Here are two important stories in Red Devils lore, both by Michael Corcoran from the Dallas Morning News. The first is the cleverly titled “Sympathy for the Devils” (Sept. 17 1992), with a strong Lester Butler interview. It gets deeper into the band’s history — and Butler’s drug use — than most by-the-numbers articles of the time.
It’s followed by “Red Devils have guitarist by the sleeve” (Sept. 19, 1992), and recaps how Texan Mike Flanigin ended up as the rhythm guitarist in the band for a short spell, replacing Dave Lee Bartel beginning with a show at Trees in Dallas. (Edited Aug. 13 to correct spelling of “Flanigin,” wrong in the original article.)
Sympathy for the Devils: The unlikely-looking Red Devils play some really wicked blues
By Michael Corcoran, Dallas Morning News
Sept. 17, 1992
The blues live on Monday, that bluest of blue-collar days. On Monday, you’re not talking with much enthusiasm and others aren’t really into listening, so you always have to repeat your first sentence twice. “I said, ‘They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday’s just as bad.’”
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Finally — I think — the only other act with a magnetic force field of over 100 km: the Red Devils (because: Mick Jagger!) with their busy and fat-accentuated party hardy clichéd blues. No trace of white and yet not heavy. The band consisted of five top strengths, though star parts were played by drummer Bill Bateman
(Blasters) and never-stagnant singer/harper Lester Butler, one of the few to handle Muddy’s “Louisiana Blues.” Butler spontaneously fulfilled a request for one of the slow songs to a fan who was killed earlier that week, though hopefully no one outside of those involved had been in the painful mistake still in his ready-made text. No, of course there is a festival for people like us to get back to. And we were.
