#grinderswitch

Thunderhead: Thunderhead (1975)

My recent explorations into the darker reaches of Southern rock have yielded nothing but disappointments (Blue Jug, Two Guns, Beaverteeth!), but I knew my luck was bound to change eventually, and that's when Thunderhead came along.

Not to be confused with a German heavy metal band active in the late '80s and early '90s, this Thunderhead hailed from New Orleans, where they formed in 1973 from the ashes of local cover bands, and eventually signed to the Paragon Agency out of Macon Georgia (same as the Allman Brothers).

Singer Mike Daggar, guitarist Ronnie Dobbs, and bassist Otho T. Ware had all paid their dues with the colorfully named Paper Steamboard, drummer Bobby Torello did the same with David and the Giants, and second guitarist Pat Rush rounded out the line-up.

Within two years, Thunderhead had signed to ABC Records, which was looking to broaden a roster dominated by mainstream pop and M.O.R. acts (Paul Anka, Eydie Gormé, Jim Croce, etc.) with, errr ... whatever it is those crusty boys in "Leonard Skinner" were playing.

Enter Thunderhead, who'd already recorded an album independently at nearby Studio in the Country, in Bogalusa, LA, with some help from early supporters Johnny Winter (*), before re-recording most of it at the behest of ABC.

And a great record it is too, led by hardly groundbreaking but superbly-crafted southern rock gems like "More Than I Can Chew," "Breaux Bridge Rag" (*), and "Busted in Georgia" -- don't let those police sirens startle you if you're listening in your car.

Along with other solid cuts like "Got to Get Away," "Armed Robbery" and "Rock Me, Roll Me," they deliver that classic hard rock sound with country accents: snarling, drawled vocals, biting, slashing geetars, a rock-solid rhythm section, and, of course, transverse flute!

Wait, what? [Insert noise of record being scratched here.]

Yes, turns out frontman Daggar was an accomplished flautist, and he brought inevitable, if unexpected, Jethro Tull vibes to distinctive fare like "Lay it On the Line," "Showdown," "Hit and Run Driver," and "Juliette," where Dobbs helpfully subs on lead vocals.

In fact, given the band's solid but far-from-revolutionary songwriting, Daggar's flute embellishments would go down as Thunderhead's most distinctive quality, in the end -- and I say "the end," because ABC quickly dropped the group and they sadly never record again.

Daggar and Torello reformed Thunderhead with new bandmates in 2009 for selective live work, though no new recordings ensued, which is probably just as well, but I strongly recommend giving this 50-year-old platter a listen.

* I believe this might be it!

** Previously recorded by bluesman Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown.

Blackhorse: Blackhorse (1979)

Am I the only one who thinks that Blackhorse’s eponymous LP looks like the work of some lame, late ‘90s nu-metal band, instead of a 1979 private pressing from an ultra-obscure, surprisingly heavy southern rock power trio from the Lone Star State?

Hailing from the Central Texas town of Mineral Wells, located some 80 miles due west of the Dallas / Ft. Worth Metro, Blackhorse formed in the early ‘70s and spent the rest of the decade paying dues, sharing stages -- but not fame or fortune -- with fellow Texan combos like ZZ Top, Bloodrock, and Point Blank.

By 1979, Gary James (lead guitar, vocals), Paul-Anthony Middleton (bass, vocals), and John Teague (drums, vocals) had grown tired of waiting for that elusive lucky break or label deal and decided to spend their own earnings from packing clubs and ballrooms to record this LP.

And its proximity to the ‘80s may explain why hard-riffing, razor-sharp highlights like “Fox Huntin’,” “Velvet Angel,” and “Hell Hotel” nearly cross the line into heavy metal, similar to the works of contemporary groups like Molly Hatchet, Doc Holliday, and my favorites: Blackfoot.

As indicated overhead, all three men shared both lead and harmony vocal duties, and while I couldn’t tell you who’s who, I believe that’s Gary lending a standard-issue southern rock growl to most of the tracks, and John with the soulful intro to the band’s rowdy cover of Little Richard’s “Lucille.”

There’s a also a solid touring lament in “Cannot Find My Way Home” that builds from subtlety to volume, but credit to Blackhorse for resisting the temptation of jamming on and on to copy “Free Bird” or a “Highway Song,” and no doubt saving that for their stage shows.

The album does lose steam near the end (likely because the boys were also running out of recording funds), bu even “Slow Down Tom” and “Dave’s Song” have their moments, and “Spencer’s Corner,” has a little fun at the expense of a local rock club that briefly banned the group for wearing cowboy hats on stage.

Go figure!

Anyway, although record label suits were never sold, fan testimonials about Blackhorse’s on-stage power and charisma still survive online, even after all these years of utter anonymity, along with some very grainy footage here and here, captured not long after this album’s release, in 1980.

Unfortunately, except for a brief California sojourn in the late ‘80s during which they renamed themselves The Cause, Blackhorse never did make it too far from their Texas strongholds, and their rock ‘n’ roll adventures had all but finished by the time the ‘90s rolled around.

Luckily, the worldwide web eventually unearthed a few details (but only a few) of the Blackhorse story, led to CD and LP reissues such as this one, and the band briefly reunited for a few shows in 2008 (you can still buy T-shirts from their Facebook page) before Gary’s death in 2015. 

I’ll leave you with a description of the band in the words: “Blackhorse is a three-piece of intense power and emotion whose concert appearances have been aptly hailed by critics as ‘kick-ass.’ This debut album is their story. So ... TURN IT UP and enjoy one of the best rock & roll albums ever”

Black Stone Cherry: Black Stone Cherry (2006)

Black Stone Cherry (who were apparently named after a brand of cigarillos, see above) didn’t earn a spot in my record collection based strictly on their songs, but also because I worked this debut album as an employee of leading hard rock and metal label, Roadrunner Records.

What’s more, this is one of a mere handful of records in which both myself AND my darling wife are thanked in the credits -- she worked for B.S.C.’s management company, you see -- so how could I resist keeping a copy around?

Our kids remain completely unimpressed, by the way ...

Anyhow, turn back the clock 15 years to 2006, and I can tell you both of our companies were selling millions of records from cheesy corporate rock bands like Nickelback, Theory of a Deadman and Shinedown.

So you’d be correct if you guessed that these money-making trends (and especially the latter’s tenuous connections to southern rock) led directly to our signing of Black Stone Cherry’s precocious, barely-twenty-somethings, and their subsequent marketing with all kinds of southern rock clichés.

But let’s cut the shit: if not for their family lineage (drummer John Fred Young’s father and manager, Richard, played in The Kentucky Headhunters), their home-base in rural Edmonton, Kentucky, and calculated cosmetic ingredients like vintage denims, center-parts, and sepia imagery, these boys were packaged for mainstream rock radio.

And yet, Black Stone Cherry had done enough homework (and we helped fill in the blanks) to imprint earthy aesthetics upon modern caricatures like “Backwoods Gold,” “Lonely Train” and “Hell and High Water” -- like a third- generation xerox of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Things got even better when the histrionic grit in Chris Robertson’s vocals (he also handled lead guitar) managed to overcome the era’s Howard Benson-coiffed, aluminum-plated studio polish; just compare “Rain Wizard” and “Crosstown Woman” (good) vs. “Shooting Star” and “Violator Girl” (bad).

Hammond organ contributions from former Stevie Ray Vaughan sideman Reese Wynans on “Tired of the Rain” and “Rollin’ On” also did a world of good for the whole band (completed by rhythm guitarist Ben Wells and bassist Jon Lawhon), which really let it rip on “Maybe Someday.”

I’d say we covered a lot of bases, trying to set up these guys for success, wouldn’t you?

I left Roadrunner for RCA before Black Stone Cherry’s sophomore album, and though I kept up with them for a few years thereafter -- and I’ve ALWAYS cheered them on -- I never did love their music that much, purely as a fan.

But they were a joy to work with, so I’ll always have fond memories (and even better stories I can’t tell), about B.S.C.’s first long-player and the work hours it took to break them in a millennium with precious little memory of the southern rockers who ruled the ‘70s.

p.s. -- Two of the best songs from these sessions: “Big City Lights” and “Stop Runnin’” were inexplicably held off the LP, so I convinced my Roadrunner peeps to let me issue them as digital EPs on what was then a very young iTunes store.

Grinderswitch: Honest to Goodness (1974)

I’ve been working my way backwards through the Grinderswitch discography over the past few years, rolling through their fourth LP Redwing (1977), third LP Pullin’ Together (‘76), second LP Macon Tracks (‘75), and now their first LP Honest to Goodness (‘74), so what have I learned?

Well, I learned that founder and bassist Joe Dan Petty roadied for The Allman Brothers Band (that’s him slouching dead center behind the Fillmore East), that Grinderswitch was named for a lonesome Tennessee crossroads, and signed to Phil Walden’s Capricorn Records.

I learned that vocalist and guitarist Dru Lombar hailed from the fertile southern rock breeding grounds of Jacksonville, Florida, that second guitarist Larry Howard and drummer Rick Burnett “came up from Auburndale, FL,” and that Paul Hornsby produced their records and played keys.

And I learned that Grinderswitch stuck fast to their easy-going interpretation of southern rock -- far more indebted to country, gospel, blues, and other American roots music stylers than Skynyrd and their disciples -- throughout their run of ‘70s LPs.

Honest to Goodness, in particular, feels like pure country rock, at times, with its many, feel-good travelogues taking the listener through Memphis (“Eighty Miles to Memphis”), New Orleans (“Catch a Train”), Georgia (“Peach County Jamboree”), and other points south.

What else would you expect from a former roadie, if not stories from the road?

“Kiss the Blues Goodbye” pretty much speaks for itself (*) and once these guys lock into a groove, let me tell you, they’re like The Blues Brothers; “Can’t Keep a Good Man Down” detours into a Latin shuffle (**) and the dreamy “How the West was Won” and heartfelt “Homebound” will take you there and back, just like a two-way ticket.

But if you’re looking for an -- as the title says -- “honest to goodness” southern rocker, complete with slippery slides and noodly guitar licks for miles at the end, “Roll On Gambler” is the song for you ... and your only option here, really, but that’s OK!

Because, for all their cheery disposition and easy touch, Grinderswitch could play the dickens out of their instruments, and these songs won’t let you forget that.

So, while I’ll never love these boys’ albums as much as I do Blackfoot’s, Molly Hatchet’s or Potliquor’s (don’t forget that one-off Navasota record!), I don’t think you can get a complete view of the ‘70s southern rock sound with devoting some time to the Grinderswitch catalog -- backwards, forwards, or any way you like it. 

* Mr. Richard Betts guests on guitar.

** Mr. Jaimoe guests on congas.

Point Blank: The Hard Way (1980)

If you’re holding a copy of this album in your hands, then you’ve officially been screwed ...

Point Blank weren’t always a sorry-ass southern rock band gone AOR in a bid to survive the ‘70s’ transition into the ‘80s (hey, even Molly Hatchet did it!), and you can sample one of their first two albums -- 1976’s very solid self-titled debut and ‘77’s merely decent Second Season -- for proof.

But Arista Records dropped Point Blank’s option not long after Lynyrd Skynyrd’s airplane dropped out of the sky in October of ‘77, so these boys from Irving, Texas might have been finished, there and then, had they not been managed by powerful ZZ Top impresario, Bill Ham.

And perhaps it would have been best if they had, because switching to MCA for 1979’s self-explanatory Airplay showed exactly which way the winds were blowing, and ‘80s’ The Hard Way saw the group’s surviving Skynyrd-isms polished to an even brighter, lifeless sheen in the studio.

Well, mostly in the studio, because radio-friendly melodic rockers like “Turning Back,” “On the Run” and “Guessing Game” left a little room for three “live” cuts in the slow blues “Wrong to Cry,” the hirsute (watch the clip) “Thank You Mama,” and a ripping but chin-scratching cover of Deep Purple’s “Highway Star.”

If nothing else, the latter threesome shined a spotlight on Point Blank’s top-notch musicianship, which was always their strong suit, anyway, more so than distinct or original songwriting, but it also underscored the band’s awkward transition between decades and musical fashions.

Needless to say, Point Blank were living on borrowed time, and though they managed to buck the odds with a faceless Top 20 single called “Nicole,” from their next and fifth LP, ‘81’s American Exce$$, the following year’s On a Roll was anything but, and the band finally called it quits soon after.

Now, Point Blank is mostly remembered (when they’re remembered at all) as one of several cautionary tales (see Blackfoot, Doc Holliday, .38 Special, the aforementioned Molly Hatchet) from that spirited yet fruitless, major label marketing spree to anoint Skynyrd’s 1980s successor.

Like I said at the top, everyone involved pretty much got screwed.

Potliquor: Louisiana Rock & Roll (1972)

I can honestly say that Potliquor are probably my favorite southern rock discovery of the past decade; the even more obscure Navasota comes close, but they only produced one excellent LP to these Baton Rouge boys’ three.

1972’s Louisiana Rock & Roll was the final chapter in Potliquor’s original trilogy, and though it failed to build on the modest traction attained by its predecessor, Levee Blues, there’s so much quality material to enjoy here.

You want hooky, gutsy southern rockers with serious radio potential?

Well, look no further than first cut “You Can’t Get There from Here,” the enigmatic of name, but slick second single “H,” or the pretty much perfect title track -- how that didn’t become a hit, I’ll never know, but I can guess it had something to do with the perennially underfunded Janus Records.

Or maybe you’re in the market for some genre-straddling southern fare?

Then check out the horn-backed “Waitin’ for Me at the River,” piano-driven blues of “Taj and Jimmy’s Blues,” or horns-and-piano-adorned “St. Jude’s Blues,” which may have taught Skynyrd’s Ronnie Van Zant to throw his falsetto around.

And if all that ain’t enough, then how about a ‘50s-style bopper like “Guitar Boogie,” a fun-loving cover of the Little Richard’s “Rip it Up,” a tenebrous stomp through Albert King’s “Born Under a Bad Sign,” or a surprisingly sensitive, string-laden closing ballad in “For You”?

Bottom line, there was little that the boys in Potliquor -- George Ratzlaff (vocals, keyboards), Les Wallace (guitar), Jerry Amoroso (drums) and Guy Schaeffer (bass, replaced midway through by Leon Medica) -- couldn’t do, except score a hit!

And, after cramming those three long-players into three years, Potliquor still hadn’t succeeded in graduating popular regional attraction, so they had to face harsh reality and unfortunately broke up.

More importantly, Ratzlaff -- the band’s creative leader and de facto monster talent -- wasn’t even involved in a series of half-hearted comeback attempts throughout the ‘70s, nor a belated, semi-legitimate self-titled fourth album, released in ‘79, so I do believe my Potliquor blogging ends here ...

Oh, but one last thing: how about that lovely, lysergic gatefold cover painting, portraying the band members lounging before their moniker, spelled in magic mushrooms?

Like I told you at the onset, there are so many reasons to love Potliquor. 

Raging Slab: The Dealer (2001)

Southern rock enjoyed a brief revival in the early 1990s, thanks in large part to  The Black Crowes’ unlikely rise, but New York City’s own Raging Slab also did what they could with 1993’s absolutely marvelous Dynamite Monster Boogie Concert -- a powerhouse album that went tragically ignored.

Subsequent strife with their label, Def American, saw the band’s next album shelved indefinitely, and ‘96’s tellingly named Sing Monkey Sing was an intentionally unlistenable “fuck you record” aimed directly at label head Rick Rubin, who retaliated by exiling it to the Columbia Record Club.

Lawsuits came next, so when the group’s husband/wife team of Greg Strezmpka and Elyse Steinman retreated to their Pennsylvania farm to lick their wounds, most of us naturally assumed we’d heard the last of Raging Slab.

But, unbeknownst to fans, Greg and Elyse were merely waiting out the remainder of their contract, finally returning to action via 2001’s The Dealer, released through independent Tee Pee Records.

Alas, as I would write in the All-Music Guide, The Dealer was a brooding, bitter, often workmanlike record: overflowing with a whopping 16 tracks (they did have plenty of time to write them, after all), yet little of the inherent joy the group had once worn proudly on their tasseled sleeves.

And, lest we forget, lighthearted fun has always been as integral to southern rock as the darker stuff; could there ever have been a “Free Bird” or “Whipping Post” without a “Sweet Home Alabama” or “Flirtin’ With Disaster”? 

But I digress ... The Dealer deals in heavy drugs (“Sir Lord Ford,” “Chasin’ the Dragon”), white trash misery (“Double Wide,” “I Don’t Know You”), and too damn many middling songs (“Too Bad,” “(What I See) Through You,” etc.).

Happier moments are confined to the soulful “Real Good Time,” the mildly hopeful “That’s Alright,” and the spunky “Flap Your Boogie Flap” and “The Ballad of Truly Mae,” where Strezmpka does his best Billy Gibbons impression while the band falls in behind like ZZ Top. 

And when slide guitarist Steinman unleashes her blood-curdling croak on “Roadless Rider," the aforementioned “Chasin’ the Dragon,” and a re-booted “Good Mornin’ Lil’ Schoolboy,” you won’t know whether to duck and cover or cut and run.

Clearly, The Dealer was a pretty depressing affair, doomed to commercial failure, and yet Raging Slab encountered many smiling, grateful faces once they hit the road in U.S. clubs that summer.

Why, they may have even felt cautiously optimistic about their looming European tour, for which they were scheduled to depart New York on September 11, 2001 ... but when terrorists attacked the Twin Towers, Raging Slab’s chronic bad luck was officially elevated to “cursed” status.

So, the group decided to start working on their next album, instead, and this would show a marked musical improvement over The Dealer, even while reflecting the band’s cynical mood by being called Pronounced: Eat Shit.

p.s. -- R.I.P. Elyse Steinman, who lost her battle with cancer in 2017.