LONG RYDERS ADOPT THE MISSIONARY POSITION
DETROIT—“We definitely feel like we’re on a mission,” declares Long Ryders drummer Greg Sowders. “We feel that it’s something so important that people don’t forget that they have a real good heritage of music and that you can play it and you don’t have to sound old—you can make it sound fresh and new.
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LONG RYDERS ADOPT THE MISSIONARY POSITION
DETROIT—“We definitely feel like we’re on a mission,” declares Long Ryders drummer Greg Sowders. “We feel that it’s something so important that people don’t forget that they have a real good heritage of music and that you can play it and you don’t have to sound old—you can make it sound fresh and new. We’re really proud of being an American band and that most of our roots are from American music, country and rock n’ roll.”
The Long Ryders back up that sentiment on their new Frontier LP, Native Sons, with an amalgamation of tunes that are firmly rooted in the tradition of popular music in these United States. The band’s oft-cited Byrds influences are certainly present (in fact, former Byrd Gene Clark lends a guest vocal spot oh “Ivory Tower”), but there’s also the ’60s garage-rock stylings of “Still Get By”and the Highway 61 Dylan-like speed-rap-meets-Johnny Cash talking blues take-off of “Pinal Wild Son,” all on the same side as their straight-out country kickin’
rendition of Mel Tillis’s “(Sweet) Mental Revenge.” The album is peppered throughout with banjo, mandolin, pedal steel guitar, brass and the chimey 12-string guitar flourishes that top off this red, white and blue stew.
“The whole trip behind the Long Ryders,” Sowders explains, “is that we get this music, bounce it around, mix it up and we come up with our sound. When people say we sound exclusively like one particular band, it’s really not fair to that original band and certainly not to us. So Native Sons, we feel, reflects what our whole idea was all about. Even our name gives you a very Western, Americana, feel. And that’s exactly us.”
At the moment, even as the Long Ryders are hitting the dusty tour trail in support of the new LP, singer Sid Griffin is anxiously awaiting the arrival of his muchanticipated biography of Gram Parsons, the late singer and songwriter who proved to be a seminal force in re-introducing country music to rock ’n’ roll.
“The book should be out any week now,” ventured Griffin with two hands full of crossed fingers. “It’ll be at all the hip campus bookstores, and the B. Dalton chain has picked it up. There’s three unpublished interviews with Gram and about 60 photos of stuff that no one’s ever seen before. It may completely go over the heads of people who don’t know Gram and scare them away, but people who have even a peripheral interest in that kind of music or in Gram will freak out. I’ve seen the book, and it looks hot.”
“He tried to have a country band that played country music with a rock ’n’ roll attitude. Here was a guy who influenced everyone from crummy bands who I don’t like, like the Eagles, to people I greatly admire, like Elvis Costello. I thought, after gleaning all this enjoyment from Gram’s records, and the Flying Burrito Brothers records and Sweetheart of the Rodeo, I felt that I owed some of these guys something, to pay them back in some spiritual sense. It’s like my quest for heaven.”
Kevin Knapp
