Those Poor Bastards play miserable and primitive old-time gothic country music. Lonesome Wyatt (guitar, vocals) and The Minister (banjo, bass, etc.) are both legally certified holiness preachers.
If you’re looking for slick, over-produced, commercial songs, you’d better cover your delicate little ears. Those Poor Bastards play it raw and they play it mean. Be a pal and support independent anti-corporate country music.
Those Poor Bastards are
Lonesome Wyatt – Vocals, Guitar
The Minister – Banjo, Bass, Percussion, Backing Vocal (Studio recordings)
Vincent Presley – Drums, Moog (Live shows)
“Those Poor Bastards own a unique sound that only touches the edges of traditional roots music, a sound that repeatedly smashes the molds that have shaped country and blues for nearly a hundred years. It’s a sound that was decidedly born too late, for it seems to long for a time its creators never knew, a simpler, more primitive time. Rather than commit itself entirely to the time in which we presently live, their sound finds itself treading through the stinking gutter of a Depression era alleyway, only to sit amongst other lost souls, all of them sitting around a mighty fire burning in the guts of a metal waste container. They proceed to pick up guitars, banjos, fiddles, buckets for percussion, and various other instruments, some homemade, some not, and play song after song as if their very lives depended upon it. And throughout the night it evolves into a sound as dark as a winter night, as sharp as a rattler’s fang, as vicious as a meth lab guard dog, as bizarre as a pack of sideshow carnies, and as full of fire and brimstone as an evangelical preacher of the South’s sweaty Bible Belt.”
— No Depression
“Those Poor Bastards are the best Gothic Country I have heard yet to this day. The depressing gloomy vocals coming out of this drifter named Lonesome Wyatt has hints of Marilyn Manson to Nick Cave, Throwrag and maybe even a hint of a demented Adam Ant with a shot of a Pilled Up Johnny Cash… And the Minister is backing up Lonesome Wyatt with a style that is a cross between erie strung out folk music with a creepy blend of The Nightmare Before Christmas!!!!!!!!!”
— Hank III
“If you’ve never heard of Those Poor Bastards, you’ll either be vulgarly repulsed or have an uncontrollable desire to see what bleach tastes like. Either way, that’s fine and dandy with them and all their Bastard Fans. Lonesome Wyatt and Vincent Presley (on tour), spin their melancholy trance with songs spitting from their latest release “Satan is Watching.” Well then, Satan be praised as if Mr. Cash were drunk at his own funeral and laughing up a storm because Joaquin Phoenix was in the casket! Their rendition of Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” made the man in black stomp and holler proudly in his grave. . .and same went for the crowd. Fans raised their bottles and cried out like injured wolves because Bastard songs you don’t sing along to. You shut the fuck up and let Lonesome’s voice takeover your soul. Yes, it’s a two-man band and no, they are nothing like the Black Keys or White Stripes—I don’t think there’s anything like them on this unholy earth. Afterwards you feel dirty and sick, and I like it that way.”
— zeegig.com