Road Cage

Upcoming New Riders Northeast Tour Dates. Come on out and check out the show.

3/11/10

THE  GERMAN HOUSE

315 GREGORY ST.

ROCHESTER ,  NY 585 325 4088

3/12/10

THE WESTCOTT THEATER

524 WESTCOTT ST.

SYRACUSE,  NY  315 299  8886

3/13/10

RIDGEFIELD PLAYHOUSE

80 EAST RIDGE AVE

RIDGEFIELD, CT  (203) 438-5795

3/14/10

UKRANIAN AMERICAN

CULTURAL CENTER

60 NORTH JEFFERSON RD.

WHIPPANY, NJ

Mr. Cage…

Correct me if I’m wrong, but having just seen the “the festival express”, that was u in one of the final jams onstage with… everybody.  I might have been 13 at the time, but we all heard about it (underground radio) and thought we could hitchhike,easily enough and catch that train from Minnesota. We were wrong. Yeah, there was no way anyone could have hitched a ride on that train - it was a private coach.

Uh, Todd - you seem to be referring to the Ian & Sylvia segment - CC Rider Blues, it’s called. Sylvia singing the lead. Tyson’s wearing the cowboy hat.

That was done at the Calgary, Alberta show. You perceived it as a ‘jam’ - okay, I guess there’s some validity to that. The personel in that shot (r. to l.) included myself, Garcia, Ian, Sylvia downstage singing lead, Delaney Bramlett, Jim Colgrove our bass player, and Amos Garrett our genius guitarist with the Strat. Onstage as well, were Danko, Bonnie Bramlett, Kreutzmann also…

As we took our stage positions, Jerry asked Ian if he could sit in  - Ian knew full-well Jerry’s relevance and warmly made room. Gar wanted to stand next to me cause he was crazy about pedal steel (obviously!) and wanted to see what I was doing. He had asked me to replace him on steel w/NRPS (relatively, newly formed at the time) back a few days at the Toronto show of the train tour and was still sizing me up. Plus he was FULLY a fan of Ian & Sylvia, knew all about the recent album we had recorded in Nashville and just wanted to be in on what we were cooking up at the time.

Btw, there’s really some neat attachments to that stage moment - you’re a writer, you should get a kick out of some of this…

Look at Gar, he starts chuckling - reason? Well, he just was hearing Amos playing the kickoff to our CC Rider (a stunning intro!) over stage-left and was looking at me like, “W-h-h-a-a-a-t the fuck???” You’ll notice me shrugging my shoulders indicating, “How the hell should I know how he does it??!”

Right after, GD played then Janis closed. I had to stay around to grok this whole production whilst Tyson was urging me to ‘get the fuck moving’ - he and Sylvia were sitting in the rent-a-short down on the tarmac beside the stage. I waived him off and said I’d take a cab back but brought my steel down and placed it in the trunk. Amazingly, he stayed! Wouldn’t leave me behind.

On the drive back, we had a formiddable crew in that car: I & S up front, me, our drummer (martial arts student) and one of the larger, meaner GD roadies Sonny Heard from Pendleton, OR. We were being dogged by a car containing 4 drunk, young Canadian cowboys making catcalls to Sylvia all the way back to the hotel (Calgary Inn). Every stoplight, these pricks pulled up besdie us and got in Tyson’s face, to which he calmly invited them to a street fight, conveniently just outside the hotel (where the cops were being summoned as we got out of the car).

As in a Hollywood script, I called to Ian as we came to a full stop, “The KEYS!” He, in SloMo tossed them over his shoulder while he was getting out, they magically sailed right into my left hand, I beat it out to get into the trunk, open my steel case and got a purchase on one of my guitar legs! One of those babies can pack more of a whallop than a skinny, 120 lb. hippie can. And when I spun over to the fight, fuck - it was over! Mere seconds. The 4 young cowpokes were unconscious, spread over the street!

Here I was, armed, full of adrenalin, blood-in-my-eyes and no place to go!! Janis had just arrived, saw my sorry state and invited me up to her room for a drink, ostensibly to settle me down and tell her what happened. It was the last I would see of her - she was gone, three months later.

Ian called me up in her room and asked me to come by his, for a moment. Seems like he had broken his hand in the fistfight - Sylvia and I had to call the house physician and get him to a hospital. The concern was that we had to shoot a pilot for an TV show in Toronto the next day! Ian’s a tough cookie…

Then they sent me back to Janis’ room…

Buddy

That’s right, share with us your best NRPS memory and you just might win a free autographed photo or two. Its simple, register and post a comment to this post.

Incidentally - I was doing my first NYC dates at the venerable, old Village Gate (Thompson & Bleecker Sts.)with Ian & Sylvia in 1969. I was tagging along behind our guitar player, the great Amos Garrett standing at those ancient cross-streets when he pointed out that we were located in what could be said to be the Epi-Center of Greenwich Village! Amos is and was infinitely more World-Wise than myself and I grooved on that remark. He said that we were a mere few steps from Dan Armstrong’s store & would I like to see it.

Sure. If Amos G. told me to walk on my hands with my pants down around my ankles, I would have tried it.

Around that time Dan was pushing the transparent, lucite/clear plastic body guitars and of course, other things, strings and so forth. I never used anything by Dan - wasn’t into anything but my trusty Jordan Boss Tone, didn’t have the inclination that many six-stringers have to get into stomp boxes. I never really experimented with such, till I inherited Jerry Garcia’s steel FX rig in 71. See, my Emmons steel was SO fucking cool sounding, so PURE (beat anything around for decades, still does!), my Twin was the best in the business - what the hell did I need FX for? It was and is a matter of pride for pro steelers to rely completely on their right and left hand techniques and pedal skills to ‘make the sound’. Kinda like a Tele player - no gimmicks, if you suck you will sound like YOU SUCK. A Gibson will make up for a lot of sloppiness - a Strat, somewhat. But only pick up a Tele when you don’t seek excuses - it’ll call you out and display your character defects VIVIDLY.
Garcia’s FX rig was set up by Healy to give him all sorts of psychedelic options: Leslie cab simulator (ho-hum), wah pedal, couple-a stomp mothers and the Granddaddy of ALL FX gizmos - a Gibson Maestro unit. This guy was set on a knee-high rack with about 12-14 different toggles much the same as the ones on a Lowrey organ.

There were the Rhythm/percussive punches, the fuzz tone buttons, some horn effects, a phase unit and VOILA an auto-wah that was JUST INCREDIBLE!!!! I used it for about a year till my technique got a tad shabby and I put it and all (including tank reverb on my Twins) away for a while so I could get my chops back. We were playing halls mostly so there was always an abundance of room ambience. There were so many 1/4 inchers going in and out that finding the ONE THAT WAS BAD became a nightmare. Add to that, we had a roadie who was a victim of too many LSD beatings when he was a kid, I guess and was prone to violent rages - a short fuse? The roadie would get all flustered, I could see the back of his neck getting red the more confused he became over which phone plug was the culprit! Benched him AND the offensive cables for awhile, put them on the Pleasure Crew till things cooled out.

We returned to the studio and I told the crew to bring out the Maestro. No such luck - it was GONE! Somebody made off with it. I asked Jerry & Healy but just got a negative.

Then, Gibson came out with the units Gar would use later on, and forever for his flange and such - the Bi-Phases?? Never got into those either. The only things I used for a long, LONG time were the Jordan and the MXR Phase 100, preferring it over the 90. That’s what got the sound on Meet Me In The Morning (BOTT/Dylan)

Hope you enjoyed Memory Lane.

I should get more of a chance to tinker with the unit you just sent me in Sept. We’re not working a hell of a lot this year due to the economy but when I get set up next week for a bunch of Master Class steel lessons I’m giving, I’ll let you know, Chris!! Thanks man…

PS/Our new cd Where I Come From has your remade BossTone ALL over it! www.thenewriders.com

bc

Dave Torbert, left, David Nelson, Mickey Hart, Jerry Garcia and John Dawson, circa 1970. Hart and Garcia, members of the Grateful Dead, played with the New Riders of the Purple Sage for a time.

The things I won’t get a chance to say anymore to some old pals – Wish that I could. Oh – the Things…

John Dawson died 2 weeks ago, Jerry Garcia passed through the Gate 14 yrs. ago, this week. I’ll never see them again. Guess my time’s comin’ too.

But the things I wish I could say to them right now would only SERVE ME! They’re dead. One of the items that drives me crazy! I’m fairly well balanced, for a human. I dealt with their imminent passing rather well. I got sober 20 years ago, no regrets – I’ve been able to live a reasonably happy life. I knew they were going away, it seemed only a matter of time. It’s not like they were snatched away through some tragic accident, or such. They seemed to be hell–bent for croakin’ the way they were trying to exist.

In the magical universe, I would like to tell McDuke that I loved him and Jerry, just one more time. To tell them how much their music has done for me, made a lifelong career for me. From the time Garcia asked me to BE a New Rider in 1970 on the Train, backed up by Nelson and Dawson, I’ve worked.

I’m sitting in a dorm palace at Virginia Tech w/NRPS, languishing with time off (no gigs!), backround music is Garcia – from early Dead to JGB. No use in waxing cynical, it’s Jerry Week and all the GD devotees are listening to old cuts with Jerry and pondering the moment. The Moment, and all the other moments since he left the earthly plane in 95. Too bad, so sad, really…Everyone misses him, the music he played and the way he played it, including me!

I never got to tell him how much his playing meant to me – it just kinda got lost in the business-of-Buddy-being-Buddy. Fuck. But he knew. He saw me, lots – standing behind his amp stack in the early seventies. He would finish a number, mosey on back to grab the cigarette he left burning on his Twin and see me standing there shaking my head, in utter astonishment. He’d smirk. “Smoke THAT, Nimrod!” Yeah, he knew…

Those memories count for somethin’…

He came up to me in the band office after they’d received copies of their album GD From The Mars Hotel. Excited as hell, he urged me to listen and give him some feedback. I didn’t. I let the moment pass. I did this with most of their albums after that – let it slip. I frankly wasn’t ready for what they were doing on the Cutting Edge – I didn’t deserve the ride. I caught up later on but ‘later on’ would prove to be too late.

Two guys who were of paramount importance in achieving great musician’s dreams! “I know you Rider, gonna miss me when I’m gone…”

Here are a few highlights of a recent in studio interview on Q104.3 FM New York’s Jonathon Clarke Show- “Out of the Box”

The New Riders are supporting their first new Album release in 20 years - “Where I Come From” with radio interviews and special engagements such as the show at BB Kings room- Lucille’s hosted byDennis Elsas, the legendary New York disc jockey from WNEW FM. The New Riders are also appearing at BB Kings Blues Club (212) 997-4144 Thursday June 4, and the famed Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ (732) 502-0600 on June 6th. Call in advance for tickets as shows were close to being sold out as of today, 6/3. Tickets may also be available through Live Nation.

You can purchase the new album Where I Come From from itunes or at a show. After 20 years, its hard not to like the fresh but classic sounds of the New Riders of the Purple Sage aka Murdering Punks.

 

 Joining the New Riders, a long and strange trip: Play Now | Play in Popup

 

 Opportunity knocks, how I got introduced to the pedal steel guitar: Play Now | Play in Popup

 

 Where the NRPS come from : Play Now | Play in Popup