Last week, my wife gave me an album called, "Christmas with Buck Owens and his Buckaroos" as an early Christmas present. It's been in heavy rotation here at the farmhouse since then as I write my final papers for the semester.

Andy and I spent a while analyzing why that album, and really any Buck Owens album, is so instantly recognizable and familiar, despite our never having heard any of the songs before. Obviously, Buck Owens songs are pretty formulaic, usually following along the lines of: intro, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, instrumental verse, chorus, repeat the last line a few times and end. Buck will sing the verses alone and Don Rich will come in with that great high harmony part on the refrains, the Telecasters are twangy and the steel guitar is crisp, with lots of major chord suspensions. The bass doesn't stray far from the 1 and the 5 or a good walk up and down a dominant 7th chord, and the drums play a shuffle no matter what.

The minimalism of the music is certainly an important part of the sound. It's deceptively simple, though, taking a few minutes to learn, and years to master (in my case, I think it's going to take a few more years). The slight variations in rhythm and dynamics are subtle but key to the sound. Los Hijos Unicos has been covering a handful of Buck Owens songs here and there over the last few months, and it really takes some concentration and group effort to keep them subdued, like they were meant to be played. The songs require all the parts to come together, and are destroyed by any one person overplaying.

Buck Owens obviously had a good time while he was playing. He sings some damned sad lyrics but he sings them with a smile and the music is almost always upbeat and danceable. Check out their smiles on this video of the Buckaroos in action on the Buck Owens Ranch show here: Foolin' Around. The Buckaroos make music that makes me want to move – it's that crisp, bright sound and strong backbeat.

Also, Buck was a real showman. Those matching sequined Nudie suits the Buckaroos all wear on most of their album covers are just about the ultimate in stage wear. Matching silver sparkle guitars and basses complete the look. What's more, that great show comes without any big dance moves or anything overly theatrical. Check out Don Rich's face during the solo 40 seconds into this clip: Love's Gonna Live Here. How can you not smile watching a man who loves playing his guitar that much?

We have a lot to learn from the Buckaroos. Let's start with Nudie suits.



Ryan
LHU

As part of our ongoing work to make our Myspace page useful and informative, we will be listing all past shows on this blog page, a mirror of the shows page on our underutilized non-myspace website.

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6/15/2009 -- The Elevens, Northampton, MA. With the Luckless Pedestrian, Sitting Next to Brian, and Matthew Loiacono.

5/1/2009 -- The Elevens, Northampton, MA. Wes Anderson B-Day Bash - the music of Wes Anderson.  Also Ryan turned 25.

4/9/2009 -- The Sierra Grille, Northampton, MA.  With the Merchant Bankers and the Original Cowards.

3/28/2009 -- The Elevens, Northampton, MA.  We played with the Aloha Steamtrain and the Novals for the Aloha Steamtrain's Annual St. Patriot's Day Celebration.

3/5/2009 -- The Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, MA.  With Tulsa from Boston.  Fun show.


2008

12/20/08 -- The Elevens, Northampton, MA. Last Minute Snow Emergency Show - Andy, Brendan and Ryan played with The Novels, School For The Dead, The Fawns, Sitting Next To Brian, and Super Happy Wicked Awesome Fun Time.

12/18/08 -- The Sierra Grille, Northampton, MA. Northampton Holiday Hoedown - We played "Mele Kalikimaka" and "Pretty Paper".

10/25/08 -- The Elevens, Northampton, MA. Who Tribute Night at the Elevens! We played "A Quick One While He's Away".

10/17/08 -- The Elevens, Northampton, MA. We played with The Others for their cd release party. This included a mini-set of Patsy Cline covers: "Strange", "She's Got You", "Walking After Midnight", "I Fall to Pieces", and "Leaving on Your Mind"..

9/26/08 -- The Elevens, Northampton, MA. We played with School for the Dead at their cd release show.

9/18/08 -- The Sierra Grille, Northampton, MA. We played "Mambo Sun", "Planet Queen", and "Monolith" at a T. Rex/Marc Bolan Tribute Night.

9/12/08 -- UMass Amherst Student Union, Amherst, MA. We played a show for UAW Local 2322.

8/21/08 -- The Sierra Grille, Northampton, MA. We played with The Claudia Malibu and The Ray Mason Band.

6/7/08 -- The Basement, Northampton, MA. We played with Trials and Tribulations and HONEY.

5/22/08 -- The Sierra Grille, Northampton, MA. We played the first night of the Valley Worm Fest with The Figments, Fields of Gaffney, The Others, the Oweihops, and School for The Dead.

4/4/08 -- The Midway Cafe, Boston, MA. We played with The Resurrectionists.

3/8/08 -- The Brass Cat, Easthampton, MA. We played with Trials and Tribulations & Jason of The Bourgeois Heroes.

2/10/08 -- The Basement, Northampton, MA. We played with Ella Longpre, Opel, Matt Silberstein, and the Novels.


2007

11/30/07 -- Sally O'Brien's, Somerville, MA. We played with Dearborn Valley, Brian Pero and the Tired Horses, and Suburban Shaker (an Uncle Shaker side project).

11/24/07 -- The Basement, Northampton, MA. We played with Brandee Simone and The Feral Children. We hope to set up more shows with both groups.

11/8/07 -- The Sierra Grille, Northampton, MA. We played with Murder Mystery and Abeja. They were both great.

10/6/07 -- The Cantab Lounge, Cambridge, MA.
We played with The Poverty Line Old Time Band and Reverend Bob and The Darkness.

8/24/2007 -- The Middle East Corner Room, Cambridge, MA.

8/9/2007 -- The Bulfinch Yacht Club, Boston, MA.
We played with Gretel and The Resurrectionists.

7/30/2007 -- The Independent, Somerville, MA.

6/29/2007 -- Danvers Family Festival Battle of the Bands, Danvers, MA.

5/18/2007 -- Skybar, Somerville, MA.
We played this, the first "Somerville Roots Night", with Sam Wheeler, The Henrines, and Dearborn Valley

5/3/2007 -- Bangkok Paradise, Salem, MA.

4/7/2007 -- Skybar, Somerville, MA

3/1/2007 -- P.A.'s Lounge, Somerville, MA
We played with Sam Wheeler and Brother/Sister.

2/24/2007 -- "Music Box" at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, North Adams, MA

1/6/2007 -- Skybar, Somerville, MA


2006

10/31/2006 -- Battle of The Bands at MCLA, North Adams, MA
(Billed as "This Week's Episode: Sneaky Pete and The Surfin' Batmen Fight For Their Right To Marry")

10/4/2006 -- Skybar, Somerville, MA
We played with Ross Livermore and The Freeways.

9/10/2006 -- Harper's Ferry, Allston, MA
We played with Kinnie Star.

9/9/2006 -- Gideon's Nightery, North Adams, MA
We played with Christie Leigh.

8/30/2006 -- The Abbey Lounge, Somerville, MA
We played with The Max Klau Band, Scholar and Pure Fiction.

8/3/2006 -- P.A.'s Lounge, Somerville, MA
We played with Pinocchio Syndrome, Comma, and Nash Lane.

6/26/2006 -- All Asia Bar, Cambridge, MA
We played with good friends, The Sober Dead

5/5/2006 -- Outsider Magazine, St. Thomas Parish Hall, New Windsor, NY

3/3/2006 -- Gideon's Nightery, Eagle Street, North Adams, MA

2/25/2006 -- "Music Box" at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, North Adams, MA

2/17/2006 -- Cup and Saucer, North Adams, MA

Hey there folks,

We're busy recording our second album so we've cut back on live shows for a little while. When the album is pressed, we'll be back out in Northampton and Boston with some cd release shows and what-have-you.

In the meantime, I thought I'd post this link to some live recordings we did a little over a year ago with some acoustic arrangements of songs off of our first album, "...and the lights go out", and some songs that will be on this next album, which has yet to be titled.

The recordings are available for listening at LHU's Band in Boston Flophouse Session. You might also want to check out their other material, they have some great live recordings of Boston bands, some of whom make it out this way occasionally.

in solidarity,
Ryan
LHU

This was in the Valley Advocate on June 19, 2008. Read the original here.


Behind the Beat: Aliens Descend on the Valley
Los Hijos Unicos takes aim at country music and country politics.

Thursday, June 19, 2008
By Matthew Dube


Los Hijos Unicos is a band on a mission: to make country music cool again. This might seem like an ambitious undertaking to some, but the eight-person outfit—with members from Northampton, Somerville and the North Shore—is a confident lot. Plus, it is armed with its own subgenre, one its members have dubbed "Alien Country."

"We've always called it Alien Country because we were committed to bringing alien sounds to our music; we wanted to use instruments and production techniques of the Beatles and the Beach Boys in country songs," explains vocalist, bassist and banjo player Ryan Quinn. "To that end, we might use a theremin, or sing four-part harmonies live, or do something like create tape loop song endings."

"Alien Country has a second meaning, though, because the music is also alienated from the sound people refer to when they use the word 'country,'" Quinn says. "We're coming to realize that we don't fit in with the roots scene we were playing with in Boston, and that we have a lot more in common with a band like [Valley power-pop band] The Novels than with most country and roots bands."

The group met at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams. It came together in 2006 when Quinn's punk band, Karate Kid Death Squad, disintegrated. "I had been writing songs that were too country for the other members, and they were playing them too punk for me," says Quinn. So he and fellow KKDS band member and multi-instrumentalist Isaac Sussman started Los Hijos Unicos and invited a bunch of friends to join in.

Quinn headed to Western Massachusetts last year to get a master's degree in Labor Studies at UMass-Amherst, and is trying to recruit the rest of the crew to move to the area. And the band name?

Quinn says, "The name comes from a poem scrawled on a Red Line subway car seat that stuck in my head, and a dream where my spirit animal told me that the band must be named after the poem."

Alien, indeed.

Los Hijos Unicos claims to be influenced by sounds from Hank Williams to Stax soul to The White Stripes. Quinn says he writes most of the songs on acoustic guitar and then gives them to the rest of the band with basic directions on how to flesh them out: "The group arranges the songs, and together we develop vocal harmonies and sometimes each others' parts." The band has one album, 2006's ∧ the lights go out, and is currently recording its second.

The live stage show is a giant hoedown, with nine people singing and shouting along to twangy tunes about highways, Nebraska and Walter Reed. The instrumentation is varied—including, but not limited to, organ, fiddle, cowbell, glockenspiel and dulcimer—but the star of the show is undoubtedly band member Andy Goulet's theremin.

When he tried out the seldom-used instrument during a tongue-in-cheek rendition of the Beach Boys' "Be True To Your School" during this past winter's Happy Valley Showdown battle of the bands, Quinn says, the crowd's response was overwhelming. "People went wild for the theremin, and we liked the sound," he recalls, "so we've kept it since then. It fills the space where steel guitar should be."

Then there is drummer Chase Billingham. While his bandmates look like they have just stepped out of an Arcade Fire concert, Billingham appears as if he might be auditioning for a role in a Rascal Flatts video. Tall and lanky, he wears a cowboy hat with an oversized American flag button affixed to the front, and a Texas Lone Star flag button-down shirt tucked into his dungarees. He is a sight to behold as he earnestly shuffles along on drums and contributes high harmony vocal parts.

When asked about his drummer's natty attire, Quinn says that Billingham's girlfriend is from Texas, and adds, "If we could afford it, we would all wear matching rhinestone nudie suits like Buck Owens and the Buckaroos."

All this leads to the ultimate question: Is there, in fact, hope for the future of popular country music?

"The music will get better when people start looking back to the sounds of the past rather than cashing in on whatever over-compressed, auto-tuned trend sells today," says Quinn. "It's only a matter of time before we get a new neo-traditionalist wave in mainstream country, trying to bring back the sounds of Johnny Horton or Buck Owens, or even Gram Parsons."

To Quinn, the politics of country music are perhaps even more troubling.

"In most people's minds, contemporary country is solidly aligned with the worst kind of jingoism and xenophobia," he says. "It's my hope that this, too, is cyclical and will pass. Los Hijos Unicos are trying to do our part to bring about the socialist future—both for country music and for the United States."

Most bands just shoot for beer tickets and gas money.

© 2008 The Valley Advocate