Concert Preview: Check in and check it out
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| The Ranger Motel staff: Brad Piccolo, Ben Han and John Cooper. Not pictured: Norman Bates. |
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By MATT ELLIOTT World Scene Writer
4/6/2007 9:50 AM
Red Dirt Rangers ready to celebrate new, rootsy recording
When the stress and the smoke and the sound of touring and performing get to be too much, Red Dirt Rangers' mandolinist John Cooper likes to retreat to his newly built home, on a 10-acre stretch of land near U.S. 412 on the southern edge of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.
"I love it out there," Cooper said. "It's nice to go out in the country and be out there and just let it go." That's part of the do-it-yourself Rangers focus for its first album in more than four years, "Ranger Motel."
"This is a real roots record for us, I think, just because of the fact that we're doing songs about Stillwater and Payne County."
Cooper, 49, described "Ranger Motel" as 14 rooms or separate spaces from the Rangers' 18-year career.
"Ranger Motel" is the last album recorded at Steve Ripley's closed Church Studio in Tulsa, Cooper said. It's the band's second album produced by the Tractors' guitarist.
It's got some folk, rock, Cajun and bluegrass influences as well as a tribute ("Psychedelic Cowboy") to one of the band's chief influences, Doug Sahm. In fact, one of Sahm's musical collaborators, keyboardist Augie Meyers of the Sir Douglas Quintet and the Texas Tornadoes has some featured performances on the album.
The band also received some co-writer help from Red Dirt denizens Mike McClure, Tom Skinner and Bob Childers.
The first song, "Red Dirt Roads," kicks the disc off in rock 'n' roll fashion, and follows the singer restlessly prowling the dirt roads outside Stillwater at night with a six-pack companion, looking to shake the "Oklahoma blues."
Other songs, such as the Eagles-esque "This Time" and "Always Come Back" show the singer inevitably drifting homeward, no matter where he goes or how far astray he's wandered.
The band's current lineup, including Tulsa Sound drummer Jimmy Karstein, fiddler Randy Crouch, as well as mainstays mandolinist Cooper, Brad Piccolo on guitar and Ben Han on lead guitar, has gelled after about five years together, Cooper said.
The Red Dirt Rangers are about as Oklahoman as their namesake, Red Dirt music. They got their start in the late 1980s, playing around the college town/farming community of Stillwater.
Cooper said he honed his chops in "the Farm," a five-bedroom house ruled by college students on 150 acres just west of Oklahoma State University's campus.
The band put out its first recording in 1991, a disc with a decidedly "Tex-Mex feel," Cooper said.
Cooper was a biology teacher and baseball coach in Oklahoma City, and Han was a photographer who working in Oklahoma City, taking photos of kidney and brain cells, said Cooper. Despite Piccolo's mechanical engineering degree, stuck to being a full-time musician.
More than 15 years later, the new album may be one of the final steps to getting the band members' lives back to normal following a horrific helicopter crash.
On June 26, 2004, a helicopter carrying the band crashed into the Cimarron River just minutes after taking off from the Elks Lodge east of Cushing, where the band was playing a birthday party.
That helicopter crash, which killed the pilot and a front seat passenger, left Han, Cooper and Piccolo with grievous injuries. Cooper, then a weight lifter and biking enthusiast broke an ankle, his pelvis, a collar bone, ribs and punctured both of his lungs in the crash.
Nearly three years later the band has bounced back, although the guys will never tour like they used to, Cooper said.
The band took a long break around January. Piccolo welcomed a new baby into his family and was building a new house, Cooper said. The mandolinist moved into his new home and Han had surgery during the break.
But now, "Everybody's doing well. Just the fact that we're sitting up and breathing is pretty good. We feel very blessed to be where we're at."
Matt Elliott 581-8366
matt.elliott@tulsaworld.com
RED DIRT RANGERS CD RELEASE PARTY
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday
Where: Bob's, Cain's Ballroom's second stage, 423 N. Main St.
Admission: $15 day of the show.
By MATT ELLIOTT World Scene Writer
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