When this tour comes to an end in a couple of weeks, Montana said the band will head into the studio to record its third LP. Also, you can expect Springsteen, Lou Reed, Neil Young and Tom Waits cover tunes. “He started getting heavy into witchcraft, black magic, and that made everybody uncomfortable.” So last January, Joey Harris, who once played with Montana’s in a band called Dick & The Snuggle Bunnies and had recorded an album titled “Joey Harris And The Speedsters,” signed on.īesides doing songs from their two LPs, the Farmers will be performing some new ones, including “Key to the World,” “God Is Here Tonight,” and “Ridin’,” Montana said. “His (Blue’s) leaving wasn’t over musical differences,” Montana said. But after recording “Van Go” late in the year, Buddy Blue was replaced. In early 1985, the band’s debut LP, “Tales Of The New West,” was released by Rhino Records to good reviews. By 1984 The Beat Farmers were opening shows for The Blasters, Los Lobos, Leon Russell, Commander Cody, Johnny Winter, The Bangles and others. So he joined forces with guitarist-singer-writer Jerry Raney, late of JR & The Shames, and bassist Rolle Rugburn and since-departed guitarist Buddy Blue, both from the Rocket Pandas. I figured there had to be a decent way to present it in a modern context.” “Ever since it started getting into this crossover stuff, its purity and honesty went out the window. “For years I thought country-western music was being butchered,” he said. They were hard-core down to their socks and underwear.”īy 1983, Montana was ready for something new. (The band took its name from the from the London R&B club where the Stones and the Yardbirds started out.) Explaining why he finally left this band, Montana said, “The Crawdaddys were extremely eccentric people, so hard-core they would make fun of you if they caught you drinking out of a post-1965 Pepsi bottle. While he was a member of the Penetrators, Montana also played in the Crawdaddys, a British Invasion-style band that released LPs in 19. The people who were involved were open-minded and upfront.” How did that square with his country upbringing? “In 1978 it was a different scene than it is now,” Montana explained. In 1977 he joined the Penetrators, and for the next five years he drummed for the new wave/punk band, which released a few records independently. What the bands in town needed, Montana said, were drummers, so he became one. But piano players were plentiful in San Diego. (The bio also claims that in 1965, Montana’s father shared a jail cell with Johnny Cash after Cash was arrested for bringing speed across the Mexicsan border, and that in the ’70s, his father did five years for mail fraud.)Īsked about musical role models, Montana said he admired Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings because “they gave me hope for my voice,” which is quite guttural the Rolling Stones’ Charlie Watts – “the best drummer there ever was” – and Nicky Hopkins, sometimes-keyboardist for the Stones.īy the time he settled in San Diego, Montana said he had been playing piano for almost 10 years. His father was road manager for country star Marty Robbins (as well as Gene Pitney and Sugarloaf, according to the bio), and from the time Montana was 3 until he was 16, he traveled with his father and the Robbins band. Despite the embellishments of his biography, Montana, who was born in Memphis, comes by his roots honestly.
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