The Backsliders return!

When last heard from back in September, Whiskeytown’s old peers The Backsliders were moving tentatively toward regrouping on a fulltime basis. They played a show as the Howell/Robinson Quartet, and it went well enough that they decided to play again — this time under the Backsliders name, last night at Raleigh’s Pour House. The first “official” Backsliders show in more than nine years, and it was pretty much everything I’d hoped it could be. They flat-out blew the roof off the joint in front of a packed house.

The proceedings began on a thoughtful note with Chip Robinson calling for a moment of silent reflection about the previous day’s horrific events. To my surprise, the audience actually complied. Then the Backsliders fired up the first song of the set, “Yep!,” triggering a mass adrenaline rush that was amazing to witness — and feel. We were all feeling it, too. Ever been overcome with the realization that you’ve been missing something without even realizing it, until the thing in question was suddenly back in your life? That’s what last night felt like.

In this particular instance, it was the combination of Chip’s voice and Steve Howell’s guitar, which still fit together with such bar-band perfection that it felt as if no time at all had gone by. This edition of the Backsliders doesn’t have quite as much guitar firepower as the mid-’90s model with Brad Rice, but Howell more than compensated with a display of the sort of six-string virtuosity you usually see on much, much larger stages. When they hit the one-two punch of “Throwin’ Rocks at the Moon” and “My Baby’s Gone” at about the halfway point, it was an ecstatic moment. Based on the fistbumps and handshakes Howell and Robinson were exchanging, I think you’ll get a chance to see it again real soon.

Yes indeed, the Backsliders are back. Yep!

ADDENDUM: By the way, I’ve also been meaning to post this lovely essay, which expresses with note-perfect grace what the Backsliders meant to Raleigh back in the day.

Backsliding away

Back in the mid-1990s, Whiskeytown was hardly the only great alternative-country band on the scene. There was the aforementioned Kenny Roby’s 6 String Drag, as well as the Backsliders — dear Lord, THE BACKSLIDERS — who could give any band on the planet a run for their money on a good night. They were a bit older and more grizzled than a lot of their fresh-faced peers in the Triangle, but the Backsliders were just so damn good that they inspired awe far and wide.

As good as they were, however, the Backsliders rivaled Whiskeytown when it came to bad interpersonal vibes between their co-leaders, Chip Robinson and Steve Howell. Oil and water, Hatfields and McCoys, Tar Heels and Wolfpack — whatever metaphor suits ya, they just did not mix.

“Those guys,” Backsliders bassist Danny Kurtz once told me, “are both their own worst enemies.”

Commercial success might have been enough to keep the Backsliders together, but it was not to be. After 1996’s brilliant Throwing Rocks at the Moon (produced with great aplomb by Dwight Yoakam guitarist Pete Anderson), Howell left the band. And while that wasn’t a mortal blow, Howell did take a lot of the Backsliders’ cool country flavor with him. Robinson carried on with replacements, releasing 1998’s still-good-but-not-as-great Southern Lines; neither album sold, however, so that was that.

(ADDENDUM: Producer Eric Ambel says of Southern Lines that, “90 percent of that record was cut with Howell, Chip, Brad, Danny and Jeff. Changes happened before the record was released with one song getting re-cut and a couple others overdubbed; but the bulk of that record is the original band.”)

The Backsliders dissolved, and Kurtz and lead guitarist Brad Rice wound up in one of the umpteen late-’90s versions of Whiskeytown. Rice later played with Ryan in various incarnations, including the Pinkhearts. He was Ryan’s lead guitarist on “Saturday Night Live” in 2001; and as Rice told me when I interviewed him for “Losering,” he was just starting a guitar solo at the 2004 show in Liverpool where Ryan fell off the stage and broke his wrist. Brad has done plenty more sideman work since then, including a long stretch with Keith Urban a few years back.

Robinson and Howell kept busy with bands and projects of their own, all of them good — especially Robinson’s terrific  solo album Mylow — but neither was as good apart as they had been together. In 2003, they did reunite to play a benefit show for Alejandro Escovedo (who was ailing and without health insurance, a sadly common situation in the music business nowadays). They were still great and it felt as if no time at all had gone by, but it was a one-off…

…Until now. Saturday night, four-fifths of the classic mid-’90s Backsliders lineup (everyone except Brad Rice) will play as the Howell/Robinson Quartet at Slim’s in Downtown Raleigh. It’s another benefit, this one for the Inspirality Elder Project; and I’m told it’s the first time the co-leaders have spoken since that 2003 reunion.

This will probably be yet another one-off with no followup, the Backsliders scattering to their separate corners afterwards. But hey, I can dream.

ADDENDUM (9/30/12): I was otherwise occupied Saturday night, but multiple witness reports say that Backsliders drummer Jeff Dennis went up to Chip’s microphone toward the end of their set and hollered, “David Menconi oughtta write a book about THAT shit!”