol' boys, never meanin' no harm..."

Roll scene.

On one side of a screen door the motoring sound of Zeke fires on all cylinders, angrily disturbing the serenity of domesticity. On the other side, a helicopter cuts low through the sky and palm trees stand tall like reeds in sand. A man sits alone on his porch, drinking Budweiser because it just happens to be the cheapest thing close to his house. A picture postcard sent from Fort Jackson, South Carolina. And when the helicopter dies beyond the horizon the screen door becomes thin like paper and the motoring sound from within filters out on to the porch like a fast burning cigarette.

Pause scene. Cue Waylon Jennings. 

Now hold on right there. Not long ago, controversy reared its ugly head in South Carolina. It seems a bunch of people got all hot over the flying of the Confederate flag a top the state house in Columbia, not far from Fort Jackson. Now I don't know about you, but I think things are about to get reeeeeal messy.

Resume scene.

"It is kind of funny," says Jason Carrion, Bud drinking porch sitter and bass player for Isabelle's Gift. "The NAACP just bitched and bitched and bitched and had the flag brought down from where you could barely see it on top of the state house. Now they have it on a Confederate memorial right in front of the state house, so you can't help but see it now. Now they're bitching about that."

Pause scene. Cue Waylon Jennings.

See what I mean. Now the boys from Isabelle's Gift have a lot of stake in this and, well, I am sure they'll tell you that their love for the flag is anything but controversial. They value their roots and have adopted the Confederate flag to represent that. Now surely there can't be anything wrong with that now, can there? 

Resume scene.

"I don't give a shit about the flag on a political sense," continues Carrion. "I like what it stands for, for us, which is that we are from the south and we are rebellious. It is more of a pride thing. It is not racist at all. I am Puerto Rican so its not like we are a white racist band or whatever. It is more of a southern pride thing. It stands for rebellion. South Carolina was the first state to go against the grain."

There it is - redneck devil music, as rebellious as Bo and Luke and they rock like the General Lee, burning up moonshine fuel while being chased by the local authorities through muddy, back-wood roads. It is southern culture gone perfectly wrong. Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms isn't just the name of their last album, it is a way of life. So are drugs, Jesus, tits, trailers, motor oil, blood, and rock n' roll.

"It's how we live," admits Carrion. "It's our lifestyle. It's a brotherhood. We are not being fake about anything."

How can it be fake when a singlewide mobile home deep in the South Carolina countryside constitutes prime rehearsal space? Simply put, it can't. 

"We try to rehearse two to three times a week. It is kind of out in the country so nobody really bothers us, except one time a cop showed up. Somebody was complaining about noise but the thing that was funny about it is that they live like a mile away and I was like, 'How they fuck are they hearing us man?'"

Pause scene. Cue Waylon Jennings.

Don't look now but it seems the law has finally caught up with Isabelle's Gift. Looks like it might take some real smooth talking to get them out of this mess.

Resume scene. 

"He was really cool," says Carrion about the cop. "He wanted a CD. We didn't have any so we told him next time he came out he could have one."

Besides buying off the authorities with free merchandise, Isabelle's Gift is doing other good things out in that trailer. It has been one year since the release of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and a new album is in the works, optimistically scheduled to see the light of day sometime this summer. The new album will include 90 per cent new material and 10 per cent old material, with extra emphasis, such as King Kong balls, put on the old songs.

"It is going to be heavier and groovier. It is going to be the best record we ever put out," says Carrion. "It is just amazing the music we are writing now. It is so much more heartfelt and so much better."

Carrion also believes that the timing for a new album couldn't be more perfect.

"What we are doing is very important," he says. "It aggravates me to watch everybody being brainwashed by what's cool on MTV and what's on the radio. There's more to it. There's more out there, you know, and I think that everybody deserves a chance to be exposed to it."

It is a sunny day, yet Carrion sits on his porch drenched in contempt for an industry held tight in the fat, sweaty palm of an almighty Boss Hogg. 

"I don't buy that bullshit teenage angst thing," he says.

Carrion once quipped, 'Kill Linkin Park.' Who else does he want to kill?

"Umm...I don't know. Get back to me on that." Laughter, at last. Because if you can't laugh then all hope is lost. 

"It is redundant, re-hashed crap." He is rollin' now. "It is the same thing that happened when bands like Candlebox started coming out because of the grunge thing. Before that there was the glam clones like Firehouse and Slaughter, who started coming out after Faster Pussycat and Poison. It is just monotonous man. I mean, the thing we're doing is completely different from what I think the majority of people are doing and I think that's what makes us really cool."

Pause scene. Cue Waylon Jennings.

Now hold on right there. I smell something fishy and it isn't Daisy's dukes. You see, Isabelle's Gift has a closer relationship with the MTV scene than would appear. Remember those annoying fellows in the monkey suits who wrote the song about doing it like mammals on the Discovery channel? Yep, that's right. Well, it seems Isabelle's Gift and the Bloodhound Gang go way back. In fact, the Bloodhound Gang's Jimmy Pop is Isabelle's Gift's manager. Now there's something to chew on. 

Resume scene.

"It is kind of weird how we hooked up with them," explains Carrion. "When their album Use Your Fingers came out in '95 they were coming through Columbia and Chris (Sutton, lead singer) and I had heard it and we were like, 'Fuck man let's go open for them,' because we draw pretty well here. Then when Lupus (Thunder) and Jimmy were trying to pick acts to go out with them again in '97 they called us and we went on tour for like two months and we got paid $100 a night. If you can imagine eight guys splitting $100 a night, I mean it was hard but it was a lot of fun."

And a lot of help adds Carrion. Now Isabelle's Gift is on their feet with a solid fan base and a live show that resembles a ritualistic blood bath at the best of times.

"The people we have following us down here in the south are crazy as hell. It is the coolest audience. Chris gets crazy on stage and people eat that shit up man. It is awesome. When it is time to go on we play whatever intro music we're going to play and then we get up there and just fucking blast. It is completely heartfelt, there's no choreography. It is complete spontaneous combustion."

Yet idle times are now at hand and Isabelle's Gift hammers out new songs amid constant line-up changes. Carrion and Sutton are the only two members left from Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. The latest members to come strutting through the revolving trailer door are guitarist James Zimmerman and drummer Troy Tyler.

Carrion, however, sees the future through mud-covered glasses and it has never looked so filthy. Filthy, for Isabelle's Gift, is the best there is. Zeke has been put in neutral, the helicopters have docked, and the Bud bottle is as empty as Cooter's stained overalls. And as Isabelle's Gift begins a new chapter, there is one storyline that will stay with them for a long time.

"Isabelle is a reference to something that happened to somebody who used to be in the band. There was a guy that was cheating on his girlfriend and contracted a venereal disease from her. Hence her gift."

This only happened to one guy?

"No comment." Carrion laughs. Beautiful. Laughter. Take it on home Waylon.

End scene. Cue Waylon Jennings.

"...making their way, the only way they know how. Well that's just a little bit more than the law will allow..."

- JW Warren