I nominate the Continental Drifters as the First Family of roots rock. The group’s six members are all seasoned road warriors, multi-instrumentalists, and most of them capable singer-songwriters in their own right.
The band’s genesis was in the club scene of Los Angeles in the Eighties, but it actually came together in New Orleans, where Continental Drifters, the group’s debut full-length record, was recorded and released in 1994. Though on a small independent New Orleans label and of less-than-perfect production, Continental Drifters was a shot heard ’round the indie-music world.
In the wake of the critical triumph of 1999’s Vermilion and in advance of a third CD scheduled for release in spring 2001, Razor and Tie has remastered and re-released that debut CD. Continental Drifters stands as a worthy predecessor to Vermilion and, I hope, a herald of even greater things to come.
The group’s core is the singing-songwriting trio of Vicki Peterson, Susan Cowsill and Peter Holsapple. Peterson, late of the ’80s super-girl-group The Bangles, and Cowsill, of the ’60s eponymous pop group, play guitar and sing; Holsapple, a musical gadfly best known as a member of the dBs and sideman to R.E.M., plays everything with strings or keys and also sings. (Cowsill and Holsapple’s marriage of several years ended in mid-2000, but the group announced it intends to continue as a band.)
Drummer Carlo Nuccio, who has since gone on to a solo career and continued as a sought-after sessionman in New Orleans, also pens songs and sings. Bassist Mark Walton contributed the opening track, and guitarist Robert Maché (who wrote the uplifting “Heart, Home” on Vermilion) lends a great deal of character and color to the band with his distinctive playing.
This record has New Orleans plastered all over it; sweet soul grooves predominate, with layered instrumentals and heart-stopping harmonies, particularly in the Peterson-Cowsill duets. Band members wrote six of the 11 tracks on Continental Drifters. The covers are all solid, including the Brill Building pop of Goffin and King’s “I Can’t Make it Alone,” Wayne Thompson’s “Soul Deep” (recorded in the ’60s by the Box Tops), Mike Nesmith’s proto country-rock ditty “Some of Shelly’s Blues,” and Gram Parsons’ sweet, sweet “A Song For You.”
If that sounds as though the Drifters have an intimate relationship with huge sections of the American pop music canon, you’re absolutely right. Not just American music, either. They were key players at a 1999 live tribute to Sandy Denny, the B-side of their first single was Fairport Convention’s “Meet on the Ledge,” and they could probably crank out credible covers of every Beatles song known to mankind.
Walton’s “Get Over It” kicks things off in high gear, with a forceful lead vocal from Cowsill, harmonies from Holsapple, propulsive drumming from Nuccio and hot, fuzzed-out licks from Maché. Everybody takes turns at the lead vocals on the slow, soulful ballad “Highway of the Saints,” and Holsapple perfectly colors this languid road song with the B-3 organ. And folk-rock nirvana is near when Cowsill and Peterson harmonize on “Mixed Messages.”
Maché gets in some angular, bluesy fills on Nuccio’s southern-fried country-rock “Mezzanine,” and the guitar-organ interplay on “Soul Deep” is a tasty reminder of all that was great about ’60s soul music.
Things drag a bit toward the end on Nuccio’s “New York” and Cowsill’s “Desperate Love,” but it’s all redeemed by “A Song For You.” This is a short record, and the final track leaves me paradoxically satisfied but still wanting more. So go ahead, start this one over from the top. The Drifters are a pleasure that comes with no guilt at all.
(Razor and Tie 1994, reissue 2001)
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