The Lazy Cowgirls

 

Some musical terms give me a thrill just reading them; “rockabilly” is one, and another is “outlaw rock”, the term often applied to the music of this month’s Under Appreciated Rock Band, THE LAZY COWGIRLS.  I mentioned them in a post not too long ago, and I had to look a half dozen times before I really became convinced that they were not in Wikipedia yet.  Could I actually live in a universe where no one among what should be millions of fans (certainly thousands) has taken the time to write a paean to these dragon-slaying head-knockers?  Anyway . . . 

 

I cannot remember a band since the 1960’s that sounds as self-assured as the Lazy Cowgirls – clearly, they have been doing it the way they want to do it from the beginning.  They have an admirable, even voluminous discography – Allmusic lists 11 albums by the Lazy Cowgirls over a 20-year period.  Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips calls them “an American institution”. 

 

 

Mark Deming says of the band for Allmusic:  “If the Ramones had been a road-tested biker gang instead of pop-obsessed cartoon speed merchants, they might have sounded something like the Lazy Cowgirls.  Merging the buzzsaw roar of first-wave punk, the sneering attitude of ’60’s garage rock, the heart-on-your-sleeve honesty of honky-tonk, and the self-assured swagger of the Rolling Stones, the Lazy Cowgirls play raw, sweaty outlaw rock and roll at its most furiously passionate and physically intense; like a Harley gunned up to 95 mph, the Lazy Cowgirls may not sound safe, but they sure are fun.” 

 

 

 

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.” 

 

 

 

A few years later, Greg Shaw gave the Lazy Cowgirls a proper album (and one of their best), Tapping the Source (1987).  Shaw even relaunched Bomp! Records to release it, since it didn’t really fit on his active Voxx Records label.  He included one of their classic songs, “Can’t You Do Anything Right?” on the two-CD retrospective set called Destination: Bomp!, whose songs and liner notes also provide a concise history of the legendary Bomp! Records label that styles itself “the last of the independent record labels”. 

 

 

 

In the liner notes for Destination: Bomp!, Greg Shaw writes:  “The [Lazy] Cowgirls had made one badly misproduced album before Tapping the Source, the Bomp LP that captured for the first time their real strengths, the nonstop buzzsaw guitar attack and Pat Todd’s vein-bursting passion as a vocalist.” 

 

 

 

The next outing by the Lazy Cowgirls was a live album; as fine as their studio recordings are, where the band really excelled was on stage (they tell me).  The first album released by the esteemed record label called Sympathy for the Record Industry was Radio Cowgirl (1989), recorded live at a local radio station, KCSB-FM.  Mark Deming writes of this album for Allmusic:  “A promo spot advertising the broadcast that kicks off this album proclaims that the Lazy Cowgirls will play ‘loud, fast, hard rock & roll music’, and it’s hard to disagree.  There are a few sloppy moments here and there (be warned:  This is real rock & roll, where not everything is supposed to be perfect), and the sound is a bit thin (like the un-retouched two-track recording it is); but all four Cowgirls are clearly audible and pouring their heart and soul into every moment of the show (even on the joke cover of the theme from Green Acres).  Besides, how many bands can cover the Ramones and the Saints alongside Larry Williams and Jim Reeves and actually do justice to all of ’em?” 

 

 

 

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 hearkens 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.” 

 

 

 

After the Lazy Cowgirls packed it in, Pat Todd formed another band, taking its name from one of their classic albums, Pat Todd and the Rankoutsiders.  Their first release is a 2-CD album on their own label (Rankoutsider Records) called The Outskirts of Your Heart (2007).  Mark Deming again, for Allmusic:  “In 2004, the Lazy Cowgirls, long one of the best-kept secrets in American rock & roll, finally called it quits after nearly 25 years of inspiring music, but lead singer and principal songwriter Pat Todd clearly isn’t ready to throw in the towel just yet.  Todd has formed a new band, the Rankoutsiders, who follow a similar path to the latter-era Cowgirls – fast and loud old-school punk on one hand, and hard but heartfelt honky tonk on the other.  However, unlike the Lazy Cowgirls, the Rankoutsiders can handle the quieter country material with the same sure hand as the louder, frantic rock stuff; and Todd’s first album with the band, The Outskirts of Your Heart, is his most impressive melding to date of his two great (musical) loves.” 

 

 

 

The band’s website, www.pattodd.net/ notes that Hound Gawd! Records reissued The Outskirts of Your Heart in January 2017.  Pat Todd and the Rankoutsiders has released three more albums since this one.  Other than the two live albums and their debut, Allmusic rankings are four stars or higher on all of the Lazy Cowgirls and Rankoutsiders albums.