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The Continental Drifters embody what can happen when six jaded musicians come together to have fun, evolve into the formal band they sought to avoid and, miracle of miracles, manage to remain friends and make magic without the usual showbiz bartering of souls or betraying of ideals.
"I think about our evolution all the time," said Peter Holsapple, a native of Winston-Salem and one of the band's five - count 'em, five - singers and songwriters of merit.
"We do bring a lot to the table; everybody does something really well. In fact, we are less a band than a songwriters' co-op. But we are also terribly big fans of one another, so we make it work without killing each other.
"If anything, our music is what happens when six experienced musicians, singers and songwriteres decide to find a common language that will allow each of them to put his or her own best foot forward. What we've come up with leaves us satisfied, and it seems to satisfy other people as well."
Reviews of the band's two albums, Continental Drifters (1994) and Vermilion (1999), have been generally glowing - more so for Vermilion, a work of more uniform appeal and quality.
The Drifters' music is not trendy, nor is it important, at least by music-industry standards. What each of the band's albums does boast is a sense of warmth and welcome, a clarity of purpose, an aura of personal awareness, all of which will linger in the minds of fans long after more serious-minded works have become bargain-bin clutter.
To be fair, not everyone loves the Drifters. There are pundits who have pondered the Drifters, for many years more an evolving rumor than a band, and found it lacking in fresh concept or singular idenity.
This is true to some degree. It is also missing the point.
At heart the Drifters' music, simple of sentiment, buoyant of melody and unfailingly honest, is a prolonged exhalation of folk, pop and rock tradition.
"It is folk rock that errs on the side of rock," Holsapple said. "It is traditional-based - but it can get loud."
He laughed. "My hope is that we fit somewhere between Fairport Convention, Booker T & The MG's, Crazy Horse and Delaney & Bonnie = not that we sound like any of those bands."
Live or on tape, the Drifters stand as a willfully casual display of individual experience and communal expertise.
"The band never intended to change the world, come up with anything different, or make piles of money," Holsapple said.
"It's the great cliche, but all of us truly are in this for the music. We've all been around the business for awhile. We've seen it from all sides, angles and positions. So what we do has evolved from what we each bring from our past and the friendship that has developed in the present.
"We share a philosophy: It's hard to come up with anything new or different ..."
Holsapple laughed. "So we don't."
The apply named Drifters have a long and tangled history. It began in the 1980s as a part-time project in New Orleans; early members retreated to form The Subdudes and work with Tom Waits and Bob Dylan. The name traveled with drummer Carlo Nuccio to Los Angeles in 1991, where Holsapple, singer Susan Cowsill, guitarist Vicki Peterson and bassist Mark Walton signed on.
A pair of singles were recorded with additional musicians who quickly entered and exited through the Drifters' revolving door. The consortium returned, with newfound confidence and focus, to New Orleans in 1993.
There the Drifters, minus Nuccio, embarked on weekly performances at a local club. Guitarist Robert Mache and drummer Russ Broussard joined, and a spare-time endeavor soon solidified into an ongoing commitment.
Songs were written, albums were made and bonds were formed.
"It was at this point where we looked at each other and realized that we were friends first and bandmates second," Holsapple said. "We began to perceive the Drifters as each other's backinng group, which made it serious and fun."
The present group is easily the most congruent, in part because all members were plucked from a slag heap of battered careers, broken dreams and shattered ideals. These Drifters are musicians who know who they are, who are comfortable with that knowledge, and, more important, are secure in what they want to achieve.
There is no brooding over the past, no thoughts of dirty lucre and dirtier deeds. The Drifters prefer to celebrate the fine art of survival.
"We've all said that this band is our reward," Holsapple said. "It's certainly nice to see everything moving forward together, for once."
Several members have flirted with superstardom: Singers and songwriters Cowsill (The Cowsills) and Peterson (The Bangles) have weathered the fickleness of fame and fortune on a grand - and damaging - scale.
Holsapple (the dB's), Walton (The Dream Syndicate), Mache (Steve Wynn) and Broussard (The Bluerunners) labored for years in critially acclaimed bands that never climbed beyond cult popularity.
Only Holsapple, a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who maintained a solo career under the radar while working as a sideman for R.E.M. and Hootie & The Blowfish, retained a relatively high musical profile.
"Because of our pasts, we continually have to fight the perception that the Continental Drifters is nothing but a busman's holiday," Holsapple said. "I suppose we will always have to deal with the 'formerly of' syndrome - which is a mixed blessing.
"Still, it's funny to me, because most perople don't realize I've been a Continental Drifter longer than I was in The dB's."
Holsapple repeatedly refers to the band as "family." This is certainly true of Holsapple and Cowsill, who have been married for years; they share a daughter, Miranda, who can shake a tambourine with the best.
It certainly wouldn't be stretching reality to describe the Drifters as a musical commune. The band rehearses, with acoustic instruments, in each other's living rooms. And all members share a near-religious devotion to the sanctity of the song, the integrity of the singer, and the sense of communiity found in music in which the sum truly is greater than the accomplishments of the parts.
"We go to great lengths to represent this band as the polygon it is," Holsapple said. "Everybody is equally important. There are no special cases.
"Vermilion is the essence of Drifters. It has good representation of almost all the songwriters, and the joy of making the album, which we did in two weeks, is evident.
"I agree with people who describe the band as a ' '60s thing.' A fair amount of us espouse hippie ideals - and that's not so bad. When you compare our music to what's selling these days, our gentle livelihood doesn't seem like such a bad way to work."
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