BIG OKIE DOOM plays Saturday at the Route 66 Roadhouse at 4328 NW 39th St. in Oklahoma City. Doors open at 8 p.m., and you must be 21 to enter.

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Stuck a few years ago in a hotel far from home where no one spoke English, his Kottak bandmates scattered to their individual rooms, bassist Price Vernon found himself bored and sleepless.
“I thought, 'It would be so great if I were here in this situation with all my boys from Oklahoma, from Mustang,” Vernon remembered. “But they weren't there. And I thought 'Man, I've gotta figure out how to get in a band where I can get all these guys, all the brothers from back home, and do stuff like this.'”
Fast forward and the Mustang native is doing just that.
Price and Paige Vernon, both sons of Ron and Pat Vernon of Mustang, will join their longtime friend Michael Albatross on stage this weekend as Big Okie Doom, a trio blending their individual styles into one rich, unique musical blend. It's the latest step in a long road from discussion to the release of an EP in the spring through Oklahoma City-based Lackpro, a record label concentrating on local indie talent.
“It's a grass-roots kind of project,” Price Vernon said. “We recorded it, we wrote it, we performed it, we're mixing it, we're promoting it. We've done pretty much the whole shoot and kaboodle. The one thing we're not doing is mastering it. We're sending it off to be mastered because it's a little bit out of our league on that deal.”
The Vernon brothers have played together before. Paige Vernon interrupted a sojourn in New Orleans to come back to Oklahoma and play in Ugly Stick with Price, a band that found some success in the 1990s. Once Ugly Stick broke up, the brothers went their separate ways. Paige returned to New Orleans and the blues he loved. Price moved to Los Angeles, where he joined Kottak, formed by Scorpions drummer James Kottak. Paige went back to New Orleans, where he'd spend the next eight years playing with various bands and steeping in the city's unique sound.
Meanwhile, Michael Albatross, who grew up in south Oklahoma City, continued his musical journey that began with the Kiss and Aerosmith tunes of his youth through the alternative sound of the1980s and the grunge of the 1990s. “Since then I've become more selective about what I listen to — and a wide range of stuff,” he said, citing the likes of Tori Amos and U2.
Price Vernon finally put forth his idea for a band while home for a visit in late 2010. “And they were like, 'We're in, we're in,” he recalled.
And they've been shepherding their sounds together ever since.
“I like to crunch up genres,” Albatross said. He compares his approach with that of director Jim Jarmusch, whose film work includes “Broken Flowers” with Bill Murray and “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai” with Forest Whitaker.”
“He likes to take cultures and smash them together,” Albatross said. “You know, take a guy from the South and stick him in a scene with a guy from France. And so the relationship they have and the conversation they have because they're actually learning something about each other. And I like to do that with music. If you take something that's heavy and bluesy and then mix it up with U2, it becomes something new and different. It doesn't sound like anything else.”
“All our styles are kind of different, so it's not like we're all playing the same thing,” Paige Vernon said. “We're playing our own unique instruments. It's starting to sound really good.”
The proof is in the sound, Price Vernon said. One song — still untitled — mixes his brother's drumming style with Albatross' guitar licks. “What Mike's doing on the guitar is kind of bluesy, and the kind of drumbeat (Paige is) playing on the drums — in New Orleans, a guitar player would never play what Mike's playing on it,” Price Vernon said. “It's just not what they do.”
Heard separately, the French Quarter influence on Paige Vernon's drumming is immediately recognizable. “But you hear it with what Mike's doing on his guitar, it changes the whole feel of the same drum part.”
Lackpro staff will be on hand Saturday night to film the show — part of the footage will end up in a video of Big Okie Doom's first release, “Inherit the King.” And while the trio is tightening up a set list heavy on the their new, original tunes, Price Vernon said they might have some surprises up their sleeves. All have done their share of covers, he said, and they are prepared to whip out a Beatle or Ramones tune on the fly to keep the audience on their toes.
“We can hit them with our stuff and then surprise them with something they don't expect from us,” he said.