In the Gram Parsons obsessed post-70s country-rock world, it's all about the Byrds and the Burritos, which y'know is great, but seems to smack of alt-country delusion about what country-rock was. They have two albums, Half Mad Moon (which is the best starting point) and Where It Lands.
Hell, I moved to Austin over 8 years ago to get away from the suburban infection and I’ll be damned if it hasn’t hit here like a dust storm of Starbucks and Ikeas!Īs for upstate NY, one of my all-time favorite Austin bands was The Damnations, who were led by a pair of sisters from Schoharie, NY, which I believe is in the greater Schenectady/Albany area. It’s interesting that your background is so similar, in the way it paralleled and played off the mainstream, where rough edges and individual character so often becomes sanded down into boring, professional, corporate homogeneity. We were a collection of misfits who weren’t particularly ambitious, but we nurtured a helluva scene, lemme tell ya. That was certainly the case for me where I was a DJ and eventually music director of KCSC (The LiveWire!) in Chico, California. For the record, many of us into the alt.country bands of the mid-’90s came out of regional DIY punk rock scenes and left-of-center college towns. You might be surprised what could come out of the Upstate New York Finger Lakes Region.ĭuncan, you had me at hand knit sweaters and brown rice. Those of us still alive (we've lost a few) are stiil doing it and sharing it with a whole new generation and finally getting around to recording ourselves. That's where it stands right now for the crew I was a part of back in the early 1970s.
Suddenly knowuing 10 Waylon songs and 15 Hank songs and 8 Lefty songs MEANT something. We knew we were steeped in a strong tradition but it took the Alt.Country wave to show us we had arrived as elder statesmen.
The music was so good and we knew it and those of us who didn't rise up the ladder played it for what it was worth at a local level, playing those obscure LP cuts and digging in the same direction as we saw our 'heroes' doing it and getting pissed when Ronstadt or Tom Rush or some major label signing covered the same song we were doing on their next LP (but also feeling vindicated that we had similar good taste.)Īfter the initial bloom had died (goodbye Gram) we dug deeper into the honky tonk pile and puddles and re-found our Rockabilly, Blues, Deep Soul & Country roots…by the next time it came around as 'Cowpunk' we were almost ready, though strill a little unsure. I also had a friend who did sound for Bonnie, Jackson and Little feat among others so I got to see a lot of the bcakstage shenanigans and of course it led me to want to work in the field which I did for far too long or short a time, depending on your point of view. Seeing all those names mentioned at clubs like the Electric Factory in Philly or the Main Point in Bryn Mar or the Red Creek in Rochester and various concerts in NYC, Allentown, Philly, Syracuse, Buffalo and Ithaca (the last five being often jump-off points for tours out of NYC) was heady stuff. Aboutvthe only thing we had in common with the 'older' acoustic crowd was they IGHT smoke some weed here and there and listen to some cool 78s. Bluegrass and folk had an older more Pete Seeger-ish style that said hand knit sweaters and brown rice while most of us that were getting into country back in 1969-1972 were drinking beer & whiskey and eating late night diner food (if we bothered eating). I got to see almost everyone of these guys at one time or another back then doing that 'country-rock' as we called it then. Enjoy.įrom The Byrds To The Eagles (Part 5 of 7) Therefore, without further ado, here’s the Beeb’s take on LA’s country-rock origins, pretty much concurrent with where we’re at in the Clarence Chronicles.
However, in a brief sequence midway through the film, there’s a discussion about the rise of the SoCal country-rock scene and I was damn near shocked that it mentioned so many principals from last week’s Clarence White post - though Clarence himself is conspicuous by his absence. While the title was promising and the documentary well-made, it covered the SoCal folk scene I’ve never much cared for (Neil Young excepted), it seemed to talk around, rather than about The Byrds (despite the titular high-five), and well, the less said about The Eagles the better. Through a fortuitous set of circumstances, this morning I happened upon a 2007 BBC documentary called, Hotel California: From The Byrds To The Eagles. Chris Hillman (L) and Gram Parsons of The Flying Burrito Brothers