Woodpile: The Byrds’ country rock

[Note from the Publisher: This dang thing has been sitting around gathering dust for about a year and a half. Cripes! Heck of a ride lately…]

Ah, the Byrds: Criminally underrated and one of my all-time faves.  Perhaps unusually, I dunno, my gateway was the country era rather than the chart-topping chiming-Rickenbacker jangle-pop era.  I still recall picking up that “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” CD from Record & Tape Traders in Towson, MD and taking it back to my summer squat up on the 3rd floor of the old DU house. Upon firing it up, I fairly quickly shut the door and thought, “Uh… This is WAY more country than I was picturing, but.. still… I think this may totally be my thing….”.  Sent me down a Gram Parsons rabbit hole and then a Clarence White one, and there I remain to this day.

Anyway, back here in modern times, I fairly recently was looking to upgrade the recording hardware and software at home, scored a MacBook refurb, began goofing around with GarageBand and thought I’d do another set of “Woodpile” songs to help me work things out.  Figured it’d also be a good opportunity to goof around on the acoustic instruments again and re-learn some things after years in the overwork wilderness….

“You Ain’t Going Nowhere” kicked off the Byrds’ Gram Parsons-driven country rock era, the lane they’d pretty much stay in up until their natural demise. This one charged out of the gates, leading off the legendary “Sweethearts of the Rodeo” from 1968.  Yet another Bob Dylan cover by the band, of course, but both parties were well into the roots by then.

“Tulsa County” is another cover, off 1969’s “Ballad of Easy Rider “.  They took songwriter Pamela Polland’s intricately picked, somewhat formal, Newport-y version and arranged it into a more stately, languid, resigned thing. Both work well, if you’re asking. Anyway, Gram Parson’s exceedingly short stay with the Byrds was done by then and the band was already deep into the Clarence White era.  Undersung hero of country guitar. Best thing yet to come out of Lewiston, ME.  King of the Telecaster and father of the pedal-steel-mimicking B-bender apparatus.  Killed by a drunk driver in LA, 1973 while loading out his gear from a bluegrass gig with his brother.  Just goddamn.

Maybe peak Clarence, and sung/ endearingly croaked by him on the record, “Truck Stop Girl” is a Little Feat cover from 1970’s “Untitled”. 

Truck Stop Girl (Untitled, 1970)

Tulsa County (Ballad of Easy Rider, 1969)

You Ain’t Going Nowhere (Sweetheart of the Rodeo, 1968)