For Surf Lords guitarist Tom Chism, a gig at Burt's Tiki Lounge is like playing in his garage.
"To me, it's always been our homecourt advantage," Chism said. "When that place first got going, they put the word out for beach stuff to be donated, and I've got a couple surf boards up on the wall down there, some of my old fiberglass boards."
The band, led by Chism and accompanied by go-go dancers, formed in 2000.
Chism said he was too young to get into surf music when it was at its height in the late '50s and early '60s.
"I got into it mainly from listening to Jimi Hendrix records," he said. "Apart from his big hits you hear on the radio, on his albums, he would go 10 or 15 minutes of just jamming without singing or anything, a lot of cool instrumental stuff."
Surf Lords drummer Mike Fleming said he learned to play surf music in the mid '60s. He said that if you wanted to play in a rock band back then, it was practically a requirement to know the style.
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After high school, Fleming played in a local band called the Bounty Hunters.
"Our big claim to fame is that we opened for Cream back in 1968 at The Pit," he said.
Chism said surf music is similar to jazz because it is common to cover songs from other genres.
"It's almost expected to take a song that may have been a vocal song, a nonsurf song and put your spin on it," he said. "In the surf world, doing covers is kind of expected, because people want to see what you do with these songs."
Jeorge Mercedes, a go-go dancer for the Surf Lords, has been with the band for four years. Mercedes said that when she first started dancing, she never knew what to wear, but now she has a trunk full of clothes and a collection of wigs.
"Some band members will laugh at me because they don't know who it is coming through the door, depending on what color my hair is," she said.
She said she started when the band's dancer at the time was moving to California.
"I would go up there and just dance with them a song or two just to have fun," she said.
Chism said it's common for women at the bar to get up on the go-go dancers' boxes and dance.
"We notice if there is a bachelorette party that comes through, they are just all over it," he said.
He said the latest surprise for the Surf Lords are new boxes for the go-gos to dance on.
"The boxes were getting kind of crumbly," Chism said. "The tile is coming off. The bass player drove into his garage with them on his roof and knocked them off."
Though there isn't a beach in New Mexico, Chism still gets to surf.
"I wave surf OK, but I wind surf a lot," he said. "As you know in New Mexico, we've got lots of good wind."
