The Devil Makes Three performs at Rams Head Live on Jan. 23, 2020. (Photo by Casey Vock)

Moonshine corn whiskey was on special at Ram’s Head Live recently, and if you studied some of the specimens strolling down the foyer toward the box office as the evening kicked off, you’d have thought that to be an appropriate drink of choice for the occasion. It was clear these folks would want a grown-up’s beverage to coax into action whatever thoughts were festering inside their heads, about to bust loose like some old rusty dam.

Since the band formed in Santa Cruz in 2002, The Devil Makes Three has distilled its own seductive, raw blend of gloomy ragtime, bluegrass and punk-spiked, string-woven rhythms. The music can physically and mentally hook you, and the band uses it as an altar for delivering prophetic, tongue-in-cheek stories of spiritual demise with playfully macabre messages about the perils of life and all its temptations.

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