Once Three Day Threshold had the audience shouting back to them fuck yeahs and no shits, I realized I’d seen this band before. They opened for Dick Dale the last time he played the Middle East. Three Day Threshold is a country-rock band very fluent in the conventions of their genre. Those conventions go beyond their songwriting with a cowboy hat, trucker hat, handlebar mustache, lap-steel and telecaster all on stage together. Lyrical content covered a criminal “heading for the border,” and a binge-drinking truck-driver pulled over for driving naked. Since they tended to play fast and prioritize fun, I found them palatable and entertaining. Two perfectly good things for an opening band to be.

Three Day Threshold finished to much applause, and then the crowd got to waiting. It wasn’t too long before one jagged guitar lick from backstage announced Dick Dale and his band were about to get started. Dick Dale walked up to the microphone, raised his hands and said, “Yeah, told ya. I’M BACK!” And then they got started.

Dick Dale is the punk’s virtuoso guitarist; no matter how fast he’s shredding which Middle-Eastern scale, he’s always playing rock and roll. He doesn’t usually give a song more than two minutes of his band’s time, and at one point on Wednesday he played just one verse and called it done. Eschewing the 17-piece rock band of his past, Dale’s act now travels as a powerful and flexible trio. At Wednesday’s show he had Sam Bolle to bust out thick and fuzzy basslines. Drums were beaten by Jerry Porter, whom Dale called “Jelly Bean Jerry Porter” (“He loves those little jelly beans”). Porter swings his sticks from above the shoulder.

Dick Dale’s performances are spontaneous, directing his band to new songs mid-song with nods and hand signals. He rarely lets the music stop, except to tell the occasional story. At Wednesday’s show, alongside Dick Dale classics, the band burned through Dalified snippets of “Hey Bo Diddley,” “What’d I Say,” “Ring of Fire,” “Summertime Blues,” “Louie Louie,” and “Smoke on the Water,” “Rumble” and “House of the Rising Sun” (Dale pressing down on his throat to sing the low note).

This strategy of rarely finishing songs works for at least three reasons. First of all, Dale sticks largely to songs most of the crowd knows. They’re simple and people like them, so no one gets lost. Second, his band is expert at following him and he teaches them exactly how to play (see our interview with Dale for some insight into how he trains his musicians). The third and most important reason is that Dick Dale’s guitar will sound good no matter what he’s playing. His famously intense reverb crashes through every space in the songs. His stratocaster hisses, groans, shrieks, and sings so expressively and so unmistakably “him” that any set will sound whole without him planning much out.

Sometimes he hammed it up. His shticks were fun: sharing the drum-kit with Porter for a coordinated solo, then drumming on Bolle’s bass strings. He pretended his body froze, until Bolle positioned his arms back on the guitar (again, the ringing crash of reverb) and pulled his head back up by the ponytail. Dale mentioned he’d just played in Florida with Kid Rock: “What the shit? I’d never heard of him––they paid me so I did it.” He teased the band and they ribbed him back, shouting without microphones. Often, he scanned the crowd, grinning and making faces, but other times he tilted his head back and closed his eyes, as though he was praying.