Teddy and the Rough Riders on a roll with another solid psychedelic country/bluegrass/cosmic rock/swing/honky tonk offering.
Teddy and the Rough Riders (T&RR) are Jack Quiggins (vocals and guitar) and Ryan Jennings (vocals and bass – and some keys) and assorted session men on their new album “Down Home”. The duo met as friends growing up in Nashville, spent time exploring the rock scene in the city and then delved into the traditional sounds of their home. The group has a regional popularity which has seen them win Austin’s Ameripolitan Award as the Best Honky Tonk Group 2024. And what’s more, they are one of Margo Price’s favourite bands so she offered to produce their first record label release in 2022, a warmly welcomed self-titled offering that AUK enjoyed. An earlier independent release “The Congress of Teddy and the Rough Riders” (2019), was a very competent take on country swing, honky tonk, and very Byrds’-like country rock, while Price’s turn at the helm led to a much better-produced album (even though it only took three days!) with some fine playing and side journeys into psychedelic guitar solos (Cosmic rock a la Gram Parsons) and more varied instrumentation (harmonica and horns). And they had the highly regarded Luke Schneider on steel and dobro.
So, the new album is “Down Home”, produced this time by T&RR and erstwhile musician Jake Davis; and a new group of session players are enlisted, led by the multi-instrumentalist Mike Daly, who replaced Schneider (very competently it has to be said), Eli Bishop on fiddle, Brad Davis on drums, Hank Long on keys, James Wallace and Sean Thompson on bass and guitar, and some excellent backing vocals courtesy of rising stars Emily Nenni and Erin Rae. The opener ‘Bullet’ is a very jaunty number from Jennings, seeking that special loving relationship: “At the starting line / Baby can’t you see / I want you to make a bullet outta me.” It has a nice, varied instrumental palette, kicked off by Bishop on fiddle, some great guitar contributions from Thompson and Daly, and a little Farfisa organ from Jennings in the mix.
It has to be said that T&RR do not hang around long with their songs, and although there are solos, they are not as protracted as you might expect from a band that quote as their influences Grateful Dead, New Riders of the Purple Sage, The Band and so on. No track exceeds three and a quarter minutes. This has been a pattern to their albums and suggests that they like to leave their audiences wanting more, which they probably get at the band’s live gigs. ‘Fast Livin’’is just about that and is a little like The Flying Burrito Brothers, with some great guitar duelling. There’s nothing too deep or contentious in the lyric content of these 11 tracks – songs about the anticipated end of COVID (‘Golden Light’), the love of Quiggins’ dog (‘Edna’s Song’), his difficult sleep patterns (‘Trouble Sleeping‘), and Jennings’s old fishing memories (‘Catfish Summer‘). But there’s some great playing – ‘Mountain Song’ (about a lost girl back in the day) has a fascinating electric bluegrass riff running throughout with a mandolin/fiddle break in the middle. The rather sad ‘Love after Life’ has some fine steel playing. And Quiggins’s penultimate song ‘This Bird Has Flown’ is his sad love song with a nice take on lying “So we lie to each other / Like we lie with one another / And iffin’ we get too close / Knowin’ what’ll hurt the most / Goodbye happy home / The bird has flown”. The track has an usually diferent rhythm and some nice mournful fiddle floating in the background.
This is a band that could really go places with possibly a little more variety in the tempo of the album; you should look for that in their next outing, but this is another really good album to keep you going in the meantime. And to keep your feet tapping – they must sound really great at live gigs.
