Roughnecks on the Bandstand, and One of Them Is Home

HOUMA, La. — The hall was full Saturday by nine, and a good part of the crowd had come in off the water to see one man play bass.

Dwayne Sikes worked offshore rigs out of Houma for six years. In the winter of 1980 he went west to the Permian Basin, and now he runs the engines on a drilling rig south of Odessa, Texas. He plays bass in a band made up of the crew he works with. The band is called Burning Dead Dinosaurs. Saturday was the only date on their summer tour that is not in the Basin.

They work seven days on and seven off, and they play on the seven off. They drove eleven hours to get here on their first day.

“A man beside us who runs a supply boat out of Fourchon took his cap off for it.

Travis Kincaid sings. On the rig he works the derrick, ninety feet up. Jesse Ruelas plays lead guitar and works the floor. Bobby Lee Crump, the driller, plays the drums. Rhonda Pike plays rhythm guitar. She is the mud logger on the well, and she is the fastest player in the band. The others watch her right hand, not the drummer. They told us so, and then they showed us.

The music is loud and heavy and moves like a rig at work: steady, then all at once. Their new record is called Mud Weight. Mr. Sikes sang one song himself, “Out of Houma,” which he wrote about the Gulf. The room knew what it was about. A man beside us who runs a supply boat out of Fourchon took his cap off for it.

Between sets Mr. Sikes signed a record for a woman who said she had taught him in the fourth grade. He said yes ma’am to everything she said.

We asked him whether he missed working offshore. “Offshore it’s fourteen and fourteen and nowhere to go,” he said. “Out here you can at least drive to a show.” He meant the Permian. He also meant Saturday.

The band left Sunday at noon. Their hitch starts again Tuesday.