BILLY TALBOT BAND
''ON THE ROAD TO SPEARFISH''
MAY 17 2013
66:54
1. Empty Stadium /4:33
2. Runnin Around /3:04
3. Cold Wind /7:58
4. On the Road to Spearfish /12:45
5. Big Rain /8:59
6. The Herd /4:17
7. Miller Drive /9:45
8. God and Me /8:54
9. Ring the Bell /6:22
Billy Talbot Band
In 1999, Talbot put together a band of eclectic performers who he felt could do justice to the songs he’d been honing. He once again called on his “Left For Dead” Crazy Horse cohort Matt Piucci to contribute lead guitar. On their first album, “Alive in the Spirit World,” Talbot recruited a rhythm section of Jeff Chase on bass, who also provided all of the album artwork, and Stephan Junca on drums. To round out the sound, versatile musicians Erik Pearson on banjo and strings and Tommy Carns on vocals. Their forthcoming album, “On The Road To Spearfish,”includes musicians Ryan James Holzer on brass, strings, and vocals, Mark Hanley on strings, piano, and vocals, with Carns on bass and Chase again providing artwork. And the Billy Talbot Band was born.
BILLY TALBOT – vocals, electric guitar, and 6-string acoustic guitar
Band-leader, William Hammond “Billy” Talbot is an American singer-songwriter and musician, best known as a founding member of Crazy Horse. Over the years, from New York to San Francisco, Billy led up bands such as The Cavaliers, The Impalas, Danny and the Memories, The Psyrcle, and the Rockets. In 1967, Billy connected with Neil Young and was invited to be in his backing band under the new name Crazy Horse.
Talbot began performing solo in 1999 at small venues, supported by fans of Crazy Horse. In October 2004, Talbot launched his solo career with the Billy Talbot Band, releasing the album “Alive In The Spirit World.” Now, in 2013, their sophomore album is set to release this May, “On The Road To Spearfish.”
MATT PIUCCI – electric pump organ, electric guitar, and acoustic piano
Matt Piucci was a founding member of The Sidewalks, along with David and Steve Roback. The band added musician Will Glenn, changed their name to Rain Parade, and continued to play “freakish” slow, atmospheric pop. By the mid-80's the band had released an album, lost founding member David Roback, and brought John Thoman on board. Island Records signed Rain Parade, but by 1986 the band had dispersed.
Not long afterward meeting Billy Talbot in LA, Piucci appeared on the “Left For Dead” album under the Crazy Horse moniker. When Talbot established the Billy Talbot Band, he called on Piucci for lead guitar. Piucci has continued to collaborate with Rain Parade partner, Steven Roback, to work with a new band Boatclub, and has released a solo album, “Hellenes.”
STEPHAN JUNCA – drums and percussion.
By way of Philly, NYC, Boston, West Palm Beach and Albuquerque, Stephan finally landed in the San Francisco music scene in the late 90's where he soon met up with Talbot, Chase and Piucci for a series of recordings in Mendocino. This was the genesis for both the Billy Talbot Band and Boatclub.
After releasing an album with both bands, including working on Piucci’s solo material “Hellenes” and Mark Hanley’s album “Planer,” Stephan’s multi-cultural drum and hand percussion work eventually opened up many avenues for sessions and live work with Azigza, Daevid Allen & Gilli Smyth of Gong, Marcus Blake, Daniel Lanois, Sparks, Henry Rollins, Killian MacGeraghty and currently, ongoing work with legendary vocalist, Jon Anderson.
ERIK PEARSON – banjo, strings, and saxophone
Erik Pearson’s gritty and orchestral guitar style and composers touch has shaped the sounds of recordings by bands including Mushroom, University of Errors, Sonya Hunter, Alice Bierhorst, Irene Sazer, Pat Thomas, Nearly Beloved, and Billy Talbot Band. He plays banjo with old time mavericks The Crooked Jades, and accompanies internationally renowned storyteller Diane Ferlatte on banjo and guitar.
In 1996, Pearson released his own solo recording, “Water,” which incorporates many of his frequent collaborators and features his talents as a songwriter, composer and arranger. Pearson studied music composition at Oberlin Conservatory and is currently a member of the teaching faculty at the Community Music Center in San Francisco.
TOMMY CARNS – bass and vocals.
Tommy Carns was reared by folksingers on Cape Cod and weaned on a steady diet of blues, work songs, black and white spirituals from the southern U.S., ballads from the British Isles, and sea songs from New England. At the age of 19, he moved to California as part of the rock trio, The Hitchhikers. In California he divides his time between writing songs, teaching guitar, recording, learning strange and wonderful folk songs, and performing.
In addition to his solo career, Carns is a member of the Billy Talbot Band and it’s offshoot Boatclub. Carns also sings in the a capella duo, Chicken on a Raft, and had recorded film soundtracks. Carns draws inspiration from folk, Americana, country, blues, rock and pop music.
RYAN JAMES HOLZER – trombone, vocals, 12-string acoustic guitar, harmonica, and autoharp
At the age of 17, Holzer left college in Lincoln, Nebraska for the Brooklyn music scene. It was around this time that Holzer reached out to Talbot on MySpace, asking him to listen to some of his work. Listening in the wee hours of the morning, Talbot thought Holzer’s song-writing was extraordinary.
After three years in Brooklyn, Holzer returned to his parents in South Dakota, met up with Talbot on his ranch and together they wrote “Big Rain.” Talbot called on Holzer to join the Billy Talbot Band on their second album where Holzer helped write both “The Herd” and “Running Around.” Along with Ralph Molina and George Whitsell, the four musicians recorded sixteen of Holzer’s compositions and called the recording “Wolves.” Now, at age 25, Holzer is back in Brooklyn performing solo.
MARK HANLEY – guitar, slide guitar, baritone acoustic mandolin, acoustic piano, vocals, organ, and synthesizer.
As the age of 20, Mark Hanley moved from his hometown of Long Island, New York out to California to play music. He settled in the Bay Area, playing with several different artists and bands over the years including Dino Valenti, Boatclub, Yak Butter, Billy Talbot Band, and recently Rain Parade.
After moving to Oakland, CA, Hanley owned and operated Flashback Guitars, a retail musical instrument shop which also offered repairs and lessons. He is now back to recording and playing under his actual name, that being Mark Hanley. Hanley has released one solo record, “Planer,” and is currently working on his second.
JEFF CHASE – bass, guitar, and album illustrations
Jeffrey Chase is an artist and musician living in Pennsylvania, with the moniker Scrapking™. Chase has provided multimedia, graphic design and illustration to a wide range of clients and continues to exhibit his paintings, drawings and relief prints regionally. Chase counts his years working with at-risk youth in Delaware as the most formative time for both his development as an artist and in gaining an understanding of the critical impact of the arts in education.
After befriending Talbot, Chase joined in on the first album, “Alive In The Spirit World,” playing bass and subsequently produced the album artwork as well. While admiring Talbot’s deep musical roots, Chase especially enjoys the opportunity to create an aesthetic around the musical works themselves, again providing the album artwork for “On The Road To Spearfish.” Chase is currently working on several short animated films and works as an Art Director at the University of Delaware.
BIOGRAPHY
Billy Talbot is best known as a founding member of Crazy Horse, perhaps the most famous backing band in the world. Throughout his decades touring and recording with Neil Young—and prior to it, in a series of bands—Talbot has always written and played his own music. In the early ’00s, he formed the Billy Talbot Band. Around the same time, he met his wife Karin. With her, he found new and profound inspiration and peace in the wide open spaces of the North American prairie. Those feelings only grew as he began helping her to restore a homestead in Spearfish, South Dakota that had been hers for some time.
On The Road To Spearfish (Vapor Records), his second solo album with the Billy Talbot Band, evokes a journey that is at once of this world and mythic. The one-story schoolhouse at his home, now converted into a music room and guest quarters, is on the cover. Inside, painting pictures and telling stories with poetic flair and a sense of wonder, Talbot translates the strength and beauty of the elemental Great Plains landscape into songs that transcend any specific geography. Rather, they inhabit the realms of the heart and soul. The spirit of what Talbot has helped create with Neil Young and Crazy Horse over many years also flows through the record—on a more personal scale, channeled through Talbot’s meditations on the world of Spearfish and beyond.
“Songwriting is part of my life, it’s how I get through things,” says Talbot. “We all have stumbling blocks, some are more importantthan others. When I’m in the throes of a big one, I get depressed, or mad, or go through changes, and I forget there’s going to be a song that will come out of it. Eventually, when I get the song out, I feel better. It’s a kind of release that helps me find peace with the stumbling block, sums it up in some way—or maybe not. Sometimes I just get a good song out of it and feel better anyway.”
The title track is Talbot’s epic anthem to the open plain, clocking in at close to 13 minutes in the middle of the set list. Spacious and awash in guitar interplay, it’s the most akin to a Crazy Horse jam on the album. The song came to Talbot after watching the first episode of the HBO western Deadwood, in which a family of Squareheads—a slur for Swedish immigrants—was massacred. The tragedy happened “on the road to Spearfish,” which is just 15 miles from the actual town of Deadwood, and about 70 miles from where Talbot’s wife Karin—who is of Swedish descent—is from (and, incidentally, only an hour north of the monumental Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills). The song mourns the West that once was, while still seeking solace in what will never fade away.
“On The Road To Spearfish” is bookended by songs that are each almost ten minutes in length, “Cold Wind” and “Big Rain.” They are mesmerizing, atmospheric soundscapes, with arcs that are cinematic in feel. At times, Talbot’s lead vocals are so hushed as to be barely there, but they are charged with emotion and stand up to the vast expanse of each song. “Cold Wind,” says Talbot, came out of a visit to Hettinger, ND, where Karin grew up. “After the first time I visited,” he says, “I left that town, which on the surface was so bucolic, knowing that there was much more than that going on.”
The album opens with “Empty Stadium,” a plaintive ballad driven by a longing for home—the real and metaphorical Spearfish. That yearning is felt throughout the set list in songs that that juxtapose despair and redemption, range from somber to psychedelic, and that span the distances in between. “Miller Drive,” perhaps the darkest track, is otherwise notable in that it came into existence out of total improvisation—and is the one song on which every band member is credited as a writer. “We were tuning, and I was playing a Strat through an old Fender Tremelux,” says Talbot. “We just got this rhythm going. It was a great groove.”
It concludes with a pair of songs that face the light. Talbot wrote the ethereal “God And Me” in 2003 while on the road for Neil Young’s Greendale tour. Actor Russ Tamblyn was in the cast, and at the time, his daughter Amber was in the new TV series Joan of Arcadia, which was considering using Joan Osborne’s “One of Us” as its theme. Talbot came up with “God And Me” as a possible alternative. Here, it becomes a gorgeous communal hymn with the entire band on backing vocals. Closing the album, and pulsating with an E Street Band vibe, “Ring The Bell” is a soulful jam layered with horns that Talbot says was inspired by Obama’s first presidential win, as well as a particularly beautiful spot on a hill near Spearfish known as “the gates of desire.”
The road that led Talbot to Spearfish began a continent away in the lower west side of Manhattan where he was born in St. Vincent’s Hospital. He started his first vocal group at age 14. The Cavaliers sang on street corners and in the hallways of the old Hudson Tubes, which now house the PATH Trains connecting New York City and Hoboken. Two weeks into attending the city’s High School of Commerce, he began getting off the subway at 42nd Street and going to the movies instead. Talbot moved to West New York, New Jersey at age 15, and began freshman year all over again. “In New Jersey, it was totally like high school should be,” he says. “Cars, girls in pedal pushers, nobody out to knife you.”
In West New York, he formed another group, The Impalas. When “Sorry I (I Ran All The Way Home)” became a hit on Cub Records, by the other Impalas, they gave up. Talbot quit high school as a sophomore, and at 17 hopped a bus to L.A., where his mother—a nightclub singer—and brother had moved two years earlier. In late ’62, he met Danny Whitten at the Sunset Strip club Peppermint West. They began singing doo wop as Danny and the Memories, with Benjamin Rocco and Lou Bisbal in the line-up, and sometimes Pat and Lolly Vegas, who would later become Redbone. Lou left the group, and brought his cousin Ralph Molina out from Florida as his replacement—the core of what would become the original Crazy Horse was in place.
Talbot and company started playing instruments, headed to San Francisco, and morphed into The Psyrcle. After returning to L.A., the outfit evolved into The Rockets. They emerged as a top band around town and made one album for White Whale Records. In 1967, they connected with Neil Young, then in Buffalo Springfield, and started to jam with him. Young sat in on a couple of Rockets gigs at The Whisky, and soon after, he invited Talbot, Whitten and Molina to be his backing band—under the new name Crazy Horse—on his second solo album, 1969’s Everybody Knows This is Nowhere. From the opening riff of “Cinnamon Girl” to the closing strains of “Cowgirl In the Sand,” Young’s alliance with Crazy Horse was forged—one song on the album is notably titled “Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets).” After The Gold Rush followed in 1970.
“The chemistry was really great, however those things happen,” says Talbot. “The Rockets were a jam band—someone would play two chords and we’d soar on that for hours. As we became Crazy Horse, Ralph, Danny and I were still always a group, not studio musicians. That’s what we were able to bring to Neil. And then, on tour, that’s where we really developed a following. There seemed to be more to it than just playing rock and roll—there was a spiritual presence and connection with the audience. I feel like everyone always comes away from the shows with something that’s just a little bit more.”
Whitten passed away in 1971. Talbot met Frank “Poncho” Sampedro at a friend’s house in 1973, and took a trip to Mexico with him. They bought guitars, and jammed in their hotel rooms. Back in L.A., they hung out with Molina. “Ralph and I said, man, we should get this guy in the band,” remembers Talbot. “Soon after that, we got a call from Neil, who wanted us to come to Chicago to record on a session with him at Chess Records. I told Neil that I wanted to bring this other fellow Poncho with us, and he said okay.” Sampedro subsequently joined Crazy Horse in 1974. Talbot, Molina and Sampedro have been central to every incarnation of the group since, both on its own, and backing up Young—with the latter, on many epic tours and almost two dozen albums also including Zuma, Rust Never Sleeps, Ragged Glory, the live albums Arc and Weld, and Americana. Most recently, Crazy Horse recorded 2012’s Psychedelic Pill with Young, and embarked on a 2012-2013 world tour.
Talbot launched his solo career with the Billy Talbot Band with the 2004 album Alive In The Spirit World, recorded in a barn on a ranch in Mendocino County over the course of a week. With the addition of newcomer Ryan James Holzer on trombone, harmonica, autoharp, organ, and acoustic guitar, the same versatile band of musicians joins Talbot for OnThe Road To Spearfish. They include guitarist Matt Piucci (formerly of Rain Parade and Moving Sidewalks), Erik Pearson (horns, banjo, lap steel), Mark Hanley (lap steel, mandolin, and guitar), Tommy Carns (bass), and Stephan Junca on drums. Using vintage gear and an eclectic orchestra of acoustic and electric instruments, the new album was recorded at Light Rail Studios in a repurposed warehouse in the Potrero Hill district of San Francisco. The filmed chronicling of the sessions—shot in HD—will be released simultaneously with the album.
Reflecting on his journey as a songwriter and performer, Talbot says he’s looking to put forth a truer expression of himself. He cites Warren Zevon’s final album, The Wind (2003), as a touchpoint in this quest. “I’m trying to really listen to the way I’m singing, to understand it more. When I first heard Warren’s last record, the starkness and the raw emotion, I really felt that and got into it. It inspired me,” he says. “That quality, that is what I’m going for.”
DoWnLoAd
''ON THE ROAD TO SPEARFISH''
MAY 17 2013
66:54
1. Empty Stadium /4:33
2. Runnin Around /3:04
3. Cold Wind /7:58
4. On the Road to Spearfish /12:45
5. Big Rain /8:59
6. The Herd /4:17
7. Miller Drive /9:45
8. God and Me /8:54
9. Ring the Bell /6:22
Billy Talbot Band
In 1999, Talbot put together a band of eclectic performers who he felt could do justice to the songs he’d been honing. He once again called on his “Left For Dead” Crazy Horse cohort Matt Piucci to contribute lead guitar. On their first album, “Alive in the Spirit World,” Talbot recruited a rhythm section of Jeff Chase on bass, who also provided all of the album artwork, and Stephan Junca on drums. To round out the sound, versatile musicians Erik Pearson on banjo and strings and Tommy Carns on vocals. Their forthcoming album, “On The Road To Spearfish,”includes musicians Ryan James Holzer on brass, strings, and vocals, Mark Hanley on strings, piano, and vocals, with Carns on bass and Chase again providing artwork. And the Billy Talbot Band was born.
BILLY TALBOT – vocals, electric guitar, and 6-string acoustic guitar
Band-leader, William Hammond “Billy” Talbot is an American singer-songwriter and musician, best known as a founding member of Crazy Horse. Over the years, from New York to San Francisco, Billy led up bands such as The Cavaliers, The Impalas, Danny and the Memories, The Psyrcle, and the Rockets. In 1967, Billy connected with Neil Young and was invited to be in his backing band under the new name Crazy Horse.
Talbot began performing solo in 1999 at small venues, supported by fans of Crazy Horse. In October 2004, Talbot launched his solo career with the Billy Talbot Band, releasing the album “Alive In The Spirit World.” Now, in 2013, their sophomore album is set to release this May, “On The Road To Spearfish.”
MATT PIUCCI – electric pump organ, electric guitar, and acoustic piano
Matt Piucci was a founding member of The Sidewalks, along with David and Steve Roback. The band added musician Will Glenn, changed their name to Rain Parade, and continued to play “freakish” slow, atmospheric pop. By the mid-80's the band had released an album, lost founding member David Roback, and brought John Thoman on board. Island Records signed Rain Parade, but by 1986 the band had dispersed.
Not long afterward meeting Billy Talbot in LA, Piucci appeared on the “Left For Dead” album under the Crazy Horse moniker. When Talbot established the Billy Talbot Band, he called on Piucci for lead guitar. Piucci has continued to collaborate with Rain Parade partner, Steven Roback, to work with a new band Boatclub, and has released a solo album, “Hellenes.”
STEPHAN JUNCA – drums and percussion.
By way of Philly, NYC, Boston, West Palm Beach and Albuquerque, Stephan finally landed in the San Francisco music scene in the late 90's where he soon met up with Talbot, Chase and Piucci for a series of recordings in Mendocino. This was the genesis for both the Billy Talbot Band and Boatclub.
After releasing an album with both bands, including working on Piucci’s solo material “Hellenes” and Mark Hanley’s album “Planer,” Stephan’s multi-cultural drum and hand percussion work eventually opened up many avenues for sessions and live work with Azigza, Daevid Allen & Gilli Smyth of Gong, Marcus Blake, Daniel Lanois, Sparks, Henry Rollins, Killian MacGeraghty and currently, ongoing work with legendary vocalist, Jon Anderson.
ERIK PEARSON – banjo, strings, and saxophone
Erik Pearson’s gritty and orchestral guitar style and composers touch has shaped the sounds of recordings by bands including Mushroom, University of Errors, Sonya Hunter, Alice Bierhorst, Irene Sazer, Pat Thomas, Nearly Beloved, and Billy Talbot Band. He plays banjo with old time mavericks The Crooked Jades, and accompanies internationally renowned storyteller Diane Ferlatte on banjo and guitar.
In 1996, Pearson released his own solo recording, “Water,” which incorporates many of his frequent collaborators and features his talents as a songwriter, composer and arranger. Pearson studied music composition at Oberlin Conservatory and is currently a member of the teaching faculty at the Community Music Center in San Francisco.
TOMMY CARNS – bass and vocals.
Tommy Carns was reared by folksingers on Cape Cod and weaned on a steady diet of blues, work songs, black and white spirituals from the southern U.S., ballads from the British Isles, and sea songs from New England. At the age of 19, he moved to California as part of the rock trio, The Hitchhikers. In California he divides his time between writing songs, teaching guitar, recording, learning strange and wonderful folk songs, and performing.
In addition to his solo career, Carns is a member of the Billy Talbot Band and it’s offshoot Boatclub. Carns also sings in the a capella duo, Chicken on a Raft, and had recorded film soundtracks. Carns draws inspiration from folk, Americana, country, blues, rock and pop music.
RYAN JAMES HOLZER – trombone, vocals, 12-string acoustic guitar, harmonica, and autoharp
At the age of 17, Holzer left college in Lincoln, Nebraska for the Brooklyn music scene. It was around this time that Holzer reached out to Talbot on MySpace, asking him to listen to some of his work. Listening in the wee hours of the morning, Talbot thought Holzer’s song-writing was extraordinary.
After three years in Brooklyn, Holzer returned to his parents in South Dakota, met up with Talbot on his ranch and together they wrote “Big Rain.” Talbot called on Holzer to join the Billy Talbot Band on their second album where Holzer helped write both “The Herd” and “Running Around.” Along with Ralph Molina and George Whitsell, the four musicians recorded sixteen of Holzer’s compositions and called the recording “Wolves.” Now, at age 25, Holzer is back in Brooklyn performing solo.
MARK HANLEY – guitar, slide guitar, baritone acoustic mandolin, acoustic piano, vocals, organ, and synthesizer.
As the age of 20, Mark Hanley moved from his hometown of Long Island, New York out to California to play music. He settled in the Bay Area, playing with several different artists and bands over the years including Dino Valenti, Boatclub, Yak Butter, Billy Talbot Band, and recently Rain Parade.
After moving to Oakland, CA, Hanley owned and operated Flashback Guitars, a retail musical instrument shop which also offered repairs and lessons. He is now back to recording and playing under his actual name, that being Mark Hanley. Hanley has released one solo record, “Planer,” and is currently working on his second.
JEFF CHASE – bass, guitar, and album illustrations
Jeffrey Chase is an artist and musician living in Pennsylvania, with the moniker Scrapking™. Chase has provided multimedia, graphic design and illustration to a wide range of clients and continues to exhibit his paintings, drawings and relief prints regionally. Chase counts his years working with at-risk youth in Delaware as the most formative time for both his development as an artist and in gaining an understanding of the critical impact of the arts in education.
After befriending Talbot, Chase joined in on the first album, “Alive In The Spirit World,” playing bass and subsequently produced the album artwork as well. While admiring Talbot’s deep musical roots, Chase especially enjoys the opportunity to create an aesthetic around the musical works themselves, again providing the album artwork for “On The Road To Spearfish.” Chase is currently working on several short animated films and works as an Art Director at the University of Delaware.
BIOGRAPHY
Billy Talbot is best known as a founding member of Crazy Horse, perhaps the most famous backing band in the world. Throughout his decades touring and recording with Neil Young—and prior to it, in a series of bands—Talbot has always written and played his own music. In the early ’00s, he formed the Billy Talbot Band. Around the same time, he met his wife Karin. With her, he found new and profound inspiration and peace in the wide open spaces of the North American prairie. Those feelings only grew as he began helping her to restore a homestead in Spearfish, South Dakota that had been hers for some time.
On The Road To Spearfish (Vapor Records), his second solo album with the Billy Talbot Band, evokes a journey that is at once of this world and mythic. The one-story schoolhouse at his home, now converted into a music room and guest quarters, is on the cover. Inside, painting pictures and telling stories with poetic flair and a sense of wonder, Talbot translates the strength and beauty of the elemental Great Plains landscape into songs that transcend any specific geography. Rather, they inhabit the realms of the heart and soul. The spirit of what Talbot has helped create with Neil Young and Crazy Horse over many years also flows through the record—on a more personal scale, channeled through Talbot’s meditations on the world of Spearfish and beyond.
“Songwriting is part of my life, it’s how I get through things,” says Talbot. “We all have stumbling blocks, some are more importantthan others. When I’m in the throes of a big one, I get depressed, or mad, or go through changes, and I forget there’s going to be a song that will come out of it. Eventually, when I get the song out, I feel better. It’s a kind of release that helps me find peace with the stumbling block, sums it up in some way—or maybe not. Sometimes I just get a good song out of it and feel better anyway.”
The title track is Talbot’s epic anthem to the open plain, clocking in at close to 13 minutes in the middle of the set list. Spacious and awash in guitar interplay, it’s the most akin to a Crazy Horse jam on the album. The song came to Talbot after watching the first episode of the HBO western Deadwood, in which a family of Squareheads—a slur for Swedish immigrants—was massacred. The tragedy happened “on the road to Spearfish,” which is just 15 miles from the actual town of Deadwood, and about 70 miles from where Talbot’s wife Karin—who is of Swedish descent—is from (and, incidentally, only an hour north of the monumental Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills). The song mourns the West that once was, while still seeking solace in what will never fade away.
“On The Road To Spearfish” is bookended by songs that are each almost ten minutes in length, “Cold Wind” and “Big Rain.” They are mesmerizing, atmospheric soundscapes, with arcs that are cinematic in feel. At times, Talbot’s lead vocals are so hushed as to be barely there, but they are charged with emotion and stand up to the vast expanse of each song. “Cold Wind,” says Talbot, came out of a visit to Hettinger, ND, where Karin grew up. “After the first time I visited,” he says, “I left that town, which on the surface was so bucolic, knowing that there was much more than that going on.”
The album opens with “Empty Stadium,” a plaintive ballad driven by a longing for home—the real and metaphorical Spearfish. That yearning is felt throughout the set list in songs that that juxtapose despair and redemption, range from somber to psychedelic, and that span the distances in between. “Miller Drive,” perhaps the darkest track, is otherwise notable in that it came into existence out of total improvisation—and is the one song on which every band member is credited as a writer. “We were tuning, and I was playing a Strat through an old Fender Tremelux,” says Talbot. “We just got this rhythm going. It was a great groove.”
It concludes with a pair of songs that face the light. Talbot wrote the ethereal “God And Me” in 2003 while on the road for Neil Young’s Greendale tour. Actor Russ Tamblyn was in the cast, and at the time, his daughter Amber was in the new TV series Joan of Arcadia, which was considering using Joan Osborne’s “One of Us” as its theme. Talbot came up with “God And Me” as a possible alternative. Here, it becomes a gorgeous communal hymn with the entire band on backing vocals. Closing the album, and pulsating with an E Street Band vibe, “Ring The Bell” is a soulful jam layered with horns that Talbot says was inspired by Obama’s first presidential win, as well as a particularly beautiful spot on a hill near Spearfish known as “the gates of desire.”
The road that led Talbot to Spearfish began a continent away in the lower west side of Manhattan where he was born in St. Vincent’s Hospital. He started his first vocal group at age 14. The Cavaliers sang on street corners and in the hallways of the old Hudson Tubes, which now house the PATH Trains connecting New York City and Hoboken. Two weeks into attending the city’s High School of Commerce, he began getting off the subway at 42nd Street and going to the movies instead. Talbot moved to West New York, New Jersey at age 15, and began freshman year all over again. “In New Jersey, it was totally like high school should be,” he says. “Cars, girls in pedal pushers, nobody out to knife you.”
In West New York, he formed another group, The Impalas. When “Sorry I (I Ran All The Way Home)” became a hit on Cub Records, by the other Impalas, they gave up. Talbot quit high school as a sophomore, and at 17 hopped a bus to L.A., where his mother—a nightclub singer—and brother had moved two years earlier. In late ’62, he met Danny Whitten at the Sunset Strip club Peppermint West. They began singing doo wop as Danny and the Memories, with Benjamin Rocco and Lou Bisbal in the line-up, and sometimes Pat and Lolly Vegas, who would later become Redbone. Lou left the group, and brought his cousin Ralph Molina out from Florida as his replacement—the core of what would become the original Crazy Horse was in place.
Talbot and company started playing instruments, headed to San Francisco, and morphed into The Psyrcle. After returning to L.A., the outfit evolved into The Rockets. They emerged as a top band around town and made one album for White Whale Records. In 1967, they connected with Neil Young, then in Buffalo Springfield, and started to jam with him. Young sat in on a couple of Rockets gigs at The Whisky, and soon after, he invited Talbot, Whitten and Molina to be his backing band—under the new name Crazy Horse—on his second solo album, 1969’s Everybody Knows This is Nowhere. From the opening riff of “Cinnamon Girl” to the closing strains of “Cowgirl In the Sand,” Young’s alliance with Crazy Horse was forged—one song on the album is notably titled “Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets).” After The Gold Rush followed in 1970.
“The chemistry was really great, however those things happen,” says Talbot. “The Rockets were a jam band—someone would play two chords and we’d soar on that for hours. As we became Crazy Horse, Ralph, Danny and I were still always a group, not studio musicians. That’s what we were able to bring to Neil. And then, on tour, that’s where we really developed a following. There seemed to be more to it than just playing rock and roll—there was a spiritual presence and connection with the audience. I feel like everyone always comes away from the shows with something that’s just a little bit more.”
Whitten passed away in 1971. Talbot met Frank “Poncho” Sampedro at a friend’s house in 1973, and took a trip to Mexico with him. They bought guitars, and jammed in their hotel rooms. Back in L.A., they hung out with Molina. “Ralph and I said, man, we should get this guy in the band,” remembers Talbot. “Soon after that, we got a call from Neil, who wanted us to come to Chicago to record on a session with him at Chess Records. I told Neil that I wanted to bring this other fellow Poncho with us, and he said okay.” Sampedro subsequently joined Crazy Horse in 1974. Talbot, Molina and Sampedro have been central to every incarnation of the group since, both on its own, and backing up Young—with the latter, on many epic tours and almost two dozen albums also including Zuma, Rust Never Sleeps, Ragged Glory, the live albums Arc and Weld, and Americana. Most recently, Crazy Horse recorded 2012’s Psychedelic Pill with Young, and embarked on a 2012-2013 world tour.
Talbot launched his solo career with the Billy Talbot Band with the 2004 album Alive In The Spirit World, recorded in a barn on a ranch in Mendocino County over the course of a week. With the addition of newcomer Ryan James Holzer on trombone, harmonica, autoharp, organ, and acoustic guitar, the same versatile band of musicians joins Talbot for OnThe Road To Spearfish. They include guitarist Matt Piucci (formerly of Rain Parade and Moving Sidewalks), Erik Pearson (horns, banjo, lap steel), Mark Hanley (lap steel, mandolin, and guitar), Tommy Carns (bass), and Stephan Junca on drums. Using vintage gear and an eclectic orchestra of acoustic and electric instruments, the new album was recorded at Light Rail Studios in a repurposed warehouse in the Potrero Hill district of San Francisco. The filmed chronicling of the sessions—shot in HD—will be released simultaneously with the album.
Reflecting on his journey as a songwriter and performer, Talbot says he’s looking to put forth a truer expression of himself. He cites Warren Zevon’s final album, The Wind (2003), as a touchpoint in this quest. “I’m trying to really listen to the way I’m singing, to understand it more. When I first heard Warren’s last record, the starkness and the raw emotion, I really felt that and got into it. It inspired me,” he says. “That quality, that is what I’m going for.”
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