Buck Daddy

Country-rock Hoosier hybrid Buck Daddy debuts downtown Friday, June 8, 2007 12:36 AM CDT

BY TOM LOUNGES Times Correspondent

As a fan of both country music and rock, this writer has always enjoyed hearing a creative melding of the two sounds, going back to the late 1960s and such pioneering groups as the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers and Rick Nelson's Stone Canyon Band.

While it is true that over the years, artists like the Eagles have homogenized the country rock sound, there have always been those free-spirited rebel souls like Steve Earl, Jason & The Scorchers, BRS-41, Lucinda Williams, Wilco and Shooter Jennings, who have kept this exciting and energetic hybrid musical style alive, well and on the edge for years.

In an effort to rope and wrangle the genre and those artists, the media has periodically come up with labels like "outlaw country," "cow-punk," and "alt-country," to define and categorize the sound that usually includes a blues groove, a rock backbeat and just the right amount of crying pedal steel and jangly lead guitar lines to make Nashville proper cringe in horror.

While Chicago has been able to boast of Wilco, The Waco Brothers, Urban Twang, Pete Berwick and a few other "alt-country" stalwarts for years, Northwest Indiana has been largely devoid of such adventurous groups, save for Michigan City's infamous Hillbilly Winos, who sadly play all too infrequently on this side of the Indiana/Illinois border.

Well at long last, the Calumet Region finally has a bunch of "outlaw-style country rockers" to call its very own. The group is Buck Daddy and has guitarist/vocalist Randy Anderson at the helm.

Anderson is familiar to area night club audiences for the time he logged in such "party rock" cover bands as Wookie Luv and Bite The Lime. "Writing was something I had never tried until a couple of years ago when the singer/songwriting bug suddenly bit me," Anderson said. "Now I'm writing all the time and my original stuff is finally off and running. I'm not sure what will come of it, but I'm having an absolute ball in the process with this (project)."

Buck Daddy fell together after Anderson met up with punk rock drummer Bobby Shaw of Shotgun Elvis some months back. "Bobby and I discovered we had a mutual appreciation of The Refreshments band, so I played him some of the stuff I was writing and he loved it."

Anderson's songs have a lot of the Southwestern flavoring of The Refreshments with a bit of Tom Petty mixed in for good measure. And topically, they are largely about everyday/everyman things like love lost, love found and drinking ... lots about drinking.

Once Shaw committed to moonlight as Anderson's cohort, Buck Daddy was born and the search was on to build a full tilt band.

Renown Hoosier guitarist/producer Danny Giorgi (most recently producing demos for Nicole Jamrose and other local artists) joined next and Shaw pulled in bassist Danny Bright from the regional punk band, The Violators. Together this quartet have forged an amazing chemistry that earmarks Buck Daddy "I guess you would say that Buck Daddy is a strange mix of country, rock, punk and blues influences, but I really don't want to try to put a label on it," Anderson said. "But people have told me our sound reminds them a lot of bands like The Rolling Stones and Small Faces."

From the songs this columnist has heard like "Redemption," "Jesus Lives In Mexico" and "Holly," along with a handful of rough mixes of "tunes in progress," that comparison is understandable but falls way short.

There is a certain similarity to the more country-inflected Stones songs like "Far Away Eyes," "Spider And The Fly," "Country Honk" and "Love In Vain," but with a more rocked up and rootsy Americana edge. With the songbook starting to fill up and feeling tight enough as a unit to step out on stage, Buck Daddy makes its debut June 9 at Martyr's in downtown Chicago.

Also on the Martyr's bill is Art "Buddy" Edwards, the former bassist of The Refreshments during that group's MTV heyday. Buck Daddy will join him, and back him up for a short set of Refreshments songs that will of course feature their famous 'King Of The Hill' theme, 'Banditos,' and a few other fan favorites," Anderson said. - Post Tribune