Continental
Drifters - Drifted: In the Beginning & Beyond
Continental
Drifters - Drifted: In the Beginning & Beyond
Throughout
the 1990s and the first part of the 21st century the Continental
Drifters formed as a band in Los Angeles and later relocated to New Orleans, as
some of their members returned to their hometown. The media brief from Omnivore
Recordings that accompanies the double album set
Drifted: In The Beginning & Beyond
suggests Continental Drifters “The best Americana supergroup that you’ve
probably never really heard of, although you know several of its individual
members.” Although Omnivore gives
top billing to Vicki Peterson (The Bangles), Susan Cowsill (The Cowsills) and
Peter Holsapple, it was our guest at Riveting Riffs Magazine, bassist Mark
Walton (Dream Syndicate), Carlo Nuccio, Gary Eaton and Ray Ganucheau who founded
the group and first began playing gigs together at Raji’s in Hollywood.
Mark Walton remembers, “Carlo and I had a little tiny
house in Studio City and we had a couch and a bunch of chairs. Carlo liked to
cook gumbo and all kinds of stuff. We would sit around and drink cases of beer,
eat, be merry and play music. Everybody would just pickup guitars and sing. It
was a jamboree and that is how we did it.
Carlo and I were playing in bands around Los Angeles. I
kept hearing Carlo sing songs on the couch and I kept saying, you’re so good and
he said you should play bass with me and I said ya’ that would be fun.
We were so busy doing so many other things.
Ray had moved to town and he was working for Microsoft
in their sales office for the Los Angeles region.
We knew Gary from some other bands. We
just started off sitting around living rooms playing songs just to have fun.
We liked it so much we thought we would
go out and play in one show, just to have some fun and that was it! We liked it
so much we decided to keep it going and to have a weekly party. Hey this is fun
let’s play some more and let’s invite some more friends down. It just became
Tuesday nights at Raji’s and we had a really great time doing it.
We would play a song the night before we played at
Raji’s and then we would play it live the next day.
We didn’t arrange it. We just heard the song and we played it. It wasn’t
one person, this is my song, and here is your part. It was just a very homespun
approach to playing.”
Mark Walton talks about the evolution of the band, “To
me that early band was not just those people. Danny McGough (organ, piano) is a
very important part of that piece of time. Eventually, Peter started coming
around three months into the Raji's thing and he enjoyed it and he wanted to
play. It didn’t matter if they were Punk Rock, Alternative or mainstream,
everybody was just having a great time wanting to be a part of it.
We had a lot of auxiliary musicians who
also came in. Everybody who played with us was really part of the band and the
whole makeup of it. It was meant to be just us and our friends.
I wanted to keep it going like that, but
we also wanted a band and we wanted to make a record, so we decided the core
membership was Ray, Carlo, Gary, Peter and me originally, even though Susan
(Cowsill) and Vicki (Peterson) were singing with us nightly.
They (Susan and Vicki) were part of the
band from the early time period. Eventually, we looked at it and we said, you
(Susan and Vicki) are here every week and you are just as much of this as we
are, so we should include you in the official lineup also.
I had all of these recordings from the different
sessions and I wanted to put all of those lineups together if I could. I think
it all blends and it sounds like the same band.”
The first disc of the two album set opens with “Who We
Are, Where We Live,” written by Vicki Peterson and featuring her on lead vocals.
It is a quick moving song that bears influences of middle of the road Rock and
Americana. Peterson’s vocals are solid, but what also shines through here is the
work of the guitarists. Although the liner notes list the musicians and singers
and what songs they appears on, it is not clear who is playing guitar on “Who We
Are, Where We Live,” as five different people play guitar on this album and it
is unlikely that all five played on this tune. If there is a criticism of the
presentation of the album it would be that with so many people listed as
contributing to various tracks in different ways, that it is not always clear
who does exactly what on any given song.
“The Mississippi,” written by Carlo Nuccio and Ray
Ganucheau has a nice Southern Rock feel to it, has a lazy melody and features
some good keyboards by Peter Holsapple.
The second song on disc one, “Side Steppin’ The Fire,”
conjures up The Band, as a good comparison. The song written by Carlo Nuccio and
featuring him on lead vocals is a very, very good song and it was originally
released on the Continental Drifter’s album Nineteen Ninety-Three on Blue Nose
Records.
The longing on the part of Nuccio and Ganucheau to move
from Los Angeles back to New Orleans can be heard, Walton believes on the song
“The Mississippi,” and he says that is why the song is so strong, because of the
deep personal connection.
“They wanted to go home and we didn’t want the band to
end. We wanted and we felt the need to keep it going. Peter and Susan who were
married and were having a daughter didn’t want to raise her in Los Angeles and
they said, hey let’s move to New Orleans too. Peter and Susan wrote the song
“Drifters,” and it is a very telling story about us moving from LA to Louisiana.
I
was tired. I had a studio there and I was driving around in the traffic and just
the music that we were getting was so satisfying that I said yep I’m going too.
One by one it happened, except for Gary
who had a son from a previous marriage and he did not want to leave him behind.
He felt it was necessary and important (to stay).
We tried to fly him in to do gigs for about another year, but it just
didn’t work out.
Vicki was doing the same thing flying back and forth,
but then she just realized, I love it here (New Orleans) and I am moving too.
Eventually she moved. It was just a
magical pull and once we got there we started feeling it.
I had always heard Carlo talk about New
Orleans and the love of it. It has that magical pull.
I would still be there if it wasn’t for Hurricane Katrina destroying
everything that I owned in that storm, but that is a different story,” he says.
Due to the damage that Hurricane Katrina caused to his
home and studio Walton threw away the tapes of the band, because he assumed what
was on them was lost forever. A friend of his convinced him that he couldn’t or
at least shouldn’t do that. These were songs that nobody other than the band
members had ever heard.
“I said no these are never going to play. There is no
way. He salvaged them and kept them for years and then five years ago he gave
them back to me. I forgot about
them until the album and people said would you like to do this?
I said there is nothing. It is all destroyed. All of a sudden a lightbulb
went off in my head and I thought about those tapes. I had to find a DAT player,
which was impossible for months and months. I finally found one and they played.
I began transferring them one by one and tried to figure out what would make a
cool package.
It is a good story and it is a hard story for me to
tell. It is an emotional thing. I was still in my salvage mode from Katrina,
breaking into my house, all of my instruments and everything was destroyed. The
(recordings) were up on a high, high shelf. I had a ranch style house with eight
foot ceilings. I didn’t think that anything could survive. I didn’t think they
would ever play. It was magical to me and I was crying. I was listening and
saying listen to that, it is beautiful.
It took me a long time, but it was a labor of love to
salvage that part of my life and the Continental Drifters. 
Until the album was released nobody else knew what was
going to happen except that I was producing it.
They didn’t get a copy until two days before the release date. It is an
interesting collection of songs. It is my way of trying to put something in the
past and to bring closure and salvaging my life in a way and a storied career,”
he says.
The second disc of the two CD set includes some great
covers including a fabulous recording of “Tighter, Tighter,” originally recorded
by Alive N Kickin’ and written by Tommy James and Bob King. The song released in
1970 charted at # 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and we think if the Continental
Drifters version had been released as a single it would have surpassed the
accomplishments of Alive N Kickin’, it is that much better. The vocals kick ass,
the instrumentals are tighter (excuse the pun) and overall it is just a better
rendition.
Richard Thompson’s “You’re Gonna' Need Somebody,” is
also covered and although Thompson was British the song is covered in such a way
by Continental Drifters that Peter Holsapple’s accordion lends a bit of a Zydeco
flavor to the song. The lead vocals are reminiscent of the Traveling Wilburys
with Cowsill’s and Peterson’s lighter, poppier background vocals juxtaposed.
The Continental Drifters’ music appealed to fans in
North America, but also in Europe. Mark Walton attributes that in part to their
desire to be true to the band members’ creative instincts rather than being
content to cater to musical trends or conform to a record label’s demands, which
is why they remained as independent artists for so long.
“The cool stuff is never what we were looking at. We
weren’t trying to be something. We weren’t trying to fall into some niche that
people could relate to. This was a
warm fuzzy place that we wanted to be in and where we wanted to feel
comfortable. Susan always talked about
how we were misfit toys from that Christmas animated feature (Rudolph the Red
Nosed Reindeer). We were like the
misfit toys and we all felt we could hang out, feel comfortable and be
ourselves. I think that is a very good way of putting it,” says Walton.
The two album set
Drifted: In The Beginning by the Continental Drifters is sometimes very
polished and studio refined and at other times it is very organic with live
peformances of songs such as the Lowman Pauling / Ralph Bass song “Dedicated To
The One I Love,” originally released by The “5” Royales, The Shirelles and most
commonly associated with The Mamas & the Papas. Some of the other live
recordings include a cover of Lucinda Williams’ “Crescent City,” which pays
homage to New Orleans and the beautiful “At The End of the Day,” (written by
Sandy Denny).
The liner notes are rich with commentary from most of
the band members and a ton of photos. Vicki Peterson talks about Continental
Drifters being a refuge for her after the disbanding of The Bangles and the
death of her fiancé and Susan Cowsill humorously explains how they found out
they were now considered part of the band, “Did we miss a memo?” Is this an
important musical release? The answer is simple and unquivocally yes. The songs
are well written, the artists are good and with thirty-three songs comprising
this double album it is a steal. Fifteen of the songs have not been previoulsy
released (editor’s note: some are covers, so they have been released by other
artists).
Photos by Greg Allen, protected by copyright © All rights reserved. Top Photo: L - R back row - Carlo Nucci, Susan Cowsill, Vicki Peterson, Gary Eaton. Front Row L - R - Gary Ganucheau, Peter Holsapple, Mark Walton.