For the Sake of the Song: Peter Rowan “Panama Red”

Back in the late 60s and early 70s despite the adulation given to the ultimate trip, LSD, most of the hippie movement were getting high on pot (despite some draconian legal penalties if caught with the stuff). A more sociable drug, most likely easier to get a hold of and able to be smoked/inhaled or baked into brownies, it rapidly gave rise to an underground industry with “head” shops selling pot paraphernalia. The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comics saw the hirsute trio become counter culture icons.

This spilled into the music of the time of course and songs such as ‘One Toke Over The Line’ (Brewer & Shipley) ‘I Was Stoned And I Missed It’ (Dr Hook & The Medicine Show), ‘Don’t Bogart That Joint’ (originally by The Fraternity Of Man but later a Little Feat live favourite), ‘The Pope Smokes Dope’ (David Peel) and ‘Illegal Smile’ (John Prine) cocked a snoot at the illegality of it all.

One of the better efforts isn’t overtly a dope song at all as it merely shares its title with a strain of pot, namely Panama Red. Ostensibly it’s about a flash Western dandy who rides into town on his “White horse, Mescalito” and disrupts everything. And while his main pleasure seems to be in stealing the local women and bedding them, while he’s in town he’ll also “rob your head” while “Everybody’s acting lazy falling out and hangin’ ’round…nobody feels like working, Panama Red is back in town”.  The law can’t find him as he casts his merry spell on the township. You get the gist.

‘Panama Red’ was written by Peter Rowan in 1969 when he was in his second band Seatrain. According to Rowan “Seatrain felt the song was too “funky-country” for the band’s pop-classical recording direction. We did perform it in the early days. The subject was “taboo” in those days. You did jail time for pot. So that might have scared commercial interests”. The song however was eagerly taken up by Old & In The Way, the bluegrass “super group” Rowan joined with Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, Vassar Clements and John Kahn and it featured on their first album, a live effort recorded in 1973 but not released until 1975.

It fell then to another Garcia adjacent band to launch the song to the general public when The New Riders Of The Purple Sage decided to record it as the title song for their fourth album, released in October of 1973. “The Adventures Of Panama Red” is their best-selling disc and the song was given prominence not only be it being the opening track, but also by the striking cover art that features the song in comic book form. The Riders’ version flies from the start with the band cooking up a storm, the tune given an almost western swing arrangement as opposed to its bluegrass origins, with Garcia’s replacement on pedal steel, Buddy Cage, in particularly fine form. The album also features another Rowan number, ‘Lonesome LA Cowboy’, which finds its protagonist smoking dope and snorting coke from midnight to dawn, trying to write a song.

Rowan eventually recorded the song on the self-titled “Peter Rowan”, his solo debut released in 1978 (It also features another dope related song, ‘The Free Mexican Airforce Is Flying Tonight’). Talking about Panama Red to the website ‘guitarplayer.com’ Rowan mentioned the song’s roots: “‘Panama Red’ is in the key of C and goes to E, which is the same thing that happens in ‘Freight Train.’ It’s my favorite part of the song because it’s similar to Elizabeth Cotten’s ‘Freight Train,’ which was hugely influential on me when I was learning to play acoustic guitar. So it was like coming full circle to honor Libba Cotten”. Panama Red has been a staple of his Rowan’s  live performances ever since (there’s a 10 minute version on his live album “Crucial Country”) and there’s a fair argument to be made that this rooting tooting cowboy tale has aged so much better than any of its contemporaries mentioned above while Rowan, now aged 83, soldiers on with his latest album, strangely enough entitled “Tales Of The Free Mexican Airforce”.

And here’s Peter Rowan talking about the origins of the song…