If you think a two-man band playing rambunctious hillbilly music on a banjo and bucket set wouldn’t go far in the music world, you’d be wrong: Hillstomp’s self-described “junkbox blues” can rock fans in their home state of Oregon as well as overseas in Italy. They’ve played at festivals in Ireland, the UK and all over America, and now they’re taking their unique blues brand to a town near you.

Hillstomp combines Henry Kammerer’s banjo, slide guitar and blues-y vocals with John Johnson’s DIY percussion set of bucket, cans and BBQ lids to make their signature country/punkabilly/blues-stomp sound. They say they draw musical inspiration from “north Mississippi trance blues [and] a bit from the hills of Appalachia,” but the mixture of those with unmatched raucousness could only come from Portland, Oregon, a city that prides itself on weird-yet-wonderful concoctions.

Discography for the band includes 2004’s self-produced debut, One Word; 2005’s The Woman That Ended The World, selected as Willamette Week’s Best Album of the Year; and 2007’s “After Two But Before Five,” a live album the Tucson Weekly said was “like a musical version of a barroom knife fight: exciting, dangerous and a little surreal.” Hillstomp’s latest release, Darker the Night, dropped earlier this summer while the two were opening for The Reverend Horton Heat. All of their music is available for purchasing through iTunes.

Hillstomp visited Sam Bond’s Garage in Eugene a couple days ago, performing a set of songs that didn’t end until the wee hours of the morning. Kammerer’s voice growled as he loudly strummed his banjo, and audience members’ feet stomped as Johnson wailed on his buckets, tambourine and cowbell. Their lively, late-night set probably woke up the nearby residents – and probably got them to rock out in their beds, too!

Hillstomp will play tonight in Arcata, CA at The Depot at Humboldt State before continuing on to various shows in Oregon and the Midwest next week. The duo has nine California concerts lined up for November; they are also currently planning a European tour in early 2011.