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| Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys - former Moz opening band back in VA - Virginian-Pilot (Nov. 16) |
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posted by davidt
on Wednesday November 29 2000, @09:15AM
TrblLuvsMe sends:
The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA) November 16, 2000, Thursday,
BIG SANDY PLAYS ROOTSY-EDGY HILLBILLY SOUND
BY SUE; VanHECKE; THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
THE LAST TIME Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys were in Norfolk was in 1992, when they opened for Morrissey at Chrysler Hall. It was an odd billing: the rollicking, hillbilly-garbed, rockabilly- and Western swing-styled Sandy and company priming the crowd for alterna-rock's most romantically miserable mopester.
But it was that unlikely tour - the Fly-Rites were invited along at the last minute after Morrissey caught their act in L.A. - that put Big Sandy and his Boys on the musical map.
(more)
''There are still people who come to our shows who first saw us on that trip,'' singer and songwriter Sandy, a k a Robert Williams, said from the road in Chicago recently. ''It put us in front of a whole new audience, a lot of people who'd never heard any stuff like this at all.''
That stuff is the rich and riotous, tradition-steeped sound of twangy Telecaster guitars, slippery pedal steel, gleefully thumping slap-bass and Sandy's honey-throated vocals. It's part Gene Vincent, part Buck Owens, part Bob Wills - and it's a whole lot of fun.
For ''Night Tide,'' the group's sixth and latest album, Sandy's broadened the blend. Those sunny, toe-tapping melodies are still there, but tinged with darker lyrical themes. It's an effective mix.
''I like that contrast,'' Sandy explained. ''When I was writing the songs for the album I wanted to try to put a little more depth into some of the songs and show a little bit wider range of emotions.''
Touring the United States and abroad most of every year, Sandy confesses to feeling ''out-of-sync'' when the band does get some time off at home in Southern California. ''I was finding myself back in the nightclubs every night,'' he said, ''but not really feeling a part of it. So thoughts were kind of running wild, kind of along the lines of things and feelings of the night.''
That alienation is nicely captured on one of the album's most poignant cuts, ''When Sleep Won't Come (Blues For Spade),'' inspired by the sordid saga of fiddler and bandleader Spade Cooley. In the '40s and '50s Cooley popularized the Western swing genre - the infectious blend of country and Big Band swing - with mega-hits like ''Shame On You'' and ''Detour'' and his own TV show before murdering his wife in a fit of jealous rage in 1961.
''I was already familiar with the story, but I had just finished rereading Nick Tosches' book 'Country,' '' a chapter of which includes a letter Cooley wrote to his friend Roy Rogers expressing remorse over what he'd done.
''It put it on my mind. I was just trying to put myself in his place, what must've been going through his mind while sitting there in prison, reflecting on what had come before, all that he had done, and how it just slipped through his fingers in the tragic way that it did. I had a friend of mine who was also . . . doing time in prison at the time, so that theme was weighing on me: you're alone with your thoughts.''
Sandy started singing in 1984 as he learned to play guitar. Singing soon turned into songwriting as well, and by 1987 Big Sandy had assembled the Fly-Rites to churn out his original tunes, inspired by his parents' '50s doo-wop, rockabilly and honky-tonk records he heard growing up.
At the time of the band's inception, there was no thriving national market for their rootsy-edgy hillbilly sound; the Americana radio format had yet to be established and the genre now labeled ''alt.country'' did not exist. Yet Sandy and the Boys persevered.
''There was a pretty well-established rockabilly scene out on the West Coast,'' thanks to the popularity of punk-abilly acts like the Cramps, X and the Blasters, he recalled, ''and we were sort of working within that realm. Things took off pretty quick in the L.A./-Holly-wood area.''
Records on small independent labels in the U.S. and the U.K. - where Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys are beloved - soon followed. In the early '90s the band was signed to the Hightone label, which has released four of the group's albums, plus solo efforts from both Sandy and the Fly-Rite Boys.
Major labels have come courting over the years, though. Sandy and the band met with representatives of the Warner Bros. imprint Sire, Morrissey's longtime label, but in the end declined because ''they wanted our first album to be like a Bob Wills tribute. (The 1940s Western-swing star) Wills is one of my heroes, but I think that's already been well done by Asleep at the Wheel and others.
''I didn't see the point of that. I want to focus on my own songs.''
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