Social Distortion tops a great night out at Festival Pier

Singer/guitarist Mike Ness started his hard-core rock-roots ensemble Social Distortion in Fullerton, Calf., in 1978. It took a dozen years to forge its first classic, their namesake major-label debut of 1990. With its cranky mix of California punk, rockabilly, tough country, and taproom rock and roll telling rotted-out stories of addiction and salvation, Ness and company formed the template for many a Social Distortion (and solo Ness) album to follow.

Celebrating 25 years of Charles Bukowski barfly-esque, sauced-up sound was worth a night out Wednesday on the Festival Pier at Penn's Landing.

Especially when you considered the support bands. Memphis' Lucero are aged, country-fried punks known for sad, drunken storytelling. Nostalgic country-pop doyenne Nikki Lane was on hand, as was hard-driving Drag the River.

Looking like the greasy guy down the bar at Blue Comet, Ness barreled into rugged songs such as the mangy "Ball & Chain," "Let It Be Me," and "Sick Boys" - all from the 1990 Social Distortion album. He sang as though he were wrestling with a physical corrosive that irritated both his skin and his soul. Bugged and antsy in the best way, songs such as "Drug Train" and "So Far Away" found Ness' voice as dry as limestone, while his muscular guitar riffs sounded like mere extensions of his beefy arms. Ness barked about breaking punk's rules, that it's "supposed to be about individualism" but that if he wanted to sing love songs (as he did with "She's a Knockout") or Johnny Cash songs (a vinegary "Folsom Prison Blues"), he would.

The band did that and then some. "Put that in your vape pipe and smoke it," he told his critics.

Lucero has been playing the punk-country game since the mid-1990s, and it showed proudly in their aged-in-the-bottle melodies (they're sponsored by Philly's Sailor Jerry Rum) and big band-arrangement roar. Ladies and liquor, women and whisky, vixens and vodka: These were part of every note Lucero played, every brawling lyric that Ben Nichols summoned up from his belly, whether it was the brassy "Can't You Hear Them Howl" or the chattering "Chain Link Fence."

Lane, from New York City via Greenville, N.C., made the most of her Loretta Lynn-inspired tear-jerkers and barnstormers without the lush, cruising arrangements of her albums.

But Drag the River was perhaps the surprise of the night. The Colorado hard-country beardo band pounded with a heavy-metal punch through the honky-tonk likes of "Amazing G" and its lyrics filled with silver dollars and rusty trailers.