Return of The King

[August 6th, 2008]

Eight years ago, a stocky, irrepressible young man from Louisiana named Louie Bankston decided to move to Portland, lured by the promise of a new band—the hard-charging garage-blues outfit 10-4 Backdoor—and a full-time job at Oaks Amusement Park.

“I was the Ferris wheel operator,” recalls Bankston—better known to the rock-’n’-roll world as King Louie—as he drives through Tennessee following a long recording session with his current group, the Loose Diamonds. “It was a great job, but no one else wanted to do it. I mean, all you had to do was yell at the kids, spin ’em around, make ’em throw up and then hose it all off and then go smoke a cigarette. I made that job desirable!”

In a matter of three short years, he had reversed his course, heading back to New Orleans, but not before playing hundreds of shows, helping craft the sound of one of this city’s most beloved and lamented bands, the Exploding Hearts (Bankston co-wrote many of the songs and played keyboards on the band’s sole album), and leaving behind plenty of sordid tales in his wake.

“He called me up at 10 in the morning, telling me the cops are after him and he needed to find a place to stay,” remembers Terry Six, former Exploding Heart and current frontman for the Nice Boys. “I found him a place in Beaverton—some dude’s house who was still living with his parents. I went to check back on him later and he was gone. They said, ‘Yeah, he left and took all our money and all our food and all our beer with him.’”

As with everyone who shares their stories about Bankston’s antics, Six spoke with a tone somewhere between amusement and disbelief. Underneath, though, was a hint of anticipation. It’s understandable, as this coming weekend holds not only the possibility of a few more wild yarns, but also because it’s the chance to see King Louie grace a Portland stage for the first time in five years.

Billed as the “King Louie Stomp,” Bankston will play three sets of music this Friday and Saturday at Slabtown: one with a reunited 10-4 Backdoor (Friday, Aug. 8); another as King Louie’s One-Man Band, his clattering solo Southern blues project (Saturday, Aug. 9); and, in perhaps the most anticipated part of the weekend, a set with Six playing the music of the Exploding Hearts (also Friday).

“We’ve been trying to get him to come out and play ever since we bought Slabtown,” says Brinda Coleman, one of the club’s owners and someone who has known Bankston for at least a decade, “but he had a lot of paranoia issues because of some ‘unfinished legal business.’”

Whether or not that “business” is cleared up remains a mystery, but when Coleman asked again, Bankston, now 35, agreed, so long as he could turn it into an event akin to the King Louie Fest that was held earlier this year in New Orleans.

As much anticipation as everyone involved has for Bankston’s triumphant return, the event is still tinged with bittersweet feelings concerning Sunday’s Exploding Hearts tribute. The band came to an untimely end in 2003, after its van crashed on I-5, claiming the lives of three of Bankston’s former bandmates.

“It’s been about five years since I’ve even touched that stuff,” says Six, “[but] it’s stirring up all the really good memories instead of the bad, knowing that those songs are going to be heard again.” Bankston echoes those sentiments, noting that his conversations with Six have “really helped see me through a lot of things” concerning the accident.

In spite of all the emotion being stirred up by his impending return, Bankston refuses to get sentimental about his days in Portland, preferring to remember some of the wilder times. “Some of my favorite memories are when all of my friends would come and visit me at the amusement park and go nuts and get drunk on the rides. Or the basement of [former 10-4 Backdoor bandmates] Sara Hot Stix and Joe Pestilence’s house. Everything you could imagine and more happened in that basement. You couldn’t wash the walls down there. You’d have to burn the whole fucking house down.”