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The last time I saw the Continental Drifters perform, I was standing in a mud-soaked field, watching thousands of people get wet, and hearing classic rock and roll - and I wasn't anywhere near Woodstock. I was in New Orleans, where most of the band is currently based and where their set at the Jazz & Heritage Festival happened to fol low the weekend's surprise flood. Fortunately they had a tune called "When It Rains," which opened an hour's worth of memorable songs with a regional twist and harmonies to die for. For the finale, the four lead singers clustered around a mike and did the Mamas & the Papas’ bit of giddy pop romance, "Dedicated to the One I Love," while the sun went down over the field. Pretty damn inspiring.
That's one reason why the Continental Drifters are close to my heart. Here's a few others: Because they include members of some of my previous favorite bands. (Those four lead singers are ex-dB's leader Peter Holsapple, ex-Bangles guitarist Vicki Peterson, session drummer Carlo Nuccio, and former preteen crush Susan Cowsill; also in the band are guitarist Robert Mache and ex-Dream Syndicate bassist Mark Walton.) Because they combine quirky pop with heartfelt country-rock as well as anyone I've heard in years; think of them as Big Star having big fun at Big Pink. And because they haven't yet played Boston (and probably won't until next year), so local fans can still feel like part of an exclusive club.
But the club just got less exclusive, because they've finally made an album. Continental Drifters (on Ichiban/Monkey Hill) may not be the definitive Drifters album (it's half-covers and saves some live stand-outs for next time), but it captures a good deal of the band's magic and personality. Each of the songwriters gets a turn in the spotlight. Nuccio's two tunes hit a solid Little Feat/Band groove. Peterson's "Mixed Messages" is more countrified than anything she wrote for the Bangles, but no less delightful. The band's country side comes out strongest, but the opening "Get Over It" (written by Walton, sung by Cowsill, and making great use of a stolen Elvis Presley riff) has one of those pop choruses that lodges in your head and doesn't leave. As does Holsapple's "Invisible Boyfriend," a ghostly waltz that scales the same heights he hit regularly with the dB's. Covers range from the pure-pop thrills of the Box Tops' "Soul Deep" to the mystic overtones of Gram Parsons's "Song for You." And Cowsill's lead on "I Can’t Make it Alone" (pinched from Dusty Springfield’s cult-classic album Dusty in Memphis) is an emotional outburst of the first order.
My own memories of the band go back two years ago to my time in Los Angeles, which was made a lot more fun by the band's Tuesday-night shows at Raji's (the closest thing to the Middle East on Hollywood Boulevard, before the last big earthquake shut it down). A lot of friendships were formed around those shows, and the best of the local pop underground - Victoria Williams, Steve Wynn, a visiting Giant Sand - stopped in regularly. The Drifters' membership changed so often that nobody was ever sure who'd be in the band that week, but their sets ranged from bar-band heaven to drunken shambles - really good drunken shambles. (I've got a blurry memory of a 10-minute version of Traffic's "Dear Mr. Fantasy," played for some reason that seemed good at the time.) I made a point of seeing the band the night before I left town; that show closed with a tune called "The Pope," about driving cross-country with a maniac at the wheel. I rated a dedication that night; it was the best going-away present I got.
More recently, a handful of Bostonians saw the band when they played an after-hours show that closed this year's South by Southwest conference in Austin. Taking the stage after 2 a.m. at Marcia Ball's gorgeous open-air club La Zona Rosa, they played a set heavy on romantic, dancing-under-the-stars tunes (assuming you can fit "Wild Thing" into that category), and were still playing when I headed home at 4:30. Having brunch with a friend the next day at noon, we couldn't resist sneaking a look into Zona Rosa, just on the off-chance that they might still be going.
Reached by phone from Los Angeles, Peterson says that being a Drifter is nothing like being a Bangle. (That band, you'll recall, made a great first album but never recovered from the left-field hit "Walk Like an Egyptian.") "Not that I didn't have fun with the Bangles, but the whole idea was to make music for Top-40 radio - even in the beginning, when our vision of Top-40 was to sound like a sped-up version of the Seeds. By the end we were so taken care of that we didn't know what we were doing.
"The Drifters pulled me out of a hard time," she says. "After the Bangles' demise I had no idea what I wanted to do, if doing music was still worth the heartache. I started hanging out at the bachelor pad where Mark and Carlo lived, and they'd sit around the couch with an acoustic guitar - which I hadn't done in years. I was | completely stymied and nervous, and we went out and played the club that night."
Peterson also works separately with Cowsill as the Psycho Sisters, whose first single gets released on SOL next week. Meanwhile, Cowsill still performs occasionally with her family (yes, those Cowsills); Nuccio has a few session gigs (he played drums on both Tori Amos albums); and Holsapple's about to release the final, long-lost dB's album from 1988, and may even tour with some version of the dB's to support it. And in a real strange turn of history, Peterson is joining the Go-Go's - but only temporarily, to replace the pregnant Charlotte Caffey on a reunion tour in November. "One all-girl band from the '80s wasn't enough, I must have it all," she laughs. "I figure the Bangles will reunite in the year 2005, so Charlotte can step in if I'm preggers by then."
All of which would make the Drifters a hard band to operate, but Peterson says that love will keep 'em together. "This band does more arguing than anyone I've ever seen, and I'm from a family of four kids," she notes. "But it's all encased in love. We can break into arguments at rehearsals and say, 'But I love you anyway.' "Yeah, I love you too, you f*****.' "
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