Back From The Ozone
I first saw Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen at the 1969 Berkeley Folk Festival when I was 16. An impressionable age, and I was impressed. I’d never seen anything like them, because there wasn’t anything like this wild aggregation of longhairs in cowboy shirts, who coalesced into a tight, swinging, rocking unit. You can call them country-rock because they were certainly near the cusp, but their eclectic tastes and versatility were unmatched then, as they are today.
Regrouping here 52 years since Lost in the Ozone, this mix of old favorites and songs making their debut finds Bill Kirchen and John Tichy on guitars with “Buffalo” Bruce Barlow on bass. Alternating steel duties are Bobby Black, still going strong well into his eighties, and Peter Siegel. How many musicians can you name who double on violin and sax? Andy Stein does just that. Add drummer Paul Revelli, with pianist Austin de Lone in place of the late George “Commander” Frayne, and you’ve got one helluva band.
The Airmen classic “Wine Do Yer Stuff” is suitable for two-stepping or two-staggering, while Tichy’s “I Can’t Get High” is a forlorn, gummy-dispensary follow-up to the Cody number “Seeds and Stems (Again).” Buffalo steps up to the mic for “Git It,” where doo-wop meets pedal steel (and why not?). Austin sings a 2:49 ode to the days when “singles” meant 45 rpm, and Kirchen (the King of Dieselbilly) upgrades to a 757 in “Back to Tennessee,” penned by Frayne and original Airman Billy C. Farlow. Stein swaps the Cajun fiddle of “Ain’t Nothin’ Shakin’” for honking sax on “Oh Momma Momma,” with de Lone laying down some boogie-woogie like 30 feet of concrete. Kirchen’s wild-coquette anthem “Olivette” would do Chuck Berry proud, and he, wife Louise, and Austin must’ve had a blast writing “Out of My Mind,” with lyrics like you’d think I’d be the first to see I’m blind. Before their campfire flickers out, they ti-yi-yippy “On the Cowboy Trail.”
Following their Airmen stints, the players scattered into The Moonlighters, Asleep At The Wheel, Nick Lowe & The Impossible Birds, The Black Brothers with Bobby’s brother Larry, and Prairie Home Companion. Some nabbed session work ranging from Doug Sahm to Tom Waits to Paul McCartney.
This may be a reunion, but it’s also a supergroup. Now as then, it is stellar musicians having too much fun.
– Dan Forte, 2023
I first saw Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen at the 1969 Berkeley Folk Festival when I was 16. An impressionable age, and I was impressed. I’d never seen anything like them, because there wasn’t anything like this wild aggregation of longhairs in cowboy shirts, who coalesced into a tight, swinging, rocking unit. You can call them country-rock because they were certainly near the cusp, but their eclectic tastes and versatility were unmatched then, as they are today.
Regrouping here 52 years since Lost in the Ozone, this mix of old favorites and songs making their debut finds Bill Kirchen and John Tichy on guitars with “Buffalo” Bruce Barlow on bass. Alternating steel duties are Bobby Black, still going strong well into his eighties, and Peter Siegel. How many musicians can you name who double on violin and sax? Andy Stein does just that. Add drummer Paul Revelli, with pianist Austin de Lone in place of the late George “Commander” Frayne, and you’ve got one helluva band.
The Airmen classic “Wine Do Yer Stuff” is suitable for two-stepping or two-staggering, while Tichy’s “I Can’t Get High” is a forlorn, gummy-dispensary follow-up to the Cody number “Seeds and Stems (Again).” Buffalo steps up to the mic for “Git It,” where doo-wop meets pedal steel (and why not?). Austin sings a 2:49 ode to the days when “singles” meant 45 rpm, and Kirchen (the King of Dieselbilly) upgrades to a 757 in “Back to Tennessee,” penned by Frayne and original Airman Billy C. Farlow. Stein swaps the Cajun fiddle of “Ain’t Nothin’ Shakin’” for honking sax on “Oh Momma Momma,” with de Lone laying down some boogie-woogie like 30 feet of concrete. Kirchen’s wild-coquette anthem “Olivette” would do Chuck Berry proud, and he, wife Louise, and Austin must’ve had a blast writing “Out of My Mind,” with lyrics like you’d think I’d be the first to see I’m blind. Before their campfire flickers out, they ti-yi-yippy “On the Cowboy Trail.”
Following their Airmen stints, the players scattered into The Moonlighters, Asleep At The Wheel, Nick Lowe & The Impossible Birds, The Black Brothers with Bobby’s brother Larry, and Prairie Home Companion. Some nabbed session work ranging from Doug Sahm to Tom Waits to Paul McCartney.
This may be a reunion, but it’s also a supergroup. Now as then, it is stellar musicians having too much fun.
– Dan Forte, 2023
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