Mary Huff is the bass player and vocalist for the group Southern Culture On The Skids.The band also known as SCOTS, is an American rock band known for its eclectic sound which combines elements of rockabilly, surf music, country music and R&B with humorous lyrics inspired by Southern Americana. Formed in 1983 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the band consists of Rick Miller, Dave Hartman, and Mary Huff.
Rick Miller and Stan Lewis formed Southern Culture on the Skids in 1983 in Chapel Hill, home of the University of North Carolina. The lineup fluctuated for a number of years, numbering as many as five members before Lewis quit in 1987, leaving Miller in charge. He soon drafted bassist Mary Huff from a Richmond, Virginia, band called the Phantoms. Her friend Dave Hartman followed as the new Skids drummer, and the trio’s lineup was set.
The Skids then took off across America, logging countless miles on the road while carving out a reputation as a crackerjack live ensemble. The Skids had just as much garage in them as any punk band, but they never really fit into anyone’s notion of alternative rock. Playing more than 200 dates a year, the band connected with scores of like-minded bands on the roots-rock chitlins circuit—everyone from the Cramps to Reverend Horton Heat. In 1994 the Skids started up a roots-rock festival in Chapel Hill: Sleazefest, an annual weekend-long shindig featuring the Skids as the headliner over a bill of similarly inclined roots-oriented bands from all over the country.
By the time they reached the ten-year mark, their profile was high enough that they finally began attracting major-label attention. Geffen Records signed the band in 1994 and issued the Dirt Track Date album the following year on its “alternative” imprint DGC. The album never reached Billboard’s Top 200 album chart but it sold a quarter-million copies, mostly on the strength of airplay for the swamp-rock album-opener “Voodoo Cadillac.” The very peculiar S&M ode “Camel Walk” also picked up some major exposure in the 1996 screwball comedy Flirting with Disaster. The Skids continued their multimedia ways by appearing as themselves in the 1997 movie I Know What You Did Last Summer (as the band in a beach-party scene at the beginning of the film).
