“Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest alt-country rock band in the universe…”
It’s Halloween, 2015, and I’m perched on the back of the soft bench running along the wall of the Sweetwater Music Hall, in Mill Valley, California. Mark Topazio, affectionately known as Captain Toast and the band’s tour manager, is introducing the New Riders.
This is not the original Sweetwater – that one was around the corner on Throckmorton Street. Toast, who I’ve been hearing introduce this edition of NRPS (yes, we pronounce that Nurps) since I stopped resisting the tug of an old, old longing and began reinegrating back into a world of music I’d walked away from for thirty years back in 2006, was not the voice I first heard performing this introduction; that would have been Bill Graham. Of the original band members, only David Nelson remains.
And they are every bit as much my New Riders as they were in early 1970, the first time I saw them, heard them, knew I was hearing music that, somehow, was going to stay forever pinned on my personal radar.
“…THE NEW RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE!”
Oh yeah. Bring it, boys. It’s showtime.
Back in the day, the common perception was that the Riders were associated with the Grateful Dead. Odd, that, because in my head, they were never a Dead side project. I barely remember the inclusion of Mickey Hart on drums, or Phil Lesh on bass, back when they toured the East Coast in the Woodstock era; Jerry Garcia on pedal steel, yes, absolutely, but still, somehow not a Dead project.
My “original” NRPS lineup was actually the transitional one: John “Marmaduke” Dawson and David Nelson on guitars and vocals, Spencer Dryden (ex-Jefferson Airplane and one of the greats) on drums, first Jerry Garcia and then (and still) Buddy Cage killing it on pedal steel, and the one and only Dave Torbert on bass and some lead vocals. Torbert, later a founder of Kingfish, also handled some of the songwriting duties, something Marmaduke had previously done nearly all of. The New Riders cover some of Torbert’s work to this day: in 2015, as I sit dressed as Loki amongst the tie-dyes and rock and roll costumes, the band plays stellar versions of “Contract” and “Groupie.” Somewhere in there, I find myself tearing up, but I’m damned if I could tell you why, even now. They’ve never actually stopped covering Torbert’s material.
The iconic first NRPS album, with Alton Kelly’s trademark cactus cover art, would have hooked me even if I hadn’t already been deep into my NRPS love. From the cheerful exuberance of side one’s opening track “I Don’t Know You” to the intestine-twisting pedal steel Garcia threw down on the album’s closer “Dirty Business,” every song is a monster. There is nothing on that album, not a note or a lyric or an indrawn breath, that doesn’t work. The New Riders had wandered through the psychelic movement, kept it country and bluegrass, and triumphantly emerged as the first and greatest alt-country band on earth. Or, as Toast puts it to the sold-out Sweetwater, “…in the universe!”
He’s not wrong.
While music historians can go on about how the Riders were a Dead side project, I have never once heard or seen them that way. Marmaduke’s lyrics were grounded in Bakersfield, not eight miles high. There was bluegrass feeding the taproot of this band, pure lovely Americana. Torbert carried on that tradition, but added just the right touch of rock grit and edge.
Tonight, Halloween 2015, the band has a guest with them: guitarist Steve Kimock, playing a wailing slide that just sings back and forth with Buddy Cage’s untouchable pedal steel work. Other nights, I get to rock out to my occasional songwriting partner (and my band’s producer), Mark Karan, trading monstrous licks with David Nelson and Michael Falzarano all night long. I actually first met Mark at a fantastic NRPS show at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall, November 2006. He was sitting in for a few songs (along with the legendary Peter Rowan, the original Lonesome L.A. Cowboy), and was waiting just offstage, where I was standing and watching. The exchange went as follows:
Me: Lot of Fender guitars up there.
Mark: Ayup.
Me: Regular old twangfest.
Mark: Ayup.
Me: Single coil hell.
Mark: Ayup.
I know, I’ve said it already, but I’m saying it again: I love the Riders. It’s them and the Rolling Stones. My two favourite bands. My NRPS love lives and thrives to this day; it outlasted my Grateful Dead love by forty years. Where there’s NRPS, there’s a happy me.
“My father, my biological father, was Thomas Jefferson Kaye.”
It’s one in the morning. We’re in the band room after the Halloween show, and NRPS drummer Johnny Markowski has just handed me that jawdropping piece of information. Tommy Kaye? Wait, what? His father was Tommy Kaye?
Just one of those fun facts that, after a few minutes of listening to Johnny talk about it, stops being at all surprising and takes on this weird sense of inevitability. Johnny is a drummer, a singer, a songwriter, a guitar player – well, yeah, his father was the legendary producer of everyone from The Shirelles to Gene Clark. He’s got that DNA. In the same way that Ronnie Penque has that DNA – legendary jazz bassist in the family lineage. Ronnie’s solo CD Only Road Home is on my regular heavy play rotation; I actually reviewed it. A killer bassist, a wonderful songwriter, and one of my favourite people anywhere. How lucky is it, that everyone in this band just rocks?
“This is the tenth anniversary of the Riders playing together with this lineup.” Johnny has headed out to the alley to smoke a joint, and I and my rather terrifying Loki helmet (that’s Tom Hiddleston’s version of Loki, big screen, Avengers edition) have just bounced off Johnny and Ronnie and moved on to Hot Tuna alum and New York Blues Hall Of Fame inductee, guitarist Michael Falzarano. Falz is yet another kickass songwriter – he’s responsible for some of my most requested NRPS tunes, most notably the take-no-prisoners “Lo And Behold.” “Wookie Kids,” co-written with Ronnie Penque, is rapidly becoming one of my all-time favourites. And on the Rider’s Where I Come From LP, on an album full of strong solid songs, Michael’s “Carl Perkins Wears The Crown” knocks it out of the park. He also produced the LP. Everyone in this band can bring it, and they can all bring multiples.
NRPS, now and then and forever, are associated with the sound of pedal steel guitar. I could go on for a few pages about Buddy Cage, but really, just listen to the man. This is one of the greatest pedal steel players anywhere, ever, period. And the man himself is summed up for me by the fact that, a few years ago, he checked into hospital because he wasn’t feeling quite right and found out that the reason was multiple myeloma. This is not a cancer you can take lightly, and he didn’t. But he didn’t miss a single tour, either. Night after night, out there on the road, out there on the stage, still playing the best damned pedal steel on earth. Buddy blows my mind. I love the man to pieces.
And then there’s David Nelson.
Here we are in 2015, which means that I’ve now known and adored David for 45 or so years. David is – I will probably get seven flavours of hell for saying this, but screw it, it’s no more than the truth – David is a genius. I don’t use that word lightly. He is quirky and solid, cerebral and utterly visceral, oh right, he’s a Gemini. A very very very smart man, is Mr. Nelson. All nine of him.
I’ve discovered, over the years, that he has the nearest thing to an eidetic memory I’ve ever come across in an adult. There’s also the little matter of his being able to converse backwards – the story of how he got interested in doing that, and used the technology of the time to learn to do it, is beyond priceless. His take on anything at all, any subject under the sun, is going to be different and unique and leave you feeling as if your own brain has been hung out to flap happily in the sun, having been put through the best possible wringer, or maybe just a kind dance, a bizarre wonderful version of a galliard. Or an Impressionist’s Two Step. It’s a song. Go listen to it.
These days, with Marmaduke gone (he died of cancer in 2009), NRPS has become very much Nelson’s band. They still do many of Marmaduke’s repertoire, as well as Torbert’s: Ronnie’s vocal on “Henry,” that rollicking tune about a pot dealer slipping in and out of Mexico, and Michael’s take on “Louisiana Lady” are both takes to which Marmaduke would, I suspect, be giving the big thumbs up. But in the kind of cosmic goes-around-comes-around thing my generation came to expect, Nelson has been writing music recently to lyrics written by – yep, of course. Robert Hunter, the Dead’s lyricist. And somehow, none of it sounds remotely like the Dead. This is the New Riders Of The Purple Sage, all the way. And a very good thing that is, too. Just give me my Riders, and I’m happy.
As the Johnny Markowski song puts it, “I hope this road goes on forever – I hope you’re down for the ride.”
You bet I am.
Where I Come From and 17 Pine Avenue (Woodstock) are available here.
(Photo of David Nelson and Deborah Grabien by permission of Bob Minkin.)
