Super Chickens

Sound engineer Chad Meise is usually a quiet fellow. Minds his own business. Certainly isn't the type to snap his fingers at you while he's talking.

But Sweet Lips -- the persona Meise takes on when performing with his boogaloo-style funk band Chickenhoof -- is all about the snapping when he wants to pick up the tempo. If the crowd's too riled up from dancing to handle a slow song, he'll snap his fingers and call out "Hot sauce!" so everyone in his outfit knows he wants it fast.

"Sweet Lips is a ladies' man," Meise explains. "You know, he always wears a suit and has French cuffs. He gives the ladies all a little something while he's out, but he goes home with that one woman because he's also a gentleman."

Having grown up watching shows at the old funk clubs on Troost with his musician father in the '70s, Meise bases Sweet Lips not on some fictional idea of what funk musicians were like back in the day but on experiences that actually shaped him. "I think Sweet Lips probably derived from those early influences," Meise says. "You know, I would see these guys all the time, with feathers in their fedoras every night and fancy handshakes with, like, five or six different motions."

Chickenhoof formed in 1999, playing for the first time at a "nines party" on September 9, 1999 (9/9/99), with what has turned out to be an all-star crew -- Mark Southerland as "Dovebelly," Nate Gawron as "The Professor," Scott Easterday as "Quasi Mofo" and Solomon Hofer as "Timing Chain." The band has been dormant for more than a year now because everyone's had so many other projects in the works that arranging practices -- not to mention performances -- has been a logistical nightmare. But for at least one night this week, Chickenhoof is back at it, playing a benefit for much-loved area bassist Johnny Hamil, who fell off a ladder and is out some serious cash.

Even before Hamil's accident, a few of the Chickenhoofers had thought about doing a reunion gig for fun. That surprised Meise, who figured the boys in the band had sworn off their hoofing days. "I was like, it must be ice skating time in hell," he says. But everyone's having a great time. "It's amazing," Meise adds. "Everybody's really into it."

And why shouldn't they be? During its heyday, Chickenhoof was easily one of the area's best live bands, partly owing to Sweet Lips' energy and charisma. At a Chickenhoof show, everybody got in on the dancing -- and quickly learned that, during the song "Strut the Butt," you'd better scoot back toward the stage in time with the music, ass first, or you'd be a total outcast.

"That's just showmanship," Meise says matter-of-factly. "The problem with punk-rock shows in this town is that people just stand there. It's amazing what happens when you do something that directly engages them."

But Southerland, who knows Meise well and is fairly weirded out by the transformation that occurs in his friend, thinks Sweet Lips might embody more than just showmanship. "The persona takes over in sort of a frightening way," he warns. "It kind of makes you think maybe some old soul musician keeled over onstage in 1972 and at that moment, Chad Meise was born."