Published by Peter Cooperon August 5, 2010in Features. 0 Comments
Tags: Belcourt Theatre, Bill Bryson, Brad Paisley, byrds, Chris Hillman, country, Desert Rose Band, Dwight Yoakam, feature3, Flying Burrito Brothers, Foster & Lloyd, grand ole opry, Herb Pedersen, Jay Dee Maness, Jerrod Niemann, john jorgenson, Kathy Mattea, lyle lovett, nanci griffith, New Grass Revival, patty loveless, rodney crowell, rosanne cash, ryman, Steve Duncan, Steve Earle.
The Desert Rose Band in 1989, from left: Jay Dee Maness, Herb Pederson, Bill Bryson, Chris Hillman, Steve Duncan and John Jorgenson.
John Jorgenson was used to fan letters.
By the late 1980s, while virtuoso guitarist Jorgenson played for hit-making country group The Desert Rose Band, those letters were plentiful, and most often came from adult females inquiring about matters beyond music.
“This one was different,” Jorgenson said, recalling a letter he received more than 20 years ago, postmarked from West Virginia. “It was written in pencil, on notebook paper, talking about, ‘The guitar part you did on this song was cool.’ Plus, I’d never met anyone named ‘Paisley’ before.”
These days, the Paisley fellow — first name, Brad — says hearing the Desert Rose Band changed his life, and we know this because he has become one of country music’s biggest stars. Jorgenson gave him a Desert Rose-used guitar in 2004, at a party where Paisley celebrated selling five million albums filled with guitar licks that are indelibly influenced by Jorgenson’s chiming, twanging, chattering electric style.
On Monday, August 9, nearly two decades after Jorgenson left Desert Rose, he and the rest of the group’s original lineup (Chris Hillman, Herb Pedersen, Jay Dee Maness, Bill Bryson and Steve Duncan) will play a reunion concert at the Belcourt Theatre. On Tuesday the 10th, they’ll play the Grand Ole Opry. Neither show will be a celebration of anything approaching five million albums sold, as the band’s 10 Top 20 country hits from 1987 to 1990 did not spawn such high commerce.
What was spawned, though, was of musical significance. In his time with the California-based, Nashville-marketed Desert Rose Band, Jorgenson brought a guitar sensibility that remains much-imitated in Music City. Lead singer Chris Hillman — who had once been booed at the Grand Ole Opry as a member of shaggy rock-gone-country band The Byrds — helped connect the Nashville mainstream to the hard-charging west coast country-rock styles of The Byrds and another one of his earlier bands, the Flying Burrito Brothers.
Herb Pedersen’s harmony vocals and rhythm guitar brought complexity and versatility to the Desert Rose Band, which could shift between progressive, amped-up sonics and bluegrass-inspired songs that a Los Angeles Times writer once wrote were “about as country as you can get without worrying about deer-tick Lyme disease.” And steel player Maness, bass man Bryson and drummer Duncan were (and are) top-flight musicians who allowed the Desert Rose Band a position as then-contemporary country’s most skilled late-’80s combo.
'Forget Nashville'
“Forget Nashville: Desert Rose May Be Country Band of ’90s,” read a September, 1989 headline in a Los Angeles paper. It wasn’t the band of the ’90s, though not for any lack of musicality. The band was among a bevy of vital, critically acclaimed acts that flavored the late ’80s, leading Steve Earle to later comment on the time as country’s “Great credibility scare.”
“There was a sophistication in country songwriting and presentation that hasn’t been equaled since,” Hillman said. “The O’Kanes were so good, and Dwight Yoakam and Kathy Mattea. It was great country music.”
Other artists marketed from Music Row at the time included Earle, Foster & Lloyd, Nanci Griffith, Lyle Lovett, Patty Loveless, New Grass Revival, Rosanne Cash and Rodney Crowell, all of whom tend to get lumped these days into the “Americana” category, though their initial splashes were made on the country scene.
That scene nearly shifted from its Nashville axis one night in 1988, when the Desert Rose Band held a record release show at The Roxy in West Hollywood. Elton John, Stephen Stills, Bruce Hornsby, Bernie Taupin, Rose Maddox and Nicolette Larson were among the sold-out crowd.
It seemed that the Desert Rose Band was the epicenter of something inventive, hip and commercially viable. It seemed that way because it was that way, if only for a short while. The reunion touring is intended as a for-the-love-of-music endeavor, not as a career move, and there’s no talk of a studio album or any grand schemes.
But for Jorgenson, Hillman, Pedersen and the others, it’s a chance to reconnect with a shared past that remains worth exploring, for band members, for fans and for fellow musicians who these days are in the business of receiving fan letters, not sending them.
“To have someone, anyone, say, ‘This music changed my life,’ that’s worth more than nine million gold records,” Hillman said. “That means you’ve left a path for someone, and that you’ve created something lasting.”
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