THE ROAD: GOES ON FOREVER AND THE PARTY NEVER ENDS.

The mythological lure of the road has long attracted attention in way more than just musical memes. We’ll get to that in due course, but it got me thinking around the whole idea of a road trip. Like, what was the first? Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, came initially to mind, until I realised how shortsighted and narrow was my entry angle, remembering the Richard Thompson response: best songs of the millennia, or of all time, did not start with Sinatra. So that in mind, throwing out my net a bit wider, are we talking the Crusades; that was a sort of tour? Or Christ’s 40 day desert gig, did that count? I think a prime contender would have to be Ulysses, his 12 tasks and all that. Tack on the Trojan War and the tour is encroaching Dylanesque Never Ending logistics.

I could be getting carried away here, but it has an appeal. I wonder what was on his rider? And who ran the merch stall? And for all the buzz around Homer, the “official releases”, I’ll bet there were live sets and bootlegs, swapped in chariot parks, before the show. It wouldn’t surprise me if someone somewhere is still putting together a box set, the Ithaca tapes, perhaps. I’m sure I read about it on the Steve Hoffman forum.

So, as they, say. Robert Earl Keen. Whatever happened to him? Nothing bad, to be fair, as he still tours and plays, but, as with, say, Steve Forbert, so much early promise seeming never quite to be capitalised upon. From Houston, Texas, he hit the ground running in the mid 80s, with a signature stripped back sound, bluegrass style instrumentation, allied to rootsy modern folk songs, all sung in his gritty mournful moan. I loved it, and West Textures, his 2nd album was a bona fide delight. Still is, the songs rendered timeless by that old timey anchor. The song that entitles this piece is his best known song, but they all have legs. Heck, at that time, he, Lyle Lovett and Nanci Griffith seemed an insurmountable triad of potential, at whose altars I knelt, in awe. So young and so much talent.

Keen  had a particular knack for a story song, with TRGOFATPNE being the prime evidence. I alway feel the idea for such long haul yarn spinning came from Bob Dylan, Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts always coming to mind as the trigger to Keen’s muse.(I suppose, given the earlier paras written, due credit for all epics should maybe go to forbears from times long past, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, for his Charge of the Light Brigade, Longfellow  for Hiawatha, or, logically, good ol’ boy Homer himself, but the tunes have been largely lost.) The relatively simple construct, the repetition and the loping propulsive rhythm together produce a suspension of time, the story taking the fill of concentration. Keen was able to show he was no one trick pony, mind, as his next album, A Bigger Piece of Sky, four years later, in 1993, had another cracker, Jesse With the Long Hair Hanging Down. With shock, I note this barely hits 3 and 3/4 minutes, it casting a way longer shadow in my memory, but, details, schmetails, this is still a saga song, just a wee bit shorter. 

Oft seen as his high water mark, A Bigger Piece of Sky, whilst it had its moments, never quite hit my spot as had West Textures. In truth, I sort of went off him a bit after that, as somebody told him his forte might be in humorous songs, an oxymoron by any definition, at least in my book. But he has plugged away, with 20 studio recordings to his name. I gather he is about to hang up his cowboy boots, making me sad I never caught him live. Indeed, of that 80’s trio of performers, Nanci was the only one who ever seemed much to visit the UK, seeing her a host of times between then and the mid 90’s. But I did get to hear one near swansong, as Keen covered a host of his traditional influences: here is what I thought about that album.

A final thought about Keen might be to thank him not only for my beloved West Textures, but also to his enlightening me to the presence and worth of anothe songwriter, one Kevin ‘Blackie’ Farrell, himself no stranger get to the long form song. The exquisite Sonora’s Death Row, covered by Keen on West Textures, is one of his, as is another of my favourites, Mama Hated Diesels, as performed by Commander Cody’s Lost Planet Airmen. Farrell probably deserves a pice in his own right, memo to self, but it’s good to at least have the opportunity to namecheck him, until then.

May the road rise to meet you…….

IN MEMORIAM: GEORGE FRAYNE

George who? Well, you might have known him better as the Commander, Cody, that is, the laconic, cigar chomping leader of his Lost Planet Airmen, that ragggle taggle collective of country memes and influences that beguiled and bemused many an otherwise country music loathing audience across the swathes of the 20th century's last three decades. I loved 'em, but you might have known that. 

Frayne started the band back in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as a way of getting some beer money whilst pursuing his studies, first a BA in design, topping that with a masters in sculpture and art, two years later, in 1968, before an initial foray into teaching. However, sensing an audience for the manic fusion of country, rockabilly and western swing, he and his like minded compadres did a bunk to Berkeley, during 1969, which is where they stayed, making forever there a little home of red necked hippies in Southern California. A bandleader in the old sense, he was unafraid of the others stealing his thunder, confident and competent enough to give the limelight to the rest of the band, if then to wrest back the crown for one of his idiosyncratic sung-spoken updates of vintage classics. Every album would contain one or two such pieces, like the song above, Hot Rod Lincoln, and the paean to nicotine, Smoke, Smoke, Smoke (That Cigarette). The rest of the booty would be shared out amongst the other front men of the band, Billy C. Farlow, vocalist for the rockier fare, toting a big and unplugged red guitar, and the mighty Bill Kirchen, who could write and croon a country weepy like no other, tongue in cheek, as tears fell down it. Kirchen also possessed an uncanny talent with a telecaster, going later on to have a career of his own, lasting to this day, the self-styled King of Dieselbilly. Having a bevy of ace musicians in the backline can't have hindered either, the likes of Bobby 'Blue' Black on steel and Andy Stein on fiddle and saxophone guaranteeing the chops were as sound as the influences, with second guitar John Tichy, bassist 'Buffalo' Bruce Barlow and drummer Lance Dickerson no small talents either. 

Successive record companies, Paramount and then Warner Brothers, had seemingly hoped for some cali country rock to file alongside the Eagles or Poco, which, if nothing else, showed how wrong they had assessed the cut of the band's jib. But, whilst 1971's Lost In the Ozone may have been defiantly different from quite anything else around at the time, it did at least have some minor chart action courtesy Hot Rod Lincoln. Which gave them that extra foot hold to keep doing what they did best. Meanwhile, an ocean away, in the UK, the teenaged me was discovering the pleasures of honky tonks and steel guitar, if only aurally, through the works of Gram Parsons' Flying Burrito Brothers, and I chanced upon a copy of their second album, as entranced by the cover painting as the anticipation off what may lay inside, buying it on spec. Hot Licks, Cold Steel and Trucker's Favorites delighted me and disarmed me in equal doses, the heavy hit of some of the songs initially too "and western" for my untutored ears. Mama Hated Diesels, a brilliantly bittersweet fable from the pen of Kevin 'Blackie' Farrell, had my jaw drop to the ground in horror, momentarily at least, ahead of bouncing swiftly back into a fixed rictus of joy as it progressed. Hook, line and sinker, this was my kind of band, that then cemented by the Live From Deep in the Heart of Texas album. OK, it's true, I was less taken by Country Casanova and Tales From the Ozone, which seemed a little too busily wacky and less authentic, but remember being delighted as a friend picked up the latter, able to further eulogise their earlier works to him.

Which is how, in the spring of 1976 we found ourselves at London's Hammersmith Odeon, the two of us ready and eager for a taste of the live show ourselves. Unbeknownst then, it was from this show that provided the live tapes for (some of) later that years second live recording, We've Got a Live One Here, a double album I had to dig out and play, as I prepared this piece. Surpassing any of my expectations, the band were on fire, the line-up augmented by harmonica maestro, Norton Buffalo. Plus, given both he and Kirchen were also adept trombone players, this gave an opportunity for the Ozone Brass to make their debut, the two 'bones and Stein's sax, for exuberantly OTT takes on western swing staples like San Antonio Rose and Milk Cow Blues. I was in heaven, transported back there by my recent revisiting of the vinyl record.

That was sort of it, the band imploding a not so long thereafter. Frayne kept the Commander Cody title on into a number of lesser bands, but the tide had turned, for me anyway, my ears more keenly attuned to the new wave of artists like Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson. This tended to put my country music aside for a while. Or, actually, until Costello brought it all tumbling back into focus, as he nailed his flag to that mast with Almost Blue. Many, many years later I was lucky enough to have some of my Commander Cody favourites reprised, including, at my request, Mama Hated Diesels, when Bill Kirchen made one of his irregular small club and bar tours of the UK. I was able to chat with him in the interval, as he manned the merch stall, mentioning the tour of all those years before. He said he kept in some touch with the Commander, and had fond memories of those days. Me too. (Here's my review from then.)

Here's a great interview, from 2018, with Frayne, where he too comments on keeping links with Kirchen. And reveals that John Tichy, after the band folded, became a professor of physics. It makes for a more reflective read than the somewhat more effervescent Rolling Stone article of some near 40 years earlier.

R.I.P., George, thanks for the music and all those fond memories.

MAYDAY/DANGER: DANGEROUS MAN/DWIGHT YOAKAM

I was going to go off on one again, lambasting and/or lampooning the various bouffant topped orange faced men leading the free(!) world, but, no, the targets too easy and all that. Plus our own UK mini-me version is looking decidedly pasty of late.....

Dangerous Man

So it is to Dwight Yoakam I turn, even if the lyrics of this song seem oddly prescient for the folk I am shunning in this post. Dwight is a maelstrom of a country maverick, and a conundrum, in that is he is or his he ain't? Is he a bona fide retro country-rockabilly honky-tonk throwback, or is he a polished opportunist with an eye for a gap in the market, seizing the niche between rock ('n'roll) and country, his break through coming at a time when Nashville was all smooth-croonin' "hats"? I incline toward the latter. For a start, as a born Kentuckian, the style he gravitates to is 100% true to that state, even if he was brought up largely in Ohio. He staked an initial claim in Nashville, ahead of slinking away to the West Coast, deemed far too rowdy for the dishes of the day. L.A.'s heady mix of cultures and countercultures was ideal for his energy, performing alongside acts as diverse as X, The Blasters and Los Lobos. Much as, in a way, had George Frayn's Commander Cody a decade before.

Of course, he looked the look, impossibly tight jeans, sometimes of leather, encasing his stick thin legs, a denim jacket and a permanently welded on 10 gallon hat. Yet, rather than aligning him with the dreary Nashville sludge in similar headwear, intriguingly this set him apart. I bought his debut, Guitars, Cadillacs, etc, etc, the expanded vinyl of the original EP, much as soon as I became aware of him: as ever I suspect was probably a piece in New Musical Express or a slot on TV's Old Grey Whistle Test, neither verifiable today, that had alerted me. This was 1986 or 7, and i was ever vigilant for crossover fertilisations, loving equally, if confusingly, folk, country and punk. The Joe Ely association with the Clash had earlier been a huge fillip to the validation of my tastes. And what a buy it was, one part rollicking roustabouts, one part beery country weepies and one part classic covers. Yoakam's yelping delivery, a yodel seeming only ever a hiccough away, was one part of the draw, the other being the searing guitar and arrangements of right hand man (and producer) Pete Anderson. More of him later.

It Won't Hurt

It would have been maybe five years later before I could catch him live, his appearance in an early afternoon slot at Glastonbury being a highlight of that years festival. By now I was expanding my interest in and expanding my collection of cover songs. Yoakam had already made for a credible presence on the Grateful Dead tribute, Deadicated, and I was then lucky enough to chance upon a copy of Croix D'Amour. This does not appear in all of his discographies, being a non U.S. release only, and, not that I realised it then, a compilation of earlier released tracks, including his alluded to version of Truckin'. With eight of the twelve songs being covers, I was in clover. He remains the only person ever able to instil any joy into the anodyne formulaicism of Queen.

Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Over the years I have continued my watch on him, spotting his appearances in not a few films and TV shows, broadly playing versions of what I imagine to be himself. He has released a regular outpouring of recordings, sometimes his own work, often more covers projects, including covering the work of his musical inspiration, Buck Owens, and several repackagings and reworkings, notably his acoustic and near solo dwightyoakamacoustic.net. In all of this one might forget quite what a great songwriter he is in his own right. Chris Isaak, no slouch himself, cites Yoakam "as good a songwriter as ever put a pen to paper". At the time of writing he continues to remain an active force for good, even if current tour dates are banjaxed. But, if you can't hear him play live, at least you can eat his biscuits, something you can't say for all your favourite stars!

Close Up the Honky-Tonks

Finally a brief word, as promised, about Pete Anderson, by Yoakam's side as rudder, between 1986 and 2002. This extraordinary multi-instrumentalist has become, through his sheer ubiquity, a guarantor of quality across the varied boards he treads. Think of all those guitar runs across most of the songs featured here, all him, the hickory smoke to Yoakam's BBQ wings. Scan this list of all his other projects and prostrate yourself. Here too is a good interview, covering, in part, the years the pair worked together.

Light blue touch paper.....

SOMETHING WITH 20: TWENTY FLIGHT ROCK

OK, OK, a bit obvious, but I can think of a dozen and two thirds reasons why it has legs aplenty, perhaps even enough for two crabs. Plus, and here is the bonus, it gives the opportunity to celebrate one Connie 'Guybo' Smith. Who he? What, aw, c'mon (everybody), SWIDT.

No, of course I didn't know either, a gap in my and, possibly,  your encyclopaedic I am now happy to fill.
Twenty Flight Rock, or 20 Flight Rock as it looks better, was a rock'n'roll/rockabilly banger that first made its appearance in 1956 film, The Girl Can't Help It, a film to celebrate the emergence of teenagers as a viable sub-group of society and a market for the cinema to exploit. Naturally, music and sex were the selling points, the latter in the form of twin peaks, not the film, actress Jayne Mansfield. As in most such films, the plot is the usual mess of wannabe stars, svengalis and shattered dreams. Or thereabouts. The plot doesn't really matter, it is really all about the music, the OST littered with soon to be idols like Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Fats Domino and, of course, Eddie Cochran.

Following the success of the film, Cochran put out the song again, re-recorded, to be a bit more polished than the raw barnyard trio version in the film, where the instrumental might had been voice, guitar, bull fiddle and a cardboard box. A 2nd guitar and backing vocals were added for the newer version, which is, inevitably, not a patch on its predecessor. Apart from Cochran, the other one constant was Guybo. A boyhood chum of Cochran, he played various stringed bass instruments alongside him for most of the early classic years, and was on the farewell tour of the UK, that ironically became just that, as Cochran was killed in a road traffic accident. Guybo lost his place in the sun, but continued to be a reliable source of detail around these formative days, popping up in documentaries. Hell, he even has a facebook page, if somewhat quiet of late.

Arguably the Cochran legacy gained no small boost from his death: nothing like the early burn of a free spirit to grant status as an icon. This happened perhaps more in the UK than at home, as, unlike many of his compatriots yet or ever to grace these shores, the british Teddy Boys took especially to Cochran, likewise to, injured in the same crash but surviving, Gene Vincent. (But let's face it, these cool dudes looked one whole lot more street than much of their R'n'R compadres.)

The song has lived on in many versions. True, most do nothing fancy with it, regurgitating the basics and, give or take an occasional sax, leaving at that. Indeed, think of any revivalist band treading the boards between now and then, yup, they'll do it, whether anodyne chart teds, Showaddywaddy, or genuine believers like the Stray Cats. But a few bear mention. Legend has it that it was the song used by Paul McCartney to serenade John Lennon, as the latter recruited the former to what, in time, became the Beatles. No recordings of that remain, bar this near decade later studio eavesdrop, but McCartney has oft included it in live performances. I prefer this version, however, from the Beatles in Hamburg biopic, Backbeat, where the story and the song see to come together.

Rivals the Stones, always IMHO a sturdier torch holder of the R'n'R essence, had to show that anything they did was better, an easier task given the Beatles being long gone by this 1981 performance.

But all this rock and roll credibility forgets this is essentially a rockabilly song, the country hick version, no les potent for its lesser sophistication. So who better than Commander Cody to give a (slight, very slight) country twist.

Perhaps the closest in spirit to 1956 and The Girl Can't Help It is this final clip, the effervescent energy of Leith identical twins, Craig and Charlie Reid, aka the Proclaimers, bursting through the grooves.

Rock the joint!

July: Riot in Cell Block #9

purchase [The Robins: Riot ... ]

The Robins and Elvis Presley were hot a little before my time. Now, that doesn't mean I couldn't have developed an affinity for their music. I mean, hey, you can believe that Elvis is still alive. So ... certainly, their songs have a life of their own that periodically shows sparks. The Robins? - they were a 50s band that  Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller poached to put together the Coasters, with whom they had a string of early rock hits.

Leiber/Stoller were pretty successful in the 50s and 60s both as song writers and producers. In addition to writing "Riot" and various other Coasters hits, they penned "Hound Dog" of Presley fame, "Yakety Yak", "Stand By Me", "On Broadway" and a total of about 70 hits that earned them a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the 80s.

One of the Leiber/Stoller hits that keeps coming back in various versions is about a jail riot that starts in cell block 4 and continues for almost 2 days until the authorities use gas to subdue the inmates.
It's the 48 hours from July 2,1953 to July 4, 1953.

Take a minute to consider the appeal of a song like "Riot", paying attention to the reputation that rock music had at the time: a bad influence on our youth.

The riot started down in cell block number 4
Spread like wild fire across the prison floor
Scar-face Jones said, "It's too late to quit"
Pass the dynamite 'cause the fuse is lit

Y'all gotta stop that stuff goin' on over there
If ya don't stop that riot, y'all gonna get the chairSI said, "Hey now boys, get ready to run
Here come the warden with an automatic gun"

Is this anything you want your kids listening to?

The version I first heard is the Johnny Winter one.

However, of course, the Blues Brothers. (But they've got the dates wrong!)

And Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen (with Jerry Garcia, who also covered it with his band... um... the Grateful Dead...)

And then the Beach Boys reworked it as Student Demonstration Time

POUR: What's Your Poison?

A rare gap in my day allowed me some further reverie around this theme, wondering whether there is a tipple that at some time has not put the poetic muse into overdrive. (Answer: quite a few, but here are a few that did!)

WATER: Clearly we start with the only real essential, that last choice at the party, adam's ale. And what better than a bit of cheesy soviet folk-jazz-rock, the russians seeming always to me big fans of plain. Yeah, right. I had never heard of Garik Sukachyov before today, but he and his "proletariat jazz" seems quite big in the eastern bloc and more, were I able to read the cyrillic of his publicity pages. The song is "Pour Me Water".

TEA: Can't stand it myself, but the life's blood, it seems of my nation, a brew being the solution to any crisis, the balm to any bluster, the antidote to any antipathy etc etc. I was expecting some Bonzo Dog type parody to celebrate this drink, but, should I be surprised it was rap, sorry, Grime, artist Yungen that celebrates this nectar. And the song? "Comfy". Not really, or, um, my cup of tea.

COFFEE: In truth from where this idea came, this song , "Truck Drivin' Man", and the band both longtime favourites of mine, with the chorus refrain of "Pour me another cup of coffee, for it is the best in the land" lilting into my head at the merest flicker of fancying a flat white. An old country staple, Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airman nail this as theirs. (I saw erstwhile guitarist Bill Kirchen, self-styled king of Dieselbilly on a solo UK tour in 2015, asking he play it as a request. Without the rest of that stellar crew, he showed he still could.)

COKE: Nope, not that one, the fizzy drink, but I felt a need to slowly build up to liquor, keep you thirsty, as it were. The only reference I could find to pouring one comes from this little Elvis Costello mid-period beauty. From his never bettered "King of America", in 1986, this song references not necessarily its consumption, more to how it may be, in the song, comparable to the vintage wine of the more decadent europeans. (As I listen again I wonder as to whether anyone currently resident in Washington might see themselves somehow as King? What's the name of the song again? Brilliant  Mistake........)

WINE: I know beer probably comes next, but I couldn't find me a convincing one, so onto another King, Dean Martin, no stranger to either grape or grain. Possibly lost for choice, this is the only one with an explicit instruction to pour. Not much else to say. (Is it just me, but anyone reminded just a little of this?)

RUM: You get the drift, by now I am just naming a drink, any drink, and asking google for a stiff one. This is the probably unfeasably long straw I got here, along with an umbrella and, quite possibly, some dry ice. Who the f is Zac Brown and why is he singing this execrable nonsense? "Castaway". I wish it was. A hat band from the southern states, I learn, committing the common if no less cardinal sin of mistaking country music with cruise ship crap in the caribbean. (See also Jimmy Buffett. No link.)

GIN: Gin is dead classy nowadays, taking a place ahead of malt whisky in its myriad styles and varieties, all increasingly exotically and artisanally sourced, prices escalating through the stratosphere. This song, "Galaxy of the Lost" was made in 2007, so the chances are it was a Gordons, possibly ahead even of  Mr Ramsey's last ditch attempt to resurrect the also-ran loser generic (or brand leader as these things often are in the real world.) More tonic than gin in both the song and performance, by ex-Test Icicle, Lightspeed Champion.

WHISKY: Right on cue, waiting for the gin backlash, here's whisky revving in the pits, tho' maybe this band are more down the rotgut end of the market than my tipple of choice, Laphroaig, thanks for asking. Double. No ice. This? "Pour Me" by Trick Pony. I like the way the video finishes before the end of the song. It seems somehow how it should be. Like the amnesia of an alcohol related black-out.

BOURBON: I don't think this is cheating. Bourbon may be generically a whisky, but, no, not really, it is different altogether. And what is about all these country dudes and their drinking? Mind you, this song, by Alan Jackson, is a whole lot classier than the whisky above, a whole lot. Lonesome guy, a broken heart, an understanding bartender. Heck, I'm there already. But if those goddamn rednecks put that Trick Pony song on the jukebox again I swear I won't be responsible for myself.

TEQUILA: Oh, hell, I must have just lost a moment or two there, where am I? That bourbon was just soooooo smooth. But what's this shit? Like that fine line between not enough and too much, I have strayed again from good country to bad country. Or from country to western as we so hilariously put it back home. Never liked tequila anyway, whether "Pour me another Tequila, Sheila" is pouring or not. Bobby Bare sounds someone I don't need to know. Am I right?

Hating to end on a low note, perhaps, but even with that large pint of water, the tea, the coffee, the cola, all that wine, rum, gin, whisky, bourbon and tequila is going to have some effect on the next day. So here is Bobby Bare's son (Bobby Bare Junior!) to remind us quite what. I have one of his records. He seems a whole lot cooler a character than his dad. Less successfull too, I'll wager, but at least he'll be forgotten on account of his art.

Cheers, y'all!

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JUKEBOX: TRUCK DRIVIN' MAN

Jukeboxes and country music seem to fit together like hats 'n' boots, cowboy that is, and the repertoire is full of odes to the loose change plunged into every truck stop Rock-ola. On my side of the sea, there has been a slightly perverse relation with this genre generally, there always being a hardcore of, usually, elderly line-dancers, dressing for Texas whilst dancing in Teeside. These are the fans of what I call "and western" and are probably best avoided. However, there has always been a healthy appetite for a more straight ahead country. Or country rock, if you will, and I was drawn into this brotherhood in my mid-teens. This is decades before alt.country or americana and within this fiercely partisan crowd, Sweetheart era Byrds were the Beatles, with the Flying Burrito Brothers being, clearly, with the Keef'n'Gram bond, the Stones. (Think of Gram being in both bands as like the Stones first UK hit being by Lennon-McCartney, as it was! OK, and Hillman, and Clarke, but you get my point.) New Riders of the Purple Sage, I suppose, fitted those outre types maybe drawn to the Kinks, whilst the out and out weirdos gravitated to Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen. I loved 'em all, and still do, but my heart was with the last, my affection for whom I have previously drawn in these pages. And, boy, did they know truckstops!

         "Well I stopped at a road house in Texas a little place called Hamburger Dan's
         Heard that old jukebox start playing tune called the Truck Drivin' Man
         The waitress then brought me up some coffee
         I thanked her then called her back again
         I said that old song sure does fit me cause I'm a truck drivin' man
         Pour me another cup of coffee for it is the best in the land
         I put a nickel in the jukebox and play the Truck Drivin' Man"

This is the song, and it's an old one, written by a Terry Fell in 1954, though it was the 1965 version by Fells then band member, Buck Owens, that first hit a wider audience, albeit with a quarter than a nickel. But it was on the Airmen's 2nd, the fabulously entitled "Hot Licks, Cold Steel and Truckers Favourites" that I first came across it, it being my highlight of the disc, with the later pleasure of seeing them performing live in London cementing my eternal allegiance. What, of course, I had never earlier realised was that Billy C. Farlowe, guitar toting front man, wasn't actually plugged in for anything beyond his top-notch vocals, his red guitar being merely a prop. Mind you, with Bill Kirchen twanging ferociously behind, who could ever be disappointed? It's a straight ahead vers chorus vers chorus song, nothing fancy, but with the astonishing instrumental breaks between each and every refrain, with especial mention, always, to Bobby "Blue" Black on consummate pedal steel. Here it is, from, whisper, near 43 years ago. Gulp.

Buy the LP!

And, by way of a special treat, here is a version by the New Riders, a live on from, gulp again, 1972. At the time of writing both bands, or versions thereof, are still on the road.

Download the track!