I'm thinking of a morning in 1984. I'm driving across Texas,
from Dallas to El Paso. I'm just west of Monahans on I-20 and halfway through a
gas station cup of coffee with plenty of cream and sugar. It's just after
sunup, the sky is pink, purple, and blue, and it's the kind of cold that you
only find in the desert. I couldn't be happier.
Guess what I've got on my cassette player.
Give up?
Pure Prairie League's "Live- Takin' the Stage."
Remember Pure Prairie League? Their big hit was the wonderfully organic "Amie," from their second album, "Bustin' Out." Their album covers were modeled on the cover of the "Saturday Evening Post." Remember?
Well, by 1977, when "Live--Lakin' the Stage" was released, they'd had a few lineup changes and Craig Fuller, the guy who wrote and sang "Amie," was no longer in the band. In fact, the very sound of the band had evolved into a more contemporary country-rock format. In the middle of a decade when southern rock bands did very well, Pure Prairie League managed to remain on the radar for a long time with a reputation for outstanding musicianship, great songwriting, and an unabashed willingness to demonstrate that traditional country and western unselfconscious earnestness.
And there's earnestness a-plenty on "Live- Takin' the Stage." And lots of guitar, steel guitar, piano, banjo, and dobro---all served with tight harmonies and clever lyrics. All recorded at several shows from Ithaca, New York, to St. Louis, Missouri, between May 1st and July 26th of 1977.
Songs you'd probably know? Well, there's "Amie," of course, but there's also a cover of Buddy Holly's "That'll be the Day."
The stuff you'd probably like? The other eighteen songs!
"Kansas City Southern," from their tragically underrated "Two Lane Highway" album, gets the album started with the guitars mimicking a train whistle. The audience responds with a roar of approval and the band kicks into a textbook example---and I mean that in the best possible way--- of a great country-rock song.
The band only waits until the third song to unleash "I'll Change Your Flat Tire Merle," an audience favorite. The song tells the story of a hippie finding Merle Haggard stopped on the side of the highway with a flat tire. The chorus is priceless: "I'll fix your flat tire Merle, Don't you get your sweet country pickin' fingers all covered in erl, Cause you're a honky, I know, Merle you got soul, and I'll fix your flat tire Merle." It's a sweetly funny and honest tribute.
Guitarist-Vocalist George Ed Powell's "Lucille Crawfield" and "Heart of Her Own" are pretty darn good. Pure Prairie League's music, and these songs in particular, bring wide western vistas to my mind, despite the fact that the band was actually from Columbus, Ohio.
Larry Goshorn, the Guitarist-Vocalist who replaced Craig Fuller, adds highlights in the form of the songs "Feelin' of Love," "Harvest," and the four-minutes and fourteen seconds of country-rock perfection called "Two Lane Highway." I'm pretty sure that the song playing in my desert memory is "Two Lane Highway." It's a very honest and ultimately optimistic portrayal of life lived out on the road. Aren't we all looking forward to the day we can go home?
And no discussion of "Live- Takin' the Stage" is complete without mentioning "Pickin' to Beat the Devil." It's a song about a preaching guitarist whose life is "dedicated to bringing God's children home." Describing his services, he sings: "Fourteen songs and a temperance sermon, that's what a good meal buys, for a little extra there's a guitar solo called Reward in the Sky." It's inspiring, in an old-timey way.
I first bought "Live- Takin' the Stage" in 1984. It's passed in and out of my collection a couple of times since then. Still, I always come back to it fondly, like an old friend. Before I can slip into melancholy, wondering where the time has gone, I remember that cold desert morning when I was nineteen, and I'm reminded of the glorious road that's always ahead of me.
Peace!
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