Legend of the dusty road

Michael Dean Damron does nothing in moderation.

Whether drinking, talking politics or growling vocals over the top of his band’s blistering country rock anthems, Damron seems dead set on proving that he has no choice but to live the larger-than-life ideal of a man of the road.

With his mountainous physique, Damron is hard to ignore in the first place, and when cresting the waves of distortion coming off his backing band, Thee Loyal Bastards, the man is practically a force of nature. It’s hard to dislike the heartfelt lope of Damron’s rusty bar rock, and if the past is any indication, this Portlander has enough fuel to support a lifetime’s worth of explorations into the dusty mythology of America’s underbelly.

Damron first emerged in the Northwest a little more than a decade ago. After years of crisscrossing the country–seeing the best and worst the states had to offer–Damron finally made Portland his artistic home base.

This Saturday he plays Dante’s along with Thee Loyal Bastards in the first of a long string of local shows he will play this summer.

“I grew up between Tulsa, Oklahoma and Las Vegas,” Damron said. “Everything I remember from growing up in L.V. is dead. It eats its history. It feeds on itself. It’ll probably be a ghost town in the next 20 years…. I want to get old enough to see it as a ghost town. I ended up coming to Portland from Dallas, Texas with my wife and kid about 11 years ago…. I love it here, and I’m dying here in the 503.”

It was after arriving in Portland that Damron formed the late bar-punk dynamo group I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch In The House, and started attacking local venues with a destructive energy befitting his former band’s aggressive moniker. Quickly finding a home on Portland’s smoke-clouded stages, Sonofabitch helped develop and hone the rusty blues-rock on which Damron has focused in his recent projects.

“Sonofabitch did more extensive touring [than current band Thee Loyal Bastards],” Damron said. “[It] made for more extensive fighting between bandmates, from my perspective. The Bastards fight less, in fact, never … the lineup, as it is, is very much the band I’ve dreamed of playing with my whole life. Very much a perfect fit for what I do.”

As with any perfect musical storm, Damron’s Loyal Bastards are more than a little rough around the edges, which may be the group’s primary strength. Now featuring the combined talents of Allen Hunter, Andy Bacon and Fred Stephenson, Thee Loyal Bastards provide the perfect context for Damron’s tales of heartbreaking loss and elusive redemption.

“The guys I’m with now,” Damron said, “are the only band I ever want to have, ever. If they go, for any reason, it’s just me and my git.”

The possibility of Damron playing with only his guitar would likely cut down on the sheer volume of his songs, but certainly not their heartrending thematic material. After the breakup of I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch In The House, Damron went into the studio to begin work on the record Perfect Day for a Funeral, which offered a violently honest portrayal of the collapse of his first marriage.

Calling on a large pool of country and rock talent to fill out that album, Damron developed his songs into impressive testimonials that pay loving homage to the loose bar-rock style that inspired them. Released through local indie label In Music We Trust, Damron’s premiere solo album turned some heads locally and attracted the attention of national press and international record labels.

Having secured European distribution courtesy of Rosa Records–and with In Music We Trust still supporting his efforts stateside–Damron went on to record Bad Days Ahead, his towering sophomore effort and first with Thee Loyal Bastards.

Bad Days Ahead saw its release earlier this year and continues to help promote Damron’s legacy as one of the nation’s foremost practitioners of electric Americana. Bounding back and forth between barnburners such as “By the Time I Get to Heaven” and ballads like “Hotter Hell,” the album is a refreshingly honest testament to the beer-and-cigarette-stained roadhouses, which are his cultural birthplace.

Unabashedly honest songwriting and interstate wanderings are Damron’s hallmarks, and they look to be traditions that will persist into his upcoming work.

“The next album is written and will get recorded in the next four months,” Damron said. “It’ll be mostly acoustic, sparse, just me and a git. I got two big guitar rock songs … I’m sure I’ll release it with In Music We Trust here in the states and Rosa [Records] over [in Europe] if they like it.”

Whatever that album contains, it will be sure to bear the same emotional gravity that has defined Damron’s songwriting for all these years.

“I wouldn’t know how to do it any other way,” Damron said. “It helps my head, for better or worse. It fixes me every time I play … my life, my truth and a guitar.”

Michael Dean Damron and Thee Loyal Bastards 9 p.m., May 17 Dante’s $8, 21-plus