The Long Ryders: The band who accidentally invented alt-country
American folk music was losing its shine when punk came around. The industrial taste of the early 1980s was marked by indie and goth gobbling up airtime and leaving rock to stunt its growth, but there were a handful of groups still making it work.
The Los Angeles grassroots Long Ryders were bringing southern cool to Paisley Underground. Their eclectic courtship of psychedelic punk with old-school country could be defined as “weirdness and energy played on country and western instruments”, which is exactly how vocalist and founding member Sid Griffin described them.
Speaking to the Guardian in 2016, Griffin reflected: “I had this idea, which I said in rehearsals: ‘Let’s take the Byrds’ guitar sound and wed it with punk energy.’ Then Steve McCarthy [joined on guitar and] brought in a huge dollop of country, which I didn’t see coming.” A sudden jolt of energy flooded their music, and although improvised, a new genre was born.
The LA Paisley Underground wasn’t quite good at fitting into any category, with its members too soft to be cowboys and too squeamish to be punks. But Griffin would have cringed to be put inside that box with the likes of “David Bowie – I despise that son of a bitch.”
Griffin told the Guardian that punk artists “were bad for rock and roll – and I’d love to see that in print, because it’s true. I think many of the new bands share that revulsion.”
Their first album served as an enticing alternative to what was on the radio, but still managed to be distinctly rock and roll. Although their most loved single, ‘Looking For Lewis and Clark’, had a cracking drum-heavy momentum and a distinct Americana flavour, their big label leap flopped and never recovered.
While speaking to NME, Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie claimed the Long Ryders’ desire to combine punk and Buffalo Springfield was too ambitious, and ended up just sounding like Buffalo Springfield. The visionary group were scorned for being far ahead of their time, anticipating the ‘90s alternative country music trend by a decade.
Signing with mainstream label Island Records brought the quartet to lose their country flavour, pushed as they were to follow the wave of college rock. The quirky cult heroes had lost their indie appeal: Jesus and Mary Chain, REM, and True West were all suddenly filling their niche, and country punk was lost in the black hole of rock that could have been.
Their spicy touch never lost its spark, and although The Long Ryders never made it big, their loyal fans carried their hopes to each of their reunion shows in the 2000s and 2010s. The band are still touring, and are turning more punk with age. One thing is certain: their howling harmonica wasn’t a shout into the void. The dent they left in rock was followed proudly by many space cowboys, the likes of Whiskeytown, Trampled by Turtles, the Jayhawks, Drive-By Truckers, and many more still to come, I’m sure.
