"We wanted to recapture the spirit of the music, not the sound of it," he explained. "We don't have any idea what the Old West was like. We're not cowboys; we don't want to pretend we are." So the band takes the old ideas and makes them its own.

Davis said his purpose was "to do for country what the Gun Club did for the blues."
He said the originals -- old-time musicians and country artists like Hank Williams and Johnny Cash -- had been shamelessly exploited, and now country music is "awful" and "homogenized."

So Davis went back to Los Angeles and created Blood on the Saddle, which, as the name implies, is a more violent, rave-up version of old-time music.

Jeep kept telling him to play "faster, harder, and louder," too.
"A light bulb went off," Davis chuckled softly. "I said, 'Well, I'll be damned.'"

After Dead Hippie broke up in 1982, Davis went to New Orleans and played dobro on Bourbon Street. He met up with Jeep, an old banjo player from Memphis.

"Before I was in that band, I didn't know anything about it (punk) -- except that I didn't like it," Davis said from his Los Angeles home earlier this week. "They kept telling me to play faster, harder, and louder." He got into it.

In 1981, Davis, a guitar player who emulated people like Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and Duane Allman, joined the punk band Dead Hippie.

Now he is playing both types of music -- at once -- in the "country thrash" band Blood on the Saddle, which will be appearing at Nino's tomorrow.
In the past couple of years, Davis has had some musical revelations.

Why would this hard-core, heavy-metal connoisseur pass up his first love for a country-coated band?
"We're not a country band," he said. "The music's crazier. We just play fast. (But) we do have cows in our back yard."

It's anybody's guess as to how much farther Blood on the Saddle can go. Equally difficult to assess is Senac, who is often seen wearing a Motorhead T-shirt.

What's more, it will have some songs published by the Peer-Southern of Nashville, Tenn., which is noted for its work with artists Ranging from Jimmie Rodgers to the Carter Family. The company also will shop a demo tape of the group.