Bentley's Bandstand: Riley, Grandma's Roadhouse

BY BILL BENTLEY

Riley, Grandma’s Roadhouse,Delmore Recording Society

Southern rock is a many-headed wonder. Like psychedelic music, it is almost impossible to define, and instead better refers to the area where the bands are born. But since the late ’60s, when people like Gregg and Duane Allman started making noise in Florida there has been a steady march of mega-talents to give hope the South really was going to do it again.

Riley Watkins was born in North Carolina, raised mostly in Alabama and ended up in Michigan, but running through his blood was a pure passion for the sounds of Dixie. His first band, the Imprints, started in the late ’50s and by the mid-’60s were renamed the Imps and started burning down bandstands all over Florida. They could make their instruments scream, and when they teamed up with future country star Gary Stewart it seemed like there was no stopping them.

Grandma’s Roadhouse, recorded at the infamous Bradley’s Barn studio in Nashville in 1970, is a snapshot of a different time. The band, called simply Riley, had taken the best elements of rock and country and shaken them up so the results sounded only like themselves. Stewart was on hand for four songs, and even when he wasn’t there the music had an incandescent glow, one that reflected the wide open land of possibilities that rolled through Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama.

Others like Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Band had mined those veins to spectacular success, and now it looked like Riley could score with a homefield advantage. They pressed 500 copies of this album and hit the road to plant some seeds. Or tried to. With Riley Watkins and Gary Stewart’s soaring voices, and as funky a rhythm section on the planet, it’s almost impossible to understand how Riley missed making a mark. But they did, and when Stewart started racking up country smashes like “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles)” and “Drinkin’ Thing,” his old pals splintered like a split log.

Fortunately, Delmore Recording Society loves nothing better than mining for buried treasure in record vaults and has reissued the original album with three extra tracks. For a snapshot into another era and a prime example of what could have been, this is a collection unlikely to be equaled. To hear “Picture,” “Daddy’s Come Home,” “Field of Green” and, yes, “Cows & Dogs, Ducks & Hogs” is to know the American south was once the center of the musical universe, and who knows but just might be again someday. Remember: old times there are not forgotten.