Music Interview: The Long Ryders

US band The Long Ryders could lay claim to founding the Americana/alt-country movement when they formed in L.A. in the early ‘80s.

The rock ‘n’ roll and Paisley Underground outfit split up in 1987 but got back together several times in the Noughties and in 2019 released their first album in 32 years – Psychedelic Country Soul.

Its follow-up, September November, is out now and it’s a much more varied record than its predecessor, with a pounding, sociopolitical guitar-fuelled anthem  (‘Elmer Gantry Is Alive And Well’), haunting and stirring, ‘Desire’-era Bob Dylan folk-rock (‘September November Sometime’), the Gene Clark-like ‘Seasons Change’, cowboy country  (‘Hand of Fate’), Byrdsy and Beatlesesque psych-rock, (‘Flying Out Of London In The Rain’) and a McCartney-style ‘granny song’ (‘That’s What They Say About Love’).

Sadly, the group’s bass player, Tom Stevens, died in 2021 – there’s a tribute to him on the new album, the poignant, mandolin-laced ballad, ‘Tom Tom.’

London-based frontman, Sid Griffin, who, along with his current bandmates, Stephen McCarthy and Greg Sowders, is one of the three founding members, says of September November: “It’s two thirds the distilled alt-country genre we helped found back in the 1980s, one third Paisley Underground adventurism yet seasoned with a dash of our own crazed soulfulness thrown in.” 

hi-fi+ got him on the phone to find out more.

SH: September November is your first album in four years.

SG: I believe so.

The last one, Psychedelic Country Soul, was your first record since 1987, so you’re on a roll now…

Yeah – that’s true.

You’ve worked with producer Ed Stasium again. Why did you choose him?

Ed is the fifth Long Ryder, but now that Tom Stevens is deceased, he’s the fourth. When you go to his house, he has gold and platinum records on the wall for Living Colour, Soul Asylum, The Smithereens, The Jeff Healey Band…

And he worked with The Ramones…

Yes – they’re his biggest claim to fame. I don’t know why I forgot them! In the mid-‘7os, he started working with Phil Spector for 10 or 15 years. He was his main engineer – he took the place of the legendary Larry Levine, who worked with Spector in his 1960s glory days. Ed really knows his stuff, plus he has the same musical and cultural references that The Long Ryders do. Sometimes if you’re talking to a producer who has different musical tastes or a different background, what can happen is that you say to the guy, ‘I want it to sound like such and such a record’, and he doesn’t know it… That’s not a problem with Ed – he completely understands what we’re talking about. It’s a big relief and we’re very much at home working with him. 

You made the record at his Kozy Tone Ranch studio in California…

Yeah – it’s his home studio and it’s a really nice place. It just worked out really well – I don’t know what else you can say about it. We demoed the songs back and forth and we recorded the album in July last year. We learned the songs before we got there, so we didn’t waste any time. 

I got there really early on the first day. I thought the traffic would be bad travelling from Los Angeles, where I had stayed for a few days to visit people. I used to live in L.A. in the ‘80s. Ed wasn’t ready – he was in the shower – and his family were there. It was embarrassing. That afternoon we just mainly hung out and talked, getting to know each other again. Then we had a big jam session in the living room, with Ed on Hammond organ – that was a lot of fun. 

The next morning, we reconvened about 11 and started working – it’s the way to go. It was a bit like The Basement Tapes with Dylan – we were in someone’s home and you’re literally set up in his living room and parts of his house, like the den and the kitchen, for whatever sound it is.

After the sessions, if Ed doesn’t have anything else on for a few weeks, he tears all the stuff down and puts it in the closet, which must be a total pain in the butt. 

We’ve recorded in big-name, formal studios, like A & M in Hollywood and Chipping Norton in Britain, which I think is now a condominium, but now we’ve recorded in someone’s home with the same equipment lying around… There’s something about recording in a home that’s easier, warmer and better.

You mentioned Tom Stevens, your bass player, who died in 2021. How was it making the new album without him? Did you ever think that the band wouldn’t carry on after his death?

Yes – we were trying to figure out if we wanted to do it anymore. The guy had been our bass player since Christmas Eve 1983. Some bands lose a member and that’s it, but some crack on, like The Stones, who still have two of the original guys. There was something weird about it and we did have a long look in the mirror, but it just made sense to go on – everybody said we should keep going. I think we’ve made a really terrific record, partly inspired by the loss of Tom Stevens and wanting to honour his memory and not drop the ball. I argued for doing it and I told the guys that if we made a mediocre record we could either put the best songs out as an EP, or if we didn’t have any good songs, we could just skip it. We didn’t have to make a record – there was no gun to our head. Now that we’ve got Cherry Red Records behind us in the way in which they are, I’m pleased that we cracked on. It’s a really good record – everyone likes it.

What’s the band’s songwriting process like?

If I can’t finish a song, I give it to Stephen or he’ll give it to me – we don’t sit down and write together much anymore because he lives in the United States and I live in London. He might have half or three quarters of a song and he’ll ask me to finish it. He polishes some of mine and I polish some of his. If your name’s first [on the credits] it’s more or less your song.

Was the first single from the album, ‘September November Sometime’, a co-write?

I did the lion’s share of it and then Stephen took over. 

I love the lyric from it, ‘Calling out across the world, are you ready for a brand new tweet?’ It’s a twist on a line from ‘Dancing In The Street’ by Martha and the Vandellas, isn’t it?

It’s amazing how many people don’t get that. A lot of my songs have a pun based on a line from a previous rock song. You got that because you have a certain depth of knowledge about music. 

‘September November Sometime’ mentions social media and ‘Elmer Gantry Is Alive And Well’ is the album’s most political song…

‘Elmer Gantry…’ is mostly Stephen’s song. I just dotted some i’s and crossed some t’s.

It reminds me of ‘I’m Waiting For The Man’ by the Velvet Underground…

I thought that too.

And there’s a bit of vintage Long Ryders in there, some ‘60s electric Dylan and some mid to late ‘80s R.E.M, who were contemporaries of yours…

It’s funny – we’re probably the only band of our era who didn’t play with R.E.M. 

That’s surprising.

We were never on the same bill as them, but I saw them a bunch of times and I know Stipe and Buck. They’re the most social people on Earth – everyone knows them. I’m quite a fan of R.E.M and they are something of an influence. Their last album, Collapse Into Now, was terrific. It’s kind of odd when a band your age – or younger – is an influence, but you’ve got to open your ears and not have prejudices against things.

I love ‘Seasons Change’ on the new record – it has that classic Paisley Underground feel and it’s like The Byrds and Gene Clark…

It’s one of Stephen’s. We voted on which songs go on the album – I don’t think there was a vote against ‘Seasons Change.’ Everyone agreed it was just a great song and we had to put it on the record. It vaguely sounds like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. 

I think ‘Hand of Fate’ sounds like a Marty Robbins gunfighter ballad…

That’s a Stephen song and he’d be very flattered by that. We’re big Marty Robbins guys – we love his music.

This album is like a mini Exile On Main St. – we’ve got rock ‘n’ roll and we wanted to do some acoustic, stripped-down things, with Stephen and I, and Greg on a snare with brushes. We’ve never had time to do some lighter things before. 

The new album is more varied than Psychedelic Country Soul…

That was on purpose – we’ve done what we’ve done, people like it or they don’t. We’ll always have the ‘Looking For Lewis and Clark’ or ‘Elmer Gantry’-style pounding songs, but we wanted to expand the net.

‘That’s What They Say About Love’ is an uncynical, old-fashioned country song, but it almost feels like a show tune, or ‘When I’m 64’ by The Beatles…

Bingo! You hit it. Why are The Beatles more popular than The Rolling Stones? It’s Paul McCartney – or what the American record industry calls ‘the grandma effect’. At the end of the day, there are very few Stones songs that housewives or grandmothers like. The Beatles had ‘Your Mother Should Know’, ‘When I’m 64’, ‘Michelle’ and ‘Yesterday’ – grandmothers bought some Beatles songs. I thought, ‘why don’t we have any grandmother songs?’ There are three guys in the band who are still alive and kicking and each one’s happily married, so why don’t we have more songs about romance, love and devotion? The main subject matter of popular music is romance, so here we go – we’re dipping our toes into the water. I love the song – I’m very proud of it. 

The song ‘Tom Tom’, which is a tribute to Tom Stevens, is really touching. I like the lines ‘Tom Tom – the bottom end is gone… Tom Tom he was the quiet one.’

Greg, our drummer, who isn’t our main songwriter by any stretch, dreamed it – the lyrics came to him in a dream. Stephen got a melody together and I wrote the bridge. It was kinda like ‘Free As A Bird’ [by The Beatles], when Paul McCartney polished off a John Lennon song and added a bridge with George Harrison’s help.

The last song on the album, ‘Flying Out Of London In The Rain’ was written by Tom Stevens – it was on his 2007 solo album Home – and he sings and plays on it…

It’s a cracking record and it didn’t do nearly as well as it should’ve done when it came out. I said we should do one of Tom’s songs so he had a presence on the new album. I picked the four of five Tom songs that sounded the most Long Ryders and the guys voted for ‘Flying Out Of London In The Rain.’ It was written about him quitting the band in summer 1987, before we threw in the towel – we cracked on until December – so it was a hell of a poignant song for us to pick.

It’s very haunting and atmospheric, with a Beatles and Byrds-like guitar solo. It’s a psychedelic country rock ballad…

Psychedelic country soul – that’s our bag. We’re very proud of the new album but it is coloured or flavoured by the loss of Tom Stevens. You can’t get back together. Grimly enough, if another Long Ryder dies, that’s the end of the line. We recorded five more songs than we needed for September November, so we’ve got half of another album in the can. If Tom was alive, we’d probably have even more than that. 

Photos by Henry Diltz and Ed Stasium

September November by The Long Ryders is out now (Cherry Red Records) on CD and vinyl.

www.thelongryders.com

www.sidgriffin.com

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