THE NEW RIDERS of the PURPLE SAGE-Greatest Fan of the Greatest Band

Play It In Your Own Spirit

An Interview with Buddy Cage and The New Riders of The Purple Sage

The New Riders of the Purple Sage have released their first studio CD in over 20 years. This legendary band’s renaissance began four years ago and continues today with over 100 shows annually to audiences throughout the United States and Canada. The album, Where I Come From, features 12 new songs, seven of which were written by David Nelson and Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. Included are the songs “Carl Perkins Wears The Crown”, an ode to the rockabilly king written by Michael Falzarano (formerly of Hot Tuna), along with “Something in the Air Tonight”. The album also includes two live show favorites - “Higher” penned by Johnny Markowski and “Olivia Rose” by Ronnie Penque - as well as a cover of the classic “Minglewood Blues”.

The New Riders of the Purple Sage, signed to Columbia Records by Clive Davis, released its eponymous first album in September 1971 to widespread acclaim. In the next 11 years the band toured and released over 12 albums, selling over 4 million records. NRPS began as a part-time spin-off from the Grateful Dead when Jerry Garcia (pedal steel guitar), Phil Lesh (bass) and Mickey Hart (drums) teamed up with John Dawson (guitar, vocals) and David Nelson (guitar). Although early live appearances were viewed as an informal warm-up to the main attraction, the group quickly established an independent identity through the strength of Dawson's original songs.

For the next 13 years the band continued to tour and released over 12 albums, selling over 4 million records. The two bands that helped define country rock as we know it today are The Eagles and The New Riders of the Purple Sage. If the Eagles were the Beatles of country rock, then The New Riders of the Purple Sage were The Rolling Stones - rockin', rowdy and genuine.

RockOm caught up with Buddy Cage, steel pedal guitarist for the New Riders to discuss the new CD, spirituality and music, the music industry in general and much more.

RockOm: How did Where I Come From come about?

Buddy Cage: That is a long answer. That comes out of Robert Hunter, the Grateful Dead lyricist, and his connection to us goes back to the very beginning, in fact he named the band in a rehearsal with Garcia. I wasn’t there at the time but as the story goes a Hell’s Angel in the rehearsal hall said, “How about Riders of the Purple Sage?” and Hunter said, “No, no man. That’s dumb.” From there it went on, “Well, Nelson you like that 'New Minglewood Blues', New this, New that – how about The New Riders of the Purple Sage?” That stuck. So he is the inventor of the name.

It turns out that almost four years ago when the band entered what we call the Renaissance, he picked up on the vibe and the energy that was going on with us. Not a hell of a lot had been going on since Jerry passed so he just got the bug to write for us. He writes all the time - short stories, poems, songs… it doesn’t really matter. He just writes. Last year he came up with six or seven tunes that he emailed off to Nelson and said, “OK, your turn.” Nelson had the mandate to go to work so they co-wrote these great tunes and that sparked another year of New Riders. Hunter has always been a part of this band. I think if you go back to 1969 he was the first guy that Garcia said to “come on down to the pizza parlor and play with us.”

RockOm: It’s an excellent album. Every song is contagious and melodic. The words just flow; it’s a hit. I really like this CD.

Buddy Cage: Me too man! I didn’t come into this Renaissance, to use that word again, to spin my wheels and play old tunes. There’s no future in that. In fact that’s probably the personal reason I left the New Riders in 1982. There was just no new stuff coming in. And if there’s no new, good stuff being generated, I’ve got to move on to other things. It may have been a twist of fate in one way or another that we got some decent gig offers. Nelson and I had talked about it and we said, “What the hell, let’s take the paycheck.” We got done doing a week’s worth of gigs and he looked at me and said, “I love it!” He’d been doing all those years of David Nelson Band stuff and here was a chance to do some New Riders things and explore its potential again.

RockOm: Did the band feel the need, after 22 years, to say something with this record?

Buddy Cage: To say something? I think we say something if a bunch of us are into a potential project together. There’s no need to sit around and say, “Let’s say something.” Or “I’ve got something to say.” I think recording is just a natural extension of the energy that’s going down at a particular time. There’s a lot of writers – Hunter and all the guys in the band – and it’s another part of the art of playing together. Seeing what comes out of a recording situation is another of those extensions.

RockOm: You guys are touring right now, supporting Where I Come From, and I can only imagine that this tour brings different emotions for each member of the band. Talk a little about how you’re feeling.

Buddy Cage: It’s a shared expression because we’re still together. It’s wonderful. It’s kind of a surprise. Back on the last question, with an old audience, there is no future. It’s just stomping back over the same stuff, time and again and there’s just no joy in that for me. However, with the influx of some new tunes to play, new places to go, we’ve been able to extend the enthusiasm in this band to new people coming in, new blood. There’s a whole astonishing dichotomy in the audience factor in this group. We get the old timers that probably think, “Jesus Christ, I’ve waited 20 years for them sons-a-bitches. Me and the old lady only go out once a year.” Fine, how long does that last? The answer being it doesn’t. But seemingly a new generation has come in enjoying songs again with this formidably banal jam band scene that goes on for the most part, for me, I just find it boring – endlessly and hopelessly “not there.” I’m sure people have shared that along the line – “I’ve had endless years of endless trills and riffing and this isn’t what a meaningful jam is anyway.” So there you go. They’ve inadvertently tuned into their family’s record collections and maybe spotted a cactus [the band's logo] somewhere in the corner and said, “A cactus, that’s cute” put it on and just got attached to good songs. Good songs just beat the hell out of most of the stuff I know.

RockOm: What’s your favorite track on Where I Come From?

Buddy Cage: I like “Ghost Train” a lot. That’s pretty much - at least in my opinion - Hunter sharing that same feeling that, “Geez, I’m just sick and tired of this Ghost Train since Jerry’s been dead.” It’s been 13 and a half years of stopping around the graveyard and expecting things you can’t resolve. But you can resolve it. I too am tired of that ghost train. I love that song a whole lot. It’s amazing – “a hundred haunted box cars.” I like “Blues Barrel” immensely. It’s got a groove funk to it that I can really get into. It satisfies another one of my playing passions as a pedal steel guitarist to just settle down and just do funk in the background, a rhythm pattern.

RockOm: Most of the songs on your album are very long. That passion is still there to keep a song going for up to 10 minutes.

Buddy Cage: I answered a question the other day that said, “How do you feel about long songs? And what is the difference between what you did 25-30 years ago and what you do now?” And basically what we were doing then was looking for airplay and commercial hits. They were kept to, for the most part, the two and a half to three and a half minute song lengths and patterns. Right now, we just don’t care about that, so there is a difference. We end up with tunes that just play themselves into eight minutes without having to go into extended [jams]. There are a lot of verses to "Ghost Train", for instance, a lot of story to it. You can’t limit it, cut it down, because you want to get special air time out of it.

RockOm: These songs were recorded in no more than three takes in the studio. What has to happen between musicians or a group of friends in order to pull something like that off?

Buddy Cage: I don’t know. From my own standpoint, I’ve been doing this a long time. It’s just a natural thing. I can do one take and say, “Well did you get that?” and know that’s what’s going on the track. That’s how the track’s going to be played. Each of these songs started out in sound checks and trying them out and then eventually they’d just appear on a set list some night.

RockOm: Take us back to the Festival Express. You, the New Riders, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and others were touring across Canada when you and Jerry sat down together and played steel guitar.

Buddy Cage: Oh, we weren’t sitting down together playing steel guitar. It wasn’t like a “jaaaam”. There was no “we be jamming” stuff about that. I asked him actually, and he said, “No, noo! You’re the guy, man!” It was kind of flattering in one way but in another way I felt I was missing something. You had to know Jerry. He was simply the most attractive, magnetic, personal guy I ever knew. The Festival Express train, the reason that came off at all, was that these two, three promoters had stolen their daddy’s checkbook and cut a few checks here and there. They brought the offer to all the bands they loved at the time and they thought would be the perfect thing to hear. Being three Canadian guys they included Ian and Sylvia (Great Speckled Bird) as their favorite Canadian thing going down, which I was playing with at the time. But it never got further than the managers, because all the managers went “Oh, no, no no! No you can’t tape it, you can’t film it. No audio. We have contracts with…” Nobody could just sign the papers and release forms. Jerry had to call everybody personally, man. With Janice it wasn’t such a long distance call, cause she was a next-door neighbor. But with everyone else he had to call and say, “Are you kidding? You don’t see this as being the best thing you’ll ever do in your freaking career?” And like I said, with his enthusiasm, he just torched off a bunch of guys and they all said, “Ah, screw the taping. We’ll do anything you want. It sounds like a real kick.” Even today if you ask anyone who’s still around about their favorite gig is and they’ll say, “That fucking train, man!” All the people that were there, all the people that didn’t even know each other at the time, had so much to say. We all ended up playing for each other, showing off. “Hey this is what my band does, what do you guys do?” It was one of those charming, amazing things.

RockOm: Did you know it was a career changing tour for you? Did you know something had to happen when you stepped off that train?

Buddy Cage: No, I didn’t actually. Apparently the first leg of that train was supposed to be in Montreal so [the bands] all went there. We boarded the train in Toronto as it was winding its way across country. By that time Jerry had already told the New Riders that were with him, “Guys, I gotta leave the band.” That was a tough place to be, I’m sure. But he had to devote time to The Dead again in writing songs and getting things done, producing the band because they owed two albums to Joe Smith at Warner Brothers at the time.

At that time the New Riders were going, “Jesus, Jerry. Thanks a lot man.” But he said, “Don’t worry; we’ll get you another player. We’ll get you a real player, a guy to take this band up the next few levels.” They heard me playing the first date in Toronto and Garcia said to the guys, “There’s the ringer; go get him.” When they approached me on the train it was pretty amazing and [Jerry] asked if I knew what was going to happen. These guys were a pretty sorry looking lot. I said, “Look at these guys. Look at these freaks.” I was dressed out between a cross of Jimi Hendrix and Cream. These guys, holy Jesus, looked like a bunch of Goddamn bikers. Gerry said, “There are no rules. You’ll never be a side man again.” I ended up getting the rest of my contract and things together during the next six months and jumped right in.

RockOm: The New Riders went on to sign with Clive Davis and Columbia.

Buddy Cage: After Woodstock the major labels were signing these west coast bands. Clive being among the west coast labels was eager to take the pitch for the New Riders. He thought if he signed us the Dead won’t be far behind. Actually, it took a few years for that to come down for him. Yeah, it was a great contract for the time. I’m not a label guy anyway. I don’t work under that kind of the pressure, that kind of rip off is completely unacceptable.

RockOm: Well I don’t know personally, but I’ll take your word for it.

Buddy Cage: You’ve heard of AIG? You’ve heard of Bank of America and Wells Fargo, Citibank? Well there you go. All major labels are the same.

RockOm: The major labels are now defunct and probably not coming back.

Buddy Cage: No, they’re not coming back. Goddamn. Just bury them deep. Bury them upside down so they can’t dig themselves out.

RockOm: What do you think of the digital age and music production? Internet radio and downloads. Is that your cup of tea?

Buddy Cage: Well it’s my cup of tea now, isn’t it? Unless you’ve got some other way of doing it. We talked earlier about the recording process, it didn’t take me long to get over the analog-digital controversy. Digital music is just so accessible. Even now, many years later after digital entered the work force we can drop in to various pockets all over the US. Wherever this band was last year from February to December '08, either coast, beginning or ending of the tour, while we were still all together and without incurring other expenses, we could just drop into little home studio deals. You can record anywhere. It’s just been so easy. For us to own our own stuff from the get-go is the key.

RockOm: It’s also easy for your new fans to access your music.

Buddy Cage: Absolutely.

RockOm: Let’s talk a little about music and spirituality. I’ve been told you are an atheist. Was there ever a time in your life where you were religious or spiritual?

Buddy Cage: Never. Religious or spiritual? What do you mean religious or spiritual? It’s not both. I don’t even really go into that in any kind of detail. It just is. It’s not something I need to record [like] writing a book or a pitch. Like we were talking before where you said you heard [the songs on the new album] were done in one or two takes - yeah, that’s spiritual! The feeling you get out of it, no one has to stand at a lectern and tell you and point to you the reasons why it’s good. There it is! There are spiritual things in all forms. I felt very spiritual of the fact that we actually got those rat bastard GOP fuckers out of our lives to a great degree and got Barack Obama in. We did that on a grass roots level. That’s spiritual.

RockOm: Do you think that perhaps in the 60’s and perhaps to a degree today that people confuse a psychedelic or drug induced experience with something spiritual?

Buddy Cage: Sure there’s confusion! If you’re taking drugs, damn right there’s confusion! If you’re ripped - not that I’m condoning it or tearing it apart - I’m not at all. I wouldn't presume to do that. But sure, there’s some kind of effect. To think of it as some kind of religious or spiritual experience, that’s up to the individual. That’s certainly not what I do. I’ve got this dumb guitar, this weird guitar I sat down to when I was a little kid, and no place to go. Talk about spiritual. I don’t know any other way to place it. What are you going to do with this dumb guitar? You gonna go to Nashville? Hell no! I could see from the time I was 15 or 16 what a dead end street that was. Play it this way or that way or you don’t get the job. Do this, do that; well I ain’t the guy to tell this too. I ended up with a rock n' roll head and with a country and western instrument. I became this weird hybrid at the beginning of the 60’s. By the mid 60’s when the music scene was starting to blossom for a lot of free thinkers and unconventional players, I seemed to fit right in because I knew what to do to serve the song, to fit in without trying to step on everybody. It developed into a style and a form through all these many years. There’s something in that. The time found me or I found the time to fit into whatever was happening. I don’t know if I could ever recreate it or preach it because it just isn’t that way, it never has been. That’s just my personal experience. So, falling through the cracks I fell into a pretty cozy place and a lot of people apparently felt the same way I did. That’s spiritual.

RockOm: What kept you and David Nelson and to a degree Robert Hunter together? You’ve had many lineup changes over the years. What is it about you and David and your association with Hunter?

Buddy Cage: Well, we listened to each other. That’s it. With Hunter and Jerry [Garcia], we always considered them a kind of a guide or beacon because they were always coming up with great ideas we could work with and work into, be part of. As far as Nelson and I go in playing in a practical sense, there you go, it’s the same thing. We listen to each other. I like the combinations we come up with. We always listen to each other. There’s little things, little intrigues going on, some places where we go, “Oh no, no, no. We don’t want to do that again!” And a lot of other places where it’s like, “Oh that’s interesting.” The end product [is] as much of a surprise and a source of pleasure for both of us. We’ve managed to be able to create a sound together that involves listening to each other and caring for what each other played. Nelson is a great guitar player on his own as I am on steel guitar, but together we’ve managed to find our way into something that worked for us.

RockOm: In 2005 when you came back together with Michael Falzarano, Ronny Penque, and Johnny Markowski joined you was it hard for them to fit into the groove you two were in? They have been around and on the scene as well.

Buddy Cage: It wasn’t that difficult. Basically the pitch to us from Markowski was, “Let’s just go out and try it and [see] if you can get Nelson out here. We know these great Marmaduke, these great John Marmaduke Dawson tunes and we’ve learned to do them. We want to present them to you.” Nelson, when he came out for the first rehearsal, he found the energy and the love these guys had for these John Dawson tunes. Nelson was quick to point out (and I stand behind him totally) Nelson said, “Please don’t think you have to copy them like side men. Play it in your own spirit.” That’s pretty much what set it off. I’ll jump into anything pretty much because that’s the way I’ve been all my life as a player. “Can you play reggae man? Yeah, sure. What’s the pay scale?” (laughing) But Nelson is very cautious as an individual about what he gets into and the amount of energy he’s going to [exert]. But when he found out how passionate the guys were about Johns tunes he said, “Think of the guys you are replacing, the rest of the playing with come naturally.” And it did.

RockOm: Is this the most fun you’ve had with the New Riders- making this record and touring?

Buddy Cage: I don’t know about the most fun, it’s the most fun I’ve had lately (laughing). It’s the next thing up and it all worked out so well. This is a whole lot of fun. Think of all the albums and experiences we’ve had; there’s so many experiences it’s amazing. This particular one, it’s what’s happening now and it’s just driving us crazy how good this thing worked out. It means so much to us to have a whole ‘nother future going on, a whole new direction rather. Yeah, I’m getting a huge kick out of it.

RockOm: Any plans for the future?

Buddy Cage: NO! These are the plans, you and I doing this interview. This is the future.

www.michaelfalzarano.com

www.thenewriders.com

Tags: Buddy Cage, David Nelson, Festival Express, Ghost Train, Grateful Dead, Jam Band, Jerry Garcia, John Marmaduke Dawson, Johnny Markowski, Michael Falzarano, music, New Riders of the Purple Sage, NRPS, Robert Hunter, RockOm, RockOm.net, Ronny Penque, spirituality, Where I Come From, Woodstock Records, www.thenewriders.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 6:40 am and is filed under Featured Articles, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

WTF?

4 posts • Page 1 of 1

WTF?

by Engineer Bob » Fri May 01, 2009 6:42 am

This dude is freakin wacked!

New Riders of the Purple Sage, “Where I Come From” produced by Michael Falzarano (Woodstock Records)

By all rights, New Riders of the Purple Sage should have come to a quick end when co-founder Jerry Garcia — who formed the band as an outlet for his latest interest, the pedal steel — dropped out, in 1971. So the fact that NRPS is still in business beats considerable odds. “Where I Come From” finds the group — still led by original singer-guitarist David Nelson — on solid but predictable ground, making psychedelic country-rock distinguished mainly by the current pedal steel player, Buddy Cage, and lyrics by Garcia’s songwriting partner, Robert Hunter.

stewart@aspentimes.com

"current" pedal steel player, Buddy Cage -I guess Buddy is a new guy :lipssealed:

Yeah right Stew, "predictable" -ha! :dizzy:

My father once told me it is better to remain silent and be thought stupid than to speak and remove all doubt.

Engineer Bob: Posts: 58; Joined: Mon Apr 14, 2008 6:11 am

Re: WTF?

by greysoul » Fri May 01, 2009 8:55 am

Don't you worry 'bout a thing: give that newcomer Cage lad another year or two and they'll come to it.

Right.

greysoul

Re: WTF?

by Stormin Norman » Sat May 02, 2009 5:45 pm

He should be thankful we're a peaceful lot.
Just remember what forest said, " Stupid is, as stupid does."
Obviously, he is a poor excuse for a life form.
Perhaps we've discovered the missing link?

Stormin Norman: Posts: 27; Joined: Sat Aug 16, 2008 8:07 am

Re: WTF?

by BakerBro » Thu May 07, 2009 3:17 am

I oughtta slap him with my crutch for that Buddy slight! :hiding:

NAH!

this looks like me right after the bike crash! :rofll:

OWWIE OWWIE OWWIE! its been 4 MONTHS, and Im still in SEVERE PAIN and BARELY HOBBLING on a cane! Much worse than I had imagined back in Jan! :cussing:

Dr now says if healing doesent improve by end of june, Im gonna get a bone graft surgery and an additional metal plate to hold that leg together. WHOOOPEEE!

CHECK OUT MY NRPS FAN SITE! www.TheBakerBros.com NRPS stuff from today and yesterday! Been a superfan for 35 years, go to my site,lemmee prove it!Thanks to the current line up for takin' it on the road!Come to San Diego and get McDUKE out here too!

BakerBro: Posts: 115; Joined: Tue Nov 07, 2006 1:19 am; Location: San Diego, Ca (Lakeside)

Buddy Cage interview from http://www.jambands.com

:sneaky:

the always entertaining BC......

Buddy Cage: Still Steeling Away

Brian Robbins
2009-04-26

With a career that spans well over 40 years and name-drops folks from Bob Dylan to Rick James to The Band to Sly & The Family Stone, it’s safe to say that pedal steel guitarist Buddy Cage has been there and back. Currently enjoying the rebirth of the New Riders of the Purple Sage [which will release a new studio effort in June, stay tuned for additional coverage],
Cage may be one of the “elder statesmen” of the scene originally based around the Grateful Dead, but he chooses to be a spokesman for no one but himself. When you talk with Buddy Cage, you’re going to get the real deal as Buddy sees, thinks, and feels it. The following conversation, recorded just as the New Riders were gearing up for a string of East Coast dates in late February/early March, is classic Buddy. A word to the uninitiated: no doubt, you may read something below that you don’t agree with, but don’t touch that dial. When you take in a full-circle sit-down with Buddy, you realize that for all the no-holds-barred opinions, there’s a level of heart and soul that many never take the time to see.

Jam On/Jam Off

BR: Hey there, Buddy, thanks for taking the time.

Buddy: Sure, man, no problem – let’s go. What do you want to talk about?

BR: How about we start with the Sirius radio gig?

Buddy: Oh, sure.

BR: Well, this past November you disappeared from your morning slot [Cage hosted a show on Sirius Channel 17 – Jam On – from 6:00 AM to noon weekdays] without a whole lot of warning; all of a sudden, it was like “Where’s Buddy?” I’m sure there are still plenty of Sirius subscribers who are wondering what happened. How about giving your side of the story? From a listener’s standpoint, it seemed the show was going well.

Buddy: Oh, yeah. I’d done the show from the road with the New Riders for about 6 months – it was wonderful. We had a lot of fun doing it from the bus, man. Plenty of action around the gigs to feed to people on the air … it was great.

BR: To give them a taste of life on the road?

Buddy: Well, there was that – but, also, things would come down musically on the road when all of us were together. Little vignettes; ideas about other forms of music and things that you could share on the air with the audience. And I was getting nothing but great reports from Sirius that they loved what was going on with the shows from the bus … everything was cooking along. At the same time, though, the merger was happening with XM. I know several people with the FCC tried to get me placed in the lineup more permanently – which was nice - but that was just lobbying. When it all comes down to it, it’s Mel’s [Sirius XM Radio CEO Mel Karmazin] decision. Then, in the last couple months before the November elections, I was getting extremely political, you know?

BR: (laughs) Not you!

Buddy: Oh, yeah. So I got kind of a warning from the format manager – she was getting orders handed to her, you know? “Be careful on that political grind.” “Leave the political stuff for the stations that specialize in that sort of thing.” And me, I was like, “Fuck you. This is too important and I’m using my space for this. It’s my goddamn program and if you take it away from me, it’ll be your program.” So that’s pretty much how that all got decided.

BR: And you were on the air up until the elections, right?

Buddy: Oh absolutely – we were on the air the week of the elections and it was great fun, man. And then the director of programming told me (with great regret) that we were going off the air … it was a tough one for him, but he was a good guy in a tough spot. So I was able to complete what I knew were going to be my last two shows. I closed the final one with “I regret turning anything in that isn’t perfect.” You can’t say “goodbye” and end a thing like that on the air – it’s not the way broadcasting works. So that was just kind of a coded message to everybody.

BR: I don’t think anyone knew-

Buddy: Oh, you wouldn’t have – it was designed that way.

BR: So, did you have a final song that you signed off with?

Buddy: Yeah, I did, but I can’t remember … I mean, to tell you the inside of the thing, the format manager programmed all the shows, okay? They don’t pay the kind of money it would take to cover the time and effort of programming your own shows. You know – I’d have my own format and that would be it. But what gets played all comes under the so-called masturbatory “jamband” umbrella. It’s like, “Come on … more fuckin’ Phish? Are you kiddin’ me? More Dave Matthews?” (laughs) I mean, the format was horrible. The director of programming was very good to me, though – he spoke up on my behalf: “You’ve got to trim it to Buddy.” He knew we should be playing some New Riders, some Dead, some associated things like that.

I mean, I’ve been in the middle of this stuff for almost 50 years; the whole open-ended thing was what the Dead was doing a long time ago, man. So many of these newer bands, even though they don’t want to be identified with the Grateful Dead or be referred to as a “tribute band” or anything like that – understandably – that’s where it all comes from. It was done 10,000 years ago, man. (laughs) Having said all that, even though I was barely, barely able to tolerate the “jambands” format, I still felt it was better than a lot of the other stations, which were geared to all sorts of other bullshit, you know? I mean, hey: it’s the way that records and airplay go. We all know that. But if you really want to be thorough and find out what young people are really listening to, call the colleges. Call the college stations, okay?

What I felt was happening with the so-called “jambands” scene was just the same shit - on and on and on. “What else can I do? What other kind of arpeggio runs can I plug into this endless form?” Totally self-indulgent. So, eventually, what I saw happen over the four years I was with Sirius, was a lot of the young people who had just gotten through college or were in the middle of college were getting tired of this “jambands” scene and were looking for something else. And I don’t know if it was from old records of their parents, or older brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles – whatever – but they’d see like this old New Riders album with the cactus on the front and say, “That’s cute” and when they’d play it, they’d find that they liked just good songs again. So it was a renewed energy for us as a band – and a lot of the listeners … but that didn’t work with the whole format thing of the station.

BR: I remember some of the early FM radio around here when I was in my teens – that was some pretty free-form stuff.

Buddy: Oh, absolutely, man – absolutely. There was so much enthusiasm and new stuff happening at the time … it was a great conduit for the new stuff. Young broadcasters were just getting whacked-out turned-on by the new stuff that was coming out and wanted to share it. That’s what it was all about.

BR: So … if you were going to tell somebody, “Hey, if you’re going to bother to turn on the radio, this is what you should be listening to,” what would you tell them?

Buddy: I wouldn’t tell them anything (laughs). I’d tell them to get out some old Joni Mitchell … get some of the old stuff out and listen to it.
But hey – things are going to perk up sooner or later.

New Friends

BR: Having said all that, apart from the rebirth of the New Riders, you’ve been playing music with some younger bands of late – Boris Garcia and the Ryan Montbleau Band come to mind.

Buddy: (laughs) Oh, yeah, man … good sessions.

BR: Well, let’s take one at a time – how did you make the connection with the Boris Garcia boys?

Buddy: We were always in the same kind of place because [longtime Dead scribe/ publicist] Dennis McNally was interested in those guys and he was doing publicity for us as well. It was Dennis who said to them, “You ought to get Buddy in on this.” They’d never thought it was an approachable subject, but when Dennis mentioned it, they were like, “Jeez – yeah!” Donna Jean Godchaux was on the album, too. It was great to be part of it.

BR: Were the Boris sessions the first time you’d worked with Tim Carbone from Railroad Earth?

Buddy: Yeah, Tim was the producer. He and I ended up in the studio together in lower Manhattan and he got me on a couple of tunes. One of them was the song “On The Other Side” - when I heard it, I said to myself, “That’s about Jerry, man.” You never try to nail a songwriter down by asking, “What does that mean?” you know? You’re usually not going to get much that’ll satisfy your curiosity. But hearing the lyrics, “Thanks for everything; I’ll see you on the other side,” I said “Holy shit!” I even talked to Bob Stirner who wrote it and he said, “Well, I guess it is …” (laughs) But both Tim and I heard it that way and we really enjoyed the hell out of it. I was very sick at the time of those sessions, but we were able to get a good take. Tim pulled it off, made it all happen, got all the good parts in the right spots, and put it all together. Tim knows how to serve the song, man … that’s what makes him good.

BR: How about the Ryan Montbleau Band – how’d you connect with them?

Buddy: With Ryan Montbleau, we ended up being booked together – the New Riders and his band – at a couple places. One gig was in Wilmington, NC and then we ended up in Colorado with them opening for us again. I was like, “Jesus, how in the hell can this opening band afford to do gigs from Wilmington to Denver,” you know? But they did … and when we heard these guys, we were stunned by how good they were. When they got into their own recording situation up in New York, they called me in to lay some tracks down.

BR: “Shine A Light” was the first cut I heard. It made the hair stand up on my arms.

Buddy: That was a good take – that’s the one that jumped out at me. In fact, both the Boris Garcia and the Ryan Montbleau Band albums came to me packaged and ready to go about six months after I’d recorded with them. I popped those into my player and said, “Holy shit” – I’d forgot how great that song was. The whole album’s amazing.

BR: Well, both albums are getting played and both bands seem to be gaining audiences all the time.

Buddy: I’m delighted to hear that – they deserve it.

Frontman / Sideman / Jerry, man

BR: Here’s a question: in a guest spot like that, how do you approach the session? I guess I’m thinking in terms of the whole ensemble instrument vs. lead thing … the role of the pedal steel.

Buddy: That just comes out of me in the way I hear the song – there’s no formula for it. Consider this: I played with my last country-western band as a sideman back in 1967 when I was 21, okay? I realized I’d much rather be doing other things and the whole sideman thing just sucked. One should be able to mold into some other form, some other presentation that didn’t involve frontman/sideman bullshit, you know? I was the one pedal steel player that was just never going to be labeled – it was just never going to happen. Nobody was ever going to say to me, “Oh, why aren’t you in Nashville?” because I’d tell ‘em to shove Nashville up their ass … I didn’t want to work under that kind of a format.

We played the Festival Express in 1970, a mere three years later … but a lot had happened in those three years, man. [The Trans Canadian Pop Tour, otherwise known as the Festival Express, was a weeklong train tour across Canada featuring whistle-stop concerts along the way. Performers included Ian and Sylvia, Great Speckled Bird, The Band, Janis Joplin, Buddy Guy, and the Grateful Dead.] I was able to play for some producers during that period of time who knew they wanted to use me – but they weren’t going to tell me what to. It just wasn’t going to happen. The result was, they were much more pleased at what I was able to pull out of my own feelings at the time – that went a long way. Everybody was real experimental in those days.

BR: And for those that don’t know the story, the Festival Express was where Jerry Garcia got you connected with the New Riders, correct?

Buddy: Yeah, Garcia was looking for someone to take his place on pedal with the New Riders. He heard me play with Ian & Sylvia and said (does a bad Jerry Garcia impression), “Hey, man – you really should take this gig.” (laughs) You know, Jerry always said, “I’ll never be a pedal steel player, man … I’d like to be, but I just ain’t there.” Of course, he had his own ideas about playing on his own – like some of his studio stuff. He was never going to be an out-front kick-ass pedal steel player and he just knew it.

BR: You know, I can think of a bunch of studio stuff, but I can’t really come up with a good example of live Jerry pedal steel off the top of my head.

Buddy: I think it’s pretty rare. There’s a YouTube thing that somebody sent me from 1970 where he’s on stage at Winterland during soundcheck that’s pretty interesting. As a matter of fact, someone sent me that YouTube and said, “Buddy, here’s the real thing - take a look at this and clarify what’s going on here.” I saw what he played, I heard what he played, and I know what he was playing through, okay? And there was a group of players on the online Steel Guitar Forum who just hated Jerry for not being a traditional pedal steel player, you know? I just set them on their asses and said, “Here you go - here’s a YouTube you can watch. You can tell what he’s playing through for gear – and he’s playing well. So fuck you!” They posted that on the Steel Guitar Forum and the site crashed in about 20 minutes (laughs).

BR: Overloaded with responses?

Buddy: Oh, you bet it was overloaded, man … it couldn’t handle it. (does a bad Jack Nicholson imitation) “You can’t handle the truth!”

BR: Did the two of you ever play pedal together?

Buddy: No. Not at all. But Jerry listened, man. He was aware of what I was doing like with Ian & Sylvia on the Great Speckled Bird album – he was aware of everything! Ahh, Jerry … an amazing guy.

Old Friends

BR: We talked about some projects with new connections – how about some of the recent projects you’ve been a part of with old friends? Michael Falzarano’s solo album We Are All One, for instance.

Buddy: Cool album!

BR: I’ll just say that what struck me right off the bat when I first heard it is, although it’s a revolving cast of characters throughout the album, it ties together really well … do you credit that to Michael’s ability as a bandleader?

Buddy: Oh, yeah – and as a producer. No question. And he was able to jump in with me, call me into sessions depending on where we were at a given time, and plunk down a couple of tunes. He did the same with everybody. There’s a whole bunch of great people on that album.

BR: That album was one of Vassar Clements’ last sessions, right?

Buddy: Absolutely. And his playing was just absolutely wonderful, man.

BR: You and Vassar had a number of opportunities to play together those last few years of his life.

Buddy: We hadn’t really hooked up for a long while until after Jerry died – there was no more Old & In The Way, there was no more New Riders at the time … that scene was quiet. The two of us didn’t get any chances to play together for quite awhile. Of course, his table was always pretty full – everybody wanted to play with Vassar and he was working a lot. It ended up that we were both hired by the band Stir Fried to play a gig with them … Vassar and I got to hang out and talk about how the ranks were thinning and Jerry was gone and so forth. So we got to relive some old memories and play together again - it was really a lot of fun. From there, we ended up playing in various formats … we got an awful lot of things done between the two of us. It was great. He was great. I cared very, very much for Vassar Clements.

BR: I know Vassar passed away in 2005, so those sessions for Michael’s album had been in the can for a few years.

BC: You know, I heard that collection of tunes for the first time last year – just about a year ago today. What had happened was, [longtime Dead lyricist] Robert Hunter had written a bunch of tunes for the New Riders and sent them to David Nelson. We got Nelson out here and headed to a private lodge in Binghamton, NY to rehearse. And during a break, we were just taking a breather and Michael says, “Hey, do you remember this?” and brings over his laptop. He starts to play these tunes we’d done and I was just flattened. Michael knows me so well, man – he knows what’s hot and what’s not and he knows when and how. He just blew me away with that stuff with Vassar and me on it – just unbelievable. I was happy that he finally got the album out last year between touring with the New Riders and doing sessions with us on the road, laying down those new Hunter tunes. It’s wonderful to be doing this new stuff with old friends, you know?

BR: Well, that’s a good segue into what’s ahead for 2009: “new stuff with old friends.” What have the New Riders got planned?

Buddy: We’ll start the festival scene in April but we’re not looking too far into the future because of the economy, but everything in our world seems to booking along at a normal clip – people still want to come out and see The New Riders. Hey, man – if it’s a lift for them, it’s a lift for me, too!

BR: And the upcoming New Riders album?

Buddy: We had taken a few dates in between the mini-tours we did last year and put in some studio time. That’s the beauty of digital recording – you can do it almost anywhere … almost everybody’s got the gear you need to take in the data. By the end of November/early December, we finished off with a couple studio dates in Sacramento and Michael had everything he needed, including the new Hunter tunes. Now it’s stuff like cover art – turns out Stanley Mouse has offered a piece for us … another old friend. He’s sent us something that’s really neat – kind of a rock-candy version of the first New Rider’s album cover. We’re going to name it for one of Hunter’s tunes – “Where I Come From.”

Let me stop right there for a minute and put this into perspective: the reason why Dennis McNally is onboard with us; the reason why Robert Hunter has written new tunes for us; the reason why Annette Flowers from Hunter’s Ice 9 publishing company is doing bookkeeping for us; the reason why folks like Steve Parish and Rock Scully and Bob Matthews and Betty Cantor-Jackson are around – all these great people, old friends of ours from the Grateful Dead - is because we were up and going with this New Riders thing.

The catch phrase these days is shovel-ready – and they were looking for something to come along after the ghost train of grieving for Jerry. You need to move on, you know? Jerry’s gone; we miss him, man - but you got to get a life and move on. There was just no there there anymore. A lot of people were in limbo for a while; nothing exciting was going on; nothing was happening. All these people were old friends of ours – since, like, 1969, for Chrissakes – and when we got the New Riders up and going again, they felt something. We all did.

One by one, one way or another – they got on board with us and got interested in doing things again. We all got back into it together.