"Banjo & Sullivan disappeared amid a series of heinous homicides and were basically forgotten." That was the boilerplate from the group's website, though it was as fanciful as it was ominous. In actuality Banjo & Sullivan was a project created by Rob Zombie guerilla marketing-style to promote and support 2005's Devil's Rejects, the sequel to his 2003 cinematic debut, House of a 1000 Corpses. As the back-story went, Roy Sullivan and Adam "Fingers" Banjo shone briefly on the early-'70s honky tonk circuit with crowd-pleasers like "Dick Soup" and "I'm at Home Getting Hammered (While She's out Getting Nailed)." Their fictional career was abruptly ended in 1978, when Banjo, Sullivan, and their crew had a run-in with a group of homicidal freaks called the Devil's Rejects. The duo's crew were killed, but "Banjo & Sullivan were never found." Cue the music. In real life, the music was written and performed by Austin songwriter Jesse Dayton, who collaborated with Lew Temple and Zombie on the project. June 2005's Rob Zombie Presents...Banjo & Sullivan: The Ultimate Collection 1972-1978 carried the ruse even further, full as it was with the duo's fictional honky tonk. Still, it was in good fun. Well, good in a dirty way, considering the subject matter of Rejects, but an ambitious project nonetheless that contained a lot of great little details. ~ Johnny Loftus, Rovi
