CLICK TO READ!! Wayward Q&A: Interview with George Frayne (Commander Cody) By Jason Harper in Art, Q&A / Fri., Nov. 6 2009 @ 8:15AM Before Commander Cody became a household name for his saloon-stomping, country-rock jams in the '70s, the man behind the moniker had a career in art academia as George Frayne. In the late '60s Frayne was plying his MFA in sculpture toward teaching at the Wisconsin State University in Oshkosh when he decided to move to San Francisco in 1969 with members of his backing band to pursue music full-time. Later that same year, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen would open for the Grateful Dead and then go on to tour the world, releasing albums throughout the '70s on Paramount and Warner Bros., the highest-charting being the band's self-titled 1975 release....

Rejuvenated Commander Cody rides into Toledo with new band
Cody

By ROD LOCKWOOD
BLADE STAFF WRITER
Article published June 21, 2009

A conversation with George Frayne - better known as boogie woogie boozerocker
Commander Cody - veers all over the place like a Hot Rod Lincoln
careening down a country road. One minute he's carrying on about his new
album, "Dopers, Drunks and Everyday Losers," and then he's talking up his
artwork displayed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which
slides into an unapologetic appreciation of marijuana before he's hooting and
hollering at a chipmunk outside who's about to become his cat's lunch if he
doesn't skedaddle. Always entertaining, more than a little self-deprecating,
smart, and just plain wacky, Frayne's every bit as unhinged as his musical alter
ego would suggest. He's equally grounded in the world of art and sound and
must be the only rocker who actually posts his curriculum vitae online without
irony. After all, Frayne has a master of fine arts degree in sculpture and painting
from the Rackham School of Graduate Studies at the University of
Michigan. "I'm probably the only musician who actually stayed in art school," he
said in a telephone interview from his home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., to
promote his upcoming Toledo show Friday. "I stayed in [the University of
Michigan] for the whole six years. My major was sculpture and my minor was
painting and all I had to do was weld stuff together and paint stuff, so it wasn't
hard. I'm good at it and I had a full ride at Michigan and played in frat bands on
the side." That was in the mid-'60s, and Frayne with his band of
country/blues/rock misfits known as Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen
was primed for fun. So he quit his job as an instructor of art at Wisconsin State
University and landed in Berkeley, Calif., effectively trading in a career as a
professor for one as hippie musician. "It was worth it! It was worth it, holy
mackerel!," he said, cackling. "Berkeley California and San Francisco in '69, '70,
'71, are you kidding me? That was the definition of fun."

Halcyon days
Despite the wild nature of those times, Commander Cody & His Lost Planet
Airmen actually were at the forefront of an important movement that provided
a key evolutionary step in country rock that ultimately paved the way for The
Eagles. Using a pedal steel guitar in a rock band, while singing songs that
appealed equally to truckers and hippies, and then mixing it up with a melange of
drug and road references, made for an unholy marriage of Buck Owens and the
Grateful Dead. The band's first album, "Lost in the Ozone" in 1971, contained
songs that are still highlights of Cody's live set, including "Seeds and Stems
Again Blues," "Wine Do Yer Stuff," the title track, and probably the band's most
well-known song, the scorching boogie gearhead rocker "Hot Rod Lincoln." The
group's second album, "Hot Licks, Cold Steel & Trucker Favorites" was equally
successful, and it kicked off a run of releases up until the late '70s that were
either underground country rock classics or live albums that captured the band's
blistering concerts. By the late '70s the tank was on empty, and Cody broke up
the band a few years later. Frayne is typically unsentimental about the band's
later music, as his description of his albums released on the Arista label indicate:
"...really, really horrible... Billboard magazine said they were dreck and I'm not
going to argue with them."

Second chance
So Frayne, 64, settled into semi-retirement from music, touring and playing small
joints regularly, but focusing most of his creative energy on his artwork. After
years of working in a pop art format and having some of his sculptures displayed
prominently, including a clever rendition of Secretariat that is at the American
Museum of Natural History in New York, he hit upon doing portraits of
musicians. The works of artists such as Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia,
and others sold well and sparked a commercial renaissance for Frayne. At the
same time, he formed a band that he said reaches the level of musicianship of
the Lost Planet Airmen and he wanted to honor them by making a CD, his first in
nearly 20 years. And "I needed to prove something." Specifically, there were
songs in his catalog that Frayne felt needed to be updated and given new life. So
the band re-recorded classics including "Seeds and Stems Again Blues," "Wine
Do Yer Stuff," and a few from those "horrible" late-'70s albums while tossing in
some covers such as John Hiatt's "Tennessee Plates" and the Hoyt Axtonpenned
"No No Song," that was a hit for Ringo Starr. They all came together
with a theme of "Dopers, Drunks and Everyday Losers," released this year on the
Blind Pig Records label. "My concept for the album fit perfectly because I took all
the loser songs and put them in a portfolio," Frayne said.

High side
Despite a couple of serious car accidents that nearly killed and crippled him,
Frayne has continued working. He tours enough to play 80 to 100 shows a year.
He said his current band provides him the kind of musical buzz that reminds him
of his original work. "There was a super high of music and getting on stage and
being in the presence of really great musicians playing really great music where
everyone's really all playing the same thing at the same time - that was the
original band. "And when I broke them up it took me a long time to get that
feeling back, but I've got it back and it's like a sine wave... so right now we're
coming back and riding on the high side of the sine wave." It's good-time, illegal
smile music with plenty of references to getting stoned, drinking adult beverages,
and partying, for which Frayne makes no apologies. "The first thing you have to
do if you're going to sober up is get away from me," he said. "I'm not an alcoholic,
but if we're going to be in a bar playing bar music, I'm going to fit right in. I don't
drink at home at all." The band's sound fits that format perfectly, he said. "We're
a rock and roll band that has a steel guitar player rather than a giant swing band
that has to turn it down," he said. Frayne said he's proud of the legacy of
Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen, but he never dwelled on the fact
that the band fell under the radar for a decade or so. "For awhile I thought no
one had any recollection of [our music.] But right now on the roots country chart
we've been number one for the last three weeks," he said. "That's really terrific
because back then I didn't get much credit and I made a couple of lousy moves,
a couple of bonehead moves of my own in this period of time, and I'm really
happy to be back in the swing of things." Commander Cody

Music City Blues News Of Nashville
Written by Don Crow  
Wednesday, 29 April 2009

If you're old enough to remember Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen from their Seventies heyday, then you know that they were one of the best country-rock outfits ever assembled.  Rolling out of the Bay Area with their hybrid brand of boogie-woogie blues and Bob Wills-inspired swing, they released several highly-acclaimed albums for the Paramount and Warner Brothers labels during this era.  Time may have slowed us all a bit, but it can't stop the boogie, because the ol' Commander is back on the Blind Pig imprint with his latest release, "Dopers, Drunks, And Everryday Losers."  It's a wild ride of fourteen cuts of just what the Commander does best---a little of this and a little of that, all delivered with that same fire and swagger that we all enjoyed "back in the day!"

     Commander Cody is the alter-ego of George Frayne, who is also a noted artist, providing the cool cover art for this set.  Here, he serves up some new material along with revisiting some of his classics.  Backing the Commander and his piano are Mark Emrick on guitar, Randy Bramwell on bass, Steve Barbuto on drums, Tiny Olsen on pedal steel, and Professor Louie on organ and accordion.  These folks conjure up the spirit of the original Airmen to make this one a real rockin' good time!

     Steve Barbuto adds lead vocal to the classic drinkin' tale, "Wine Do Yer Stuff," while Mark Emrick does vocal duty on the trucker anthem, "I took three bennies, and my Semi Truck won't start!"  The Commander leads the way with that mean left hand on rockers such as the leadoff "Roll Yer Own," "Seven Eleven," and "Losers Avenue."

     We had three favorites, too.  The Commander gives a fine read of the John Hiatt tale of a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde who end up making "Tennessee Plates!"  Professor Louie's organ forms the perfect backdrop for the Commander's slowed-down version of the teetotaler's tale, "The No No Song."  And, Circe Link lays down a bittersweet vocal on one of the best cry-in-your-beer songs ever conceived, "Seeds And Stems Again."

     Commander Cody's music has stood the test of time.  And, as he sings in "Last Call For Alcohol," everybody "drink up, drink up, and order again," and, with "Dopers, Drunks And Everyday Losers," by all means....ENJOY!!! 

Until next time......Sheryl and Don Crow.

30 Days Out

Drunks and Everyday Losers.  It’s a great party album, and there’s even an updated version of “Seeds And Stems (Again)” as well as a nice version of Hoyt Axton’s “No No Song.”  Now Frayne isn’t much of a singer, so enjoy singer Circe Link’s “Seeds and Stems” and discover that the Commander is still one hell of a piano player. 

Pass the hookah - the Commander is on the flight deck once again!

Philadelphia Daily News

Veteran roadhouse rock twangster Commander Cody (George Frayne) is up for a good time (again) on "Dopers, Drunks and Everyday Losers" (Blind Pig, B). Put a grin on with ditties like "Wine Do Yer Stuff" and his immortal (or was that immoral?), "Seeds and Stems Again."

****
Rambles.NET 
Michael Scott Cain

It seems to me there has never been a time when there wasn't a Commander Cody around. He's as dependable as the sun and the sky, rarely obtrusive, never in the way but always around when he's needed. And just when we're in danger of drowning in the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus and Kellie Pickler, here comes Cody with a new album.

Cody -- who became if not famous, certainly dangerous with his '70s band, Commander Cody & the Lost Planet Airmen, which gave us such musicians as Bill Kirchen and Billy C. Farlow -- has for the past few decades specialized in creating joy and fun with a unique blend of rock, country and blues, all held together by Cody's sledgehammer, honky-tonk, ragtime piano.

So, how is the new album? "Brilliant" is the first word that springs to mind. The current band -- Mark Emerick on guitar, Steve Barnuto on drums, Chris Olson on pedal steel and Randy Bramwell on bass, as well as the commander himself -- is a fabulous aggregation, and the material ranges all over the Cody repertoire. He does updated versions of "Seeds & Stems Again," "Seven-Eleven," "Wine, Do Your Stuff" and a few others. He covers John Hiatt's "Tennessee Plates" and "No No Song" and comes up with a handful of originals that are destined to take their places as future Cody classics.

You can't listen to Dopers, Drunks & Everyday Losers without laughing, wanting to dance and admiring the musicianship. My advice? Don't wait 'til tomorrow, don't wait for the rain to stop, just go out and get it. Now.

****
Jambands.com
Dopers, Drunks, And Everyday Losers - Commander Cody 
Brian Robbins 

Dopers, Drunks, And Everyday Losers is everything anyone who has followed Commander Cody’s 40+ year career has come to expect: fun. No one’s out to change the world here (unless you consider building a bridge between dope-smokin’ furry freaks and pill-poppin’ redneck truck drivers a form of Glasnost …which I suppose it is, in its way). In fact, if you are familiar at all with the piano-thumping Commander (aka George Frayne) and his musical catalog, you’ll recognize a number of the cuts on Dopers - but don’t mistake it for a greatest hits collection. What we have here is a revved-up Commander and a red-hot band (guitarist Mark Emerick, Randy Bramwell on bass, drummer Steve Barbuto, and killer pedal steel player Chris Olsen) tearing into old CC favorites, a few covers, and some new Frayne-penned tunes.

As much as the Commander and his cohorts (whether it was the original Lost Planet Airmen or the various lineups of the Commander Cody Band) have made a career of playing the part of the one-more-beer-might-be-too-many bad boys, make no mistake: these crazy bastards can play. Drop the needle on Dopers, Drunks, And Everyday Losers and hang on: WHAM! Emerick’s slide guitar nails you in the face, the Commander’s topple-down-the-barroom-stairs piano grabs you by the shirt collar, and you’re off.

Oh, I know: you think you’re above the heart-wrenching pedal steel sob of “Seeds And Stems Again” or “Wine Do Your Stuff," right? Yeah, well – give a listen and then try to ignore it. Just try.

Or consider the bug-eyed, twitching, sweaty two minutes and twenty seconds of “Semi Truck”. Where else, I ask you, are you going to find lyrics like this?

Well here I sit 
All alone with a broken heart 
I took three bennies 
And my semi-truck won’t start

Laugh if you will – three hours later you’ll find the song’s speed-fueled melody slamming around in your head and wondering how it got there.

Let’s face it – if the Commander is going to cover a John Hiatt song, it’s probably not going to be “Have A Little Faith In Me” … but the rollicking “Tennessee Plates” fits the bill perfectly. That’s the key to enjoying the Commander and his band: they take being serious about not being serious very seriously. They’re not going to do a goofed-up version of a novelty song for a laugh, but they might slap you good-naturedly across the chops with an absolutely killer version of a really twisted, goofy song – get it?
Woodstock wizard Professor Louie Hurwitz of the Crowmatix shared production chores on Dopers with the Commander, capturing the gonzo atmosphere of the sessions without sacrificing sound quality.

All in all, Dopers, Drunks, And Everyday Losers is a fun outing. Throw that rascal in and crank it up. We oughta make the state line before sunup if we don’t pass out.
 

Commander Cody - Dopers, Drunks and Everyday Losers

Some albums require several listenings to really get the subtlety and nuance of the music composition or the power of the thought in the lyrics.  Commander Cody’s first studio effort in 20 years, Dopers, Drunks and Everyday Losers is not one of those albums.  This, ladies and gentlemen, is a party album.  If you don’t believe me, here are some of the song titles; Roll Yer Own, Wine Do Yer Stuff, Seeds and Stems Again, It’s Gonna Be One of Those Nights, Last Call For Alcohol. In the spirit of his earlier incarnations (Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen) and brothers in arms like Asleep At The Wheel and Austin Lounge Lizards, this is a disc that’s the perfect accompaniment to Friday night.

The album starts off with Roll Yer Own , a straightforward example of Commander Cody’s (nee George Frayne) unmatched style of honky tonk piano.  Along with the slide guitar and pedal steel highlights, this really sets the tone for the album.  Next up is one of my favorites from the playlist, Tennessee Plates , a John Hiatt song about a road trip that goes awry and ends up with our protagonist making, you guessed it, Tennessee license plates.  From there the album goes through a number of tunes including Semi Truck, Down and Out, and Seven Eleven that pay tribute (sort of) to the white trash way of life.

At that point, the Commander does an update of a previous classic, Seeds and Stems Again.  Now, as a poor college student in the 70’s, the original was, well, it was one of those things you could really relate to.  In this updated version, the Commander brought in long-haired, high cheek-boned chanteuse Circe Link to add a beautiful voice to the story of woe.  And as beautiful as her voice is, it’s a little like Patsy Cline singing “I want to rock and roll all night, and party every day.”  You just don’t buy it.  I suppose I just have too much history with the original.  What does work well, though, is the final song of the album, a new version of the old Hoyt Axton song made famous by George Harrison, No No Song .  With a gentle Caribbean rhythm twanged up just a bit with accordion and pedal steel, this ode to temptation really closes the album on a high note.

So if your music collection is in need of some party music that’s slightly off the beaten track, Dopers, Drunks and Everyday Losers will be a good addition.  But I also recommend spending the extra 99 cents and getting the 1971 version of Seeds and Stems Again Blues from Lost in the Ozone.

Village Records.......

Love that title. That’s how my high school principal introduced our graduating class to the assembled friends and family. The guy was quite the visionary as it turns out. Anyway, back to the task at hand here. This is the first new album from the Commander in light years. He's got some great new tunes and even updates some of his old stuff just to remind us of how great they were. I don't know about the rest of you but his blend of rock, boogie and redneck country never goes out of date. There's just something about that sweet spot where traditional country meets burned out barfly that works every time!!

The fast, furious ballad of Commander Cody

April 21, 2009
by Rush Evans

He was a West Coast hippie with a western-swing vibe a quarter century after Bob Wills and a rapid-fire rap song a quarter century before Snoop Dogg.

When Commander Cody sang — or talked — at lightning speed, about how his pappy said, “Son, you’re gonna drive me to drinkin’ if you don’t stop drivin’ that hot rod Lincoln,” he turned the rock-and-roll generation onto the cool sounds of a swinging steel guitar, a fiery fiddle and a boogie-woogie piano.

Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen carved out a lighthearted niche of improvisational country music that rocked at a time when their fellow hippies were grooving to a much heavier message.

They enjoyed another hit in “Don’t Let Go,” and they gave their fellow hippies the best songs from their redneck counterparts who might not have ever crossed paths had it not been for this seminal boogie band, with great country covers and cool originals like the countercultural underground standard “Down To Seeds And Stems Again Blues.”

George Frayne was the Commander, and he still is, taking the “Hot Rod Lincoln” on the never-ending rock-and-roll road. He still blazes through that monster hit at tongue-twisting velocity, and conversation with him unfolds in the same staccato style, so much so that it only makes sense to let him tell his own story.

Before a gig at an Austin, Texas, beer garden called Threadgill’s, just yards away from the site of the old Armadillo World Headquarters, where the band’s classic 1974 live album was recorded, Frayne chatted with a Goldmine journalist rooted in Austin, one who’d had the good fortune of spending a few musical evenings in that cavernous old concert hall before they leveled it in 1980.

“I was not ready for how cool the Armadillo was gonna be,” he said. “We came in here first time, we opened for Waylon and we just saw what was going on and it was great. That was the time we were way into the swing, and I had the eight guys: the fiddle player who played sax; the guitar player that played trombone; the lead singer that played trumpet. Bobby Black was a one-man horn section. They took to us pretty well. We kept coming back, and we did our album here. We’d been up for three days, you know what I mean? Those were the days of getting up and partying for weeks at a time.”

As for his hometown, Frayne says, “Austin back then was like a little oasis. It was like Antioch, Ohio, or Yellow Springs, Ohio, your little tiny town on a larger scale surrounded by mean and nastiness. There was names of towns in Texas back then that I wouldn’t even wanna repeat. The Armadillo was a really great place where you could go and not be afraid of doing the stuff that you’d be afraid of doing out in the street. And don’t forget it was my first introduction to Texas women. That’ll say enough about that.”

The album he’s talking about is the legendary Live From Deep In The Heart of Texas, a seminal recording that documented the spirit of Texas-styled hippie counterculture, a southern contribution to the Woodstock generation.

Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen headlined the show at the Headquarters’ last hurrah, New Year’s Eve, 1980. Our stone’s-throw proximity to that hallowed site led the Commander to further reminiscing, rattling off stories and names of his fellow Planet Airmen in a rock-and-roll odyssey that could’ve only happened in the magical decade known as the ’70s. Try to keep up.

George Frayne: It started innocently enough. We had a little four- [or] five-piece frat band in Ann Arbor. The thing about frat bands is you don’t practice; practicing is unmanly. You listen to the record and go over it in your mind, and go to the gig and drink a fifth and just play. It’s gotta be that kinda tune.

I played piano back then; you couldn’t get a keyboard. The only piano keyboard was the Wurlitzer, and you couldn’t play that at frat parties because it had a flat top with an air vent because there was tubes in there, and I could not get people to not put their beer on top of the piano. I’d have to buy tubes for that thing every week.

We did a Friday night party, Saturday afternoon open house, Saturday night frat party, Sunday open house, five gigs a weekend, and by that time I’d have bought those big old tubes ... which were five bucks apiece at the time which was a lot of money, so the Farfisa [organ] was the only other thing that was apparent, and it fit the frat-band thing perfectly. But then when we wanted to start playing a little country and boogie woogie, we had to play places that had pianos.

We went to a flea market and we found the Best Of Buck Owens, and we listened to that, and we’d started doing “Act Naturally” about a year before The Beatles came out with it, and then we did “Tiger By The Tail,” and we found that country music goes along real smoothly. It’s the kind of music where you don’t really have to know what the chords are. If you’ve heard country music, you can follow them, but you know the people that we played for had never heard any of this stuff!

In Michigan, they’d never heard “Tiger By The Tail” or “Truck Drivin’ Man.” They went “Ohh,” so we went “Whoa”’ and of course, right about that time, I started selling marijuana in Ann Arbor. I sold the weed, and we’d roll a hundred reefers before the gig, and I’d pay everybody in reefers; pretty soon I had about 30 people in the band!

Then I was back home in Long Island, and at the farmer’s market in Long Island, fifty-cent bin, and you know the Bob Wills album on Harmony? It’s a painting of Bob Wills’ smiling face with a background, Bob Wills Special? I put it on, and my mom went, “What is that,” and the first time he went, “Aah-hahh,” I knew he was stoned, and it turned out I was right. Bob drank a lot, but they also smoked a little weed. I don’t know if Bob himself smoked weed, but you know the other guys in his band did.

Then we went to Nashville, and the only people who would talk to us were the people in Buck Owens’ band. They all smoked weed. And when they came into town, at that time I was growing weed in California, so they would always come find out where we were so I could turn them on. So the whole Nashville underground people knew who I was, as [did] the other hippies; I was like the harbinger of the marijuana age. I was High Times centerfold twice.

Being the harbinger of the marijuana age did surprisingly little harm to George’s memory, as his understanding of his fun little party band’s important contribution is vivid, clear and right on the money.

The influence they took from those Owens and Wills records led to an original sound, putting country and rock together in a manner every bit as revolutionary as what Bob had done with another American musical discipline.

Frayne: We also started listening to a little Cab Calloway. Then we realized what Bob Wills was; he was the guy that brought jazz to country. Whatever the big swing hit would be, they would be able to play that in their live show; there was jazz. And we noticed that it was a lot more simple to learn those tunes that way than to try to cop a Benny Goodman [song], because he had already simplified it. They made it so it was easy to play, and I wasn’t that good a player at that time, and I’m looking for stuff that’s easy to play, so we fell into that.

Then I’m sitting outside my little apartment in downtown Ann Arbor and here comes this weird-looking guy, Andy Stein, walking by and he’s got a fiddle case, and I said, “Hey, you play that thing?” He goes, “Yeah.” He comes, he sits in, he’s got a perfect ear; you don’t have to show him anything. He’s like [steel guitar player] Bobby Black — perfect ear, knows everything, he just plays it perfectly. So we’ve got a frat band, the bass player gave up the bass [and] decided he was gonna learn how to play the steel guitar. Andy Stein was the guy who arranged stuff, and then [guitarist] Bill Kirchen picked up on that, because Bill had come over to my band.

He had his own band called Seventh Seal, which was like a hippie early heavy-metal band, but he was also a folkie. There was a whole folk scene which developed into some of the heavy-metal scene, so I got him in the band; then I had [vocalist and harmonica player] Billy C. Farlow come in. I found him playing the midway lunch for 50 bucks a night, and he was a songwriter. So I had him sit in, and then we got really stoned and went off and wrote ‘Seeds And Stems’ together, and that’s the first thing we did. Boom. That’s where it went.

And what kicked it off was listening to Bob Wills and me realizing that this is great reefer music that we were playing for all these hippies to get turned on to. This is a beautiful kind of music to play for them. We moved not to San Francisco but to Berkeley. When we first came to San Francisco, all those Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane players ... well, the Dead liked us because Jerry [Garcia] was gonna learn how to play steel. The Airplane guys were nice to us, but they weren’t really behind us. The crowd in San Francisco didn’t like us. That whole country-blues thing that went with the East Bay in Berkeley, we fell right into that.

And so the Lost Planet Airmen were born, behind the hazy cloud of their fearless Commander. It was the first hippie-country band, a band of rock and rollers that had more in common, spiritually, with Hank Williams and Wills than they did with any of their fellow long-haired musical contemporaries.

Hank would have undoubtedly dug their sound, but it was Bob who was the King of Western Swing, and the King was around long enough to cross paths with the Commander.

Frayne: In 1973, I met [Bob Wills] at the country music convention when Merle [Haggard] brought him there, and he was in a wheelchair. We backed up Gene Vincent. We were the last people to back up Gene Vincent before he died. We opened for Merle Haggard at the Oakland Coliseum, and Gene wouldn’t play “Be Bop A Lula.”

He had some cockamamie excuse why not. He had made some really horrible hippie albums. He had this song, “Red blue summery green, these are the colors…” [singing] Oh, Gene! He wouldn’t do any of his hits, but he wants to do “Maybelline.” So we’re up on stage in front of 5,000 people and in front of Merle Haggard, when “Okie From Muskogee” was a hit, and Gene Vincent forgets the words to “Maybelline!” People started throwin’ shit at us, you know. Merle was very nice to me. “You boys are tryin’ real hard to do what you do, and I wish you boys the best of luck.” He was very nice.

[Bob Wills] was nice to anybody. I don’t think he had any idea about hippie / no hippie hair. Everybody knew we were being stoned because we were stoned! And he was very nice. He said, “Thank you for being interested in my music.” I told him we played Bob Wills music, and we’re trying to bring country and western to the north and the West Coast so they could dig this fine tradition of stuff that you people in Texas and the south have enjoyed all this time. What Paul Butterfield did for the blues, I wanna do that for country. I wanna bring it to the northerners; I wanna bring it to Michigan and the San Francisco Bay area, be that flag bearer.

When we went in 1973 to the CMA Convention in Nashville, they booed us off the stage. ‘Get a haircut! Find a rock concert, you hippie freaks!’ So that was the last time I played in Nashville. Well, I went back one time in the early ’80s to a bar there, and nobody showed up. That’s when I got pissed off, because I was about to score a mother/daughter act, and somebody broke it up. A mother/daughter combo, that’s No. 2 on the list of things to do. The No. 1 thing, of course, is sleeping with three red-headed sisters. That was the thinking at the time. Obviously I’m not thinking that now, of course, ’cause if my wife hears me say that now — she’s Sicilian you know — she’s gonna nail my balls to the wall and leave ’em there. But that’s what we thought at the time.

Commander Cody was never supposed to be doing any vocals. There was no Lynyrd Skynyrd, there was no Marshall Tucker ... why did there have to be a Commander Cody? The rest of the band said, “George, you’re gonna be the Commander Cody.” So people said, “Who’s the commander? What’s he doing?” I couldn’t sing a note back then, but I fell into this genre of fast talking, from Phil Harris. A lot of the stuff that I did was on this one Phil Harris album; then I got “Hot Rod Lincoln” from Johnny Bond. “Hot Rod Lincoln” is an answer song to a song called “Hot Rod Race” from 1949. It was actually pretty awful.

But Cody’s answer to that answer song was a surefire hit. The song had been written and performed in the ’50s by Charlie Ryan, and it later bolstered country singer Johnny Bond’s career in 1960.

Now that “Hot Rod” would be the vehicle for a bunch of hippies, and it was the ride of their lives.

Frayne: I learned the words to “Hot Rod Lincoln.” We started doing it; then they put it on the album, and then we tried to release “Lost In The Ozone” as the single. They didn’t like that. Somebody was playing “Hot Rod Lincoln” on the radio in the garlic capital of the world, Gilroy, Calif., and then L.A. got it; then New York got it, like that. My mom was pissed [about what I was doing] until she heard “Hot Rod Lincoln” on the radio in New York City. The next thing you know, she was on the phone to radio stations: “How come you haven’t played my son’s record?”

The only thing that was wrong with that is that we tried to release other singles after that by the real lead singers, but they never caught on, so Paramount insisted that the next thing will be by me. So that’s when “Smoke That Cigarette” came out as a single, and that’s what eventually broke up the band, because the real singers weren’t getting any hits, and finally it was kicked off by the manager stealing $500,000 from us or something like that. He just ripped us off for God knows how much money. We were out on the road; nobody had been paid in six months; we were over-extended on everything; we had two secretaries; a bus, a truck, five roadies, lawyers on retainer; and all this kind of stuff. It just collapsed from being top-heavy. There was nothing we could do.

Without another hit we were just sunk, and Warner Brothers disowned us because they couldn’t get any sales from us by using the usual L.A. country thing. And when we got off the Paramount label, I had two equal offers from Columbia and from Warner Brothers.

Now the president of Columbia Records called me on the phone saying, “We’re gonna back you to the max.” So I called up the manager saying, “I wanna go with Columbia,” and he said, “No, it’s too late, we already went with Warner Brother.” Now, if we had gone with Columbia, you know, that would’ve been fantastic, but I don’t know what it was. I got some speculation as to why they did that to me, but I’m sure it had to do with money.

Don’t forget, another thing that happened was all of sudden, we were doing all this western swing, and all of a sudden, our manager and booking agent started booking us as opening acts for the weirdest headliners in the world. I mean, I opened for The Doors! I opened for Led Zeppelin! 150,000 people. I could write a book about that gig. Peter Grant, their manager, and [another] Peter … oh maybe it’s a good thing we forget it, was the promoter of the gig, they’re up in a helicopter with an electronic counting device and they figured there was a 150,000 people there.

He claimed there was only 90,000 paid, but there was over a 150,000 people there. It was gonna be two weekends, and the first weekend was a beautifully sunny fantastic day, love fest all the way. So we left to go do a few gigs on the continent and come back for the second week when Keith Richards was supposed to bring his band and they were gonna play. Well, meanwhile, it rained. NME and all those musical people slagged the whole gig completely, put Commander Cody down, “Commander Bullfrog,” because I jumped over Steve Fishell, the Nashville producer.

They said, “Led Zeppelin’s rockabilly stuff sucked,” the promoter split and the Led Zeppelin guys were running the show, and they weren’t gonna pay anybody. So Southside Johnny, Commander Cody and Todd Rundgren were supposed to go on before Led Zeppelin. So we got together and said, “No American band goes on until all American bands get paid.” So they gave me a suitcase full of French franc notes, $15,000 in franc notes. We played 40 minutes, and we left. All sorts of other stuff went on; I could write a book just on that week of my life. It was on the Knebworth Estate out in the country about 40 miles from London. Ten percent of the crowd was still there after the weekend got through, and they didn’t like it at all. Keith Richards was supposed to show and he hadn’t shown yet, and you know people got really pissed, an advertised Stones show.

Then, of course, the band broke up, Billy C. went off to do the blues scene. Kirchen, he’s the guy that does the country stuff. [Guitarist] John Tichy, he does the rockabilly stuff. And I went on to do the boogie and rock-and-roll stuff, all of us having varying degrees of success in our specific genre, but at one time, that whole bunch of people came together.

And that’s the name of that tune.

The Commander still has plenty to say about 'Dopers, Drunks, and Everyday Losers'

Like the music of his hero Bob Wills, the music of Commander Cody still lives, breathes and pays the bills thanks to the tenacious dedication of its creator to working on the proverbial rock-and-roll road (and yes, Bob Wills music counts as rock and roll).

But that doesn’t mean that the studio isn’t important to a road hog like Cody. His new album on Blind Pig, Dopers, Drunks, and Everyday Losers, proves that 40 years down that road, the Commander can still write a song, dress it up and bring it to life.

“I hadn’t done a good studio album in almost 30 years, and it is time for a return to high quality,” he says, and Dopers... lives up to his promise, from the first driving steel-guitar notes of “Roll Your Own,” into the road-tripping take on John Hiatt’s “Tennessee Plates,” and through a dozen more tracks of teardrop country and rocking western swing.

Among the new compositions by Cody himself (originals credited to his real name, George Frayne) is a road ode called “OK Hotel,” which could have easily shown up on 1971’s Lost in the Ozone album, though contemporary references assure that this particular Lost Planet Airman is still living and working in the future (“Mary the maid comes in once a day, when her habit don’t keep her in the bed / And don’t leave anything behind unless you don’t mind seeing your stuff selling on the web / at the OK Hotel you’ll be doing swell, if you can stand the smell and the maniacs”).

Cody’s got plenty of Internet know-how, and the “OK Hotel” came right out of his own musical experimentation on the info superhighway.

“‘OK Hotel’ is from the Deep Toad project 2004 when I was learning how to use garage band,” he says. “Deep Toad is a band I made up. I got a drum machine, I played one take on the bass, one take on the imitation saxophone, like that. It took me three days to make an album. It’s not the hottest thing in the world, but the tunes are funny. I called it Deep Toad and I put it out on the garage band Web site, which is a great way for new bands to get going. [It was] a mock album demo of songs that have been around for decades. ‘OK Hotel’ is the best of these.”

Cody also took the opportunity to work up a new take on an old classic, with a torchy chanteuse taking a guest vocal on the Commander’s signature song, “Down To Seeds And Stems Again Blues.” Cody’s daughter, a New York model, turned him on to her singing friend, Circe Link, whose mournful voice recalled a version by the late great Nicolette Larson.

The album’s opening number, “Roll Your Own,” had been recorded by Commander Cody And The Lost Planet Airmen some years ago, as produced by the late Hoyt Axton, who had also recorded it himself to great effect. It’s an Axton original that Cody chose as the closer for the album, a song you already know, as most famously sung by a Beatle.

“Hoyt was a good friend of mine,” says Cody. “He tried to give me ‘The No No Song’ in ’75, and I rejected it after listening to my first wife’s advice. He gave it to Ringo, and they made five million bucks, so I thought I’d finally do a version of it.”

Axton would probably be proud to hear his rehab protagonist from “The No No Song” as another great character in the long line of Dopers, Drunks, and Everyday Losers in Commander Cody’s musical universe.