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Since he started playing at Levelz a few years ago, the Reverend Horton Heat's show has become an annual hipster event.

The Rev. calls his music country-flavored punkabilly. He's been on stage since the late '80s, when he started playing in Texas roadhouses. His first albums were released on Sub Pop, the label famous for putting out the Seattle sound.

More than a decade later, the Rev. still is putting out albums, still giving 150 truly entertaining shows a year and still attracting a growing following, but one of the best parts of going to a Reverend Horton Heat show is the opening acts he brings along. The Rev. always chooses someone interesting -- musically and visually. Two years ago, he brought Nashville Pussy, and last year he brought punk rock bluegrass band Split Lip Rayfield, whose bass player wrapped his hand in duct tape and played a homemade instrument made from the gas tank of a Ford Marquis and one weedwacker string.

This year, Reverend Horton Heat is bringing along a crazy band called Throw Rag.

One writer compared Throw Rag to the scene in "Quills" when the Marquis de Sade organizes all loonies to perform a play.

Throw Rag plays a genre of music its members call "sailor rock." A form of music that was written, as a rock critic at Destroy All Monthly said so well, "for that one lone, old drunk guy at Mr. T's Bowl who is courageously dancing the most (screwed)-up jig right in front of the stage while all the rest of the cool, fashionable but gutless crowd look on at him in horror/admiration."

A Throw Rag show is legend for being freaky and unpredictable. Fans of Motorhead, The Cramps and Elvis Presley can find something to appreciate in Throw Rag's music, if not in its on-stage Iggy Pop antics.

The six-piece Throw Rag has toured with Social Distortion and the Supersuckers.

In "Auntie Bert" they sing, "Auntie bert loves K-mart Harleys horseshoes and swap meets honky tonk fights god bless false teeth she water skis Lake Elsinore wears knee-high moccasins loves speedway mud bogs tractor pulls ..."

This isn't the kind of band we see in Steamboat very often, and we have the Reverend to thank for that.