Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers have built a loyal audience and musical legacy mile by mile, and song by song. With seven studio albums including 2014’s “The Independent” and 18 years together, the band from Tempe, Arizona, draws from a deep well of roots rock spiked with desert tales, mariachi and other influences from south of the border.
Many in the band’s devoted audience are part of a traveling tribe. Annual family reunions are held at the band’s Circus Mexicus festival in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico, across the Gulf from Baja California. The gatherings are often fueled by Clyne’s line of Mexican Moonshine tequilas, named after a song from 2004’s “¡Americano!” album.
Drummer P.H. Naffah and bassist Nick Scropos share Chicago roots as schoolmates prior to leaving town for the desert. The Peacemakers have built their brand in Chicago through nearly annual stops since the band’s early days, with multiple visits to Abbey Pub, Schubas, Martyrs and more. When the bandmates play Lincoln Hall on Sunday, however, they’ll celebrate a milestone from another lifetime.
Clyne and Naffah first worked together as half of the Refreshments. The band is remembered for “Yahoos and Triangles,” its twanging theme song to animated TV series “King of the Hill.”
Also fondly recalled are mid-’90s alt-rock hits “Down Together” and “Banditos” — the latter is the chugging rocker describing a Bonnie and Clyde-style pact of mayhem and a midnight meeting to split ill-gotten gains. The song name-checks “Star Trek: The Next Generation’s” Captain Jean-Luc Picard and boasts a chorus that bluntly states, “Everybody knows that the world is full of stupid people.”
The album featuring those songs was “Fizzy Fuzzy Big and Buzzy,” and this year marks its 20th birthday. Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers will perform the album front to back, in addition to Peacemakers standouts like forlorn tear-in-my-beer favorite “Green & Dumb” from 1999’s “Honky Tonk Union.”
• Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers, with Enormodome, 8 p.m. Sept. 18, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln. Tickets $22 (ages 21+); lh-st.com.
Jeff Elbel is a local freelance writer. Email: elbel.jeff@gmail.com
