D. D. WEEKDAY
Hailing from Vincennes, Indiana, Pat Todd (vocalist), D. D. Weekday (guitar), and Keith Telligman (bass) headed for California to put a band together. They found another Indiana expat there, Allen Clark (drums) and began hitting the L.A. clubs as the Lazy Cowgirls. Of this early period, Todd says that they were playing countless shows for “no one, and people from work”. Chris Desjardins (former frontman of an art-punk band called the Flesh Eaters) lined them up a record deal with Restless Records, resulting in their self-titled 1984 debut Lazy Cowgirls. Fred Beldin gives the album a tepid review for Allmusic but closes with: “Despite an inauspicious start, the Lazy Cowgirls never made a bad record again, and those with a taste for intelligent but visceral rock & roll are urged to examine their catalog.”
My own introduction to the Lazy Cowgirls was Rank Outsider (1999). By this point, years of nonstop touring and lackluster record sales were taking their toll; D. D. Weekday and Keith Telligman left the band by 1991, and further shakeups ensued through the rest of the decade. But Weekday’s replacement on guitar, Michael Leigh returned to the line-up in time for Rank Outsider and another record that came out just six months later, Somewhere Down the Line. Mark Deming for Allmusic says of Rank Outsider: “Singer Pat Todd is in superb, revved-up form here – if anything, the guy's vocals just get better and more confident with the passage of time – and while the presence of a few acoustic-based cuts is something new for this band, their loose, bluesy feel harkens back to Exile On Main Street-era Rolling Stones more than anyone in the MTV Unplugged crowd. Another great record from a band that knows how.”
(March 2017)
