A friend of mine who is a terrific bass player, all around musician and Harley rider told me he was learning pedal steel. Ron “King Bee” Raymond then asked me, ‘would I like to form a band?’ I thought, ‘Well, I have exactly one country number in my repertoire.’ It was “Dark End of the Street,” the famous cheating number written by Dan Penn and Chips Moman for soul singer Leroy Carr. I first heard the song on the Flying Burrito Bros album, The Gilded Palace of Sin, Gram Parsons most celebrated LP. But there were plenty of other great songs waiting in the wings, to my surprise.
I had just finished a well-researched bio, Twenty Thousand Roads – The Ballad of Gram Parsons and his Cosmic American Music, by David Meyer. And country was on my mind, having recently returned from my first trip to Nashville. It suddenly dawned on me – it was the perfect time to form a Gram Parsons tribute band!
Gram Parsons was introduced to me in a watershed, twentieth anniversary issue of Rolling Stone Magazine, The 100 Best Albums of the Last Twenty Years. I found a review of Sweetheart of the Rodeo by The Byrds, on which Gram was enlisted to provide a new direction to the then floundering superstars. I was working at J&R Music World at the time – buying experimental, electronic and Greek music. I grabbed Palace and Sweetheart for my collection, and eventually started buying the country records for the store.
We have a little show coming up, playing at an open mic night at the old Brownies space at Avenue A at 10th street, now called HiFi Bar, on Sunday, November 8th. The address is 169 Avenue A, between 10th and 11th Streets in the East Village. We go on at 7:30. Hope to see you there!
On Practicing Guitar 
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