Country Roots

[May 19th, 2004] Holed up beneath a cloud of cigarette smoke in the far corner of Kelly's Olympian, the namesakes of Clampitt, Gaddis and Buck are busy putting the past year in perspective as an old cowboy barkeep brings another round to the table.

These three tumbleweed poets are all smiles this particular evening, and why not? Their debut, Nine Tracks, was released on Portland's Lelp Recordings earlier this month to a slew of positive reviews. Originally envisioned as a four-song EP, the track listing swelled after Lelp founder Fred Schaaf couldn't pick any tunes to shelve. The resulting album is a sneak peek into an American archetype, where trains equal freedom and outlaws are the real heroes.

"I didn't choose to play country music," says Erik Clampitt. "It's like country music kinda chose to play through me."

This isn't some Old West braggadocio. At 29, Clampitt is dialed into that fuzzbox of traditional American music we all carry around in our head. So are 26-year-old Sean Burke, a.k.a. Buck Dagger, and Marley Gaddis, 28. What's startling is the trio's ability to lend an authentic air to their material without sounding contrived in a genre obsessed with its own history. Theirs is an art intrinsically bound by generations of redone harmonies, reworked lyrics and recycled song structures. It's almost like the past gives the present a language within which to work. Like any form of creativity, some folks are revealed as posers and others as poets.

"It's an age-old formula that [we're] just kind of adding to," Burke says of the songs.

If CG&B are guilty of borrowing heavily from the past, it can't be said they haven't taken the sound to new places. The group spent much of last year sandwiched between rock bands at venues like Ash Street and Dante's. Gaddis, the relative rookie of the three, recalls being at once keenly aware of and excited about their underdog status. "There's something very basic in this music people are drawn to," she says.

In the next few weeks the trio plans to do more to attract even more people. They will release a split 7-inch (alongside Power of County) at the end of June and will be featured on an upcoming Extra Ball compilation. Then they plan on splitting town for a couple of weeks in July to tour the West Coast.

Back here in the bar, Burke rolls another cigarette and voices his hopes for the future. Across a table filled with retired beer mugs, Clampitt discusses extending the tour beyond the coast to Austin, Texas.

"The one thing I want to stress over more than anything is not bills, is not my house, is not my job. It's working on the band," Clampitt says. "It's where all my energy seems to go."