NRBQ
If you bought the debut album by NRBQ when it was released on Columbia Records in
1969, you might have been thrown off guard. It was representative of a musical approach
that thought nothing of introducing Eddie Cochran to Sun Ra, nodding over to Chuck Willis,
contributing unique original songwriting, and just stomping all over the joint. Were they a
revival band? A jazz fusion band? Was this rockabilly? Power pop before it was named?
Americana before that was named? NRBQ were behind and ahead of the curve from the
start, and that’s where they’ve remained over the past five decades, amassing a
discography that is way overdue for a complete reappraisal and gathering an audience for
whom the word ‘loyal’ is far less than adequate.
There really is no other band that does what NRBQ does, something that’s beyond category,
as Duke Ellington would say about his music, something that could never be pinpointed as
‘rock,’ exactly, although that’s as good a description as any. Much has been made over the
years of the band’s eclectic nature, but it has its roots in a very solid tradition of taking
diverse musical strains and incorporating them into an all-encompassing vision. Elvis
Presley was doing hillbilly music, blues, Rodgers & Hart right from the beginning. The
Beatles covered Motown, Sun, and ‘The Music Man.’ Who ever said music needed to be one
thing only?
The original New Rhythm and Blues Quartet was born in Louisville, Kentucky in the second
half of the 1960s, when Terry Adams (keyboards) and Steve Ferguson (guitar) came
together in the Adams family home and agreed on just what kind of band they wanted to
have. No rules, no boundaries, no fear. NRBQ went through a number of line-ups from ’66
to ’68, after which Adams and Ferguson met up with Frank Gadler (vocals), Tom Staley
(drums), and Joey Spampinato aka Jody St. Nicholas (bass) in Florida, and formed the
Quintet that became the first recorded NRBQ. They were signed to Columbia Records, and
recorded two albums – NRBQ and Boppin’ The Blues (a partial collaboration with
rockabilly legend Carl Perkins) – before parting ways with the label.
After their Columbia tenure, Ferguson left and Adams, Spampinato, Gadler and Staley were
joined by guitarist Al Anderson for the first of two much-loved Kama Sutra albums,
1972’s Scraps. A year later, minus Gadler, the now-quartet recorded Workshop. The label
possibly thought it had another Lovin’ Spoonful on its hands. You know, wacky-eccentric,
with a big dose of pop exuberance. The Kama Sutra albums are the ones that began to
define the band’s personality for real, and they started to really hit their stride with their
first indie release on their own Red Rooster label, All Hopped Up, which featured one of
their most durable songs, Anderson’s “Ridin’ In My Car.” All Hopped Up also saw the
departure of Staley and the arrival of drummer Tom Ardolino. It was this line-up – Adams,
Anderson, Spampinato and Ardolino, along with the Whole Wheat Horns (Terry’s brother
Donn — who originally came up with the band’s name — on trombone and Keith Spring on
saxophone) – that remained intact for two decades, releasing albums and touring
incessantly, building a devoted following along the way.
The band spent most of the rest of the 20th century playing 200+ shows a year in the U.S.
and Europe, and releasing albums on Red Rooster/Rounder with stopovers at a few major
labels: Mercury (At Yankee Stadium), Bearsville/Warner Bros. (Grooves In Orbit), Virgin
(Wild Weekend), and Rhino (Message for the Mess-Age). There were live albums, and
collaborations with Skeeter Davis and Captain Lou Albano, and compilations, and reissues.
Along the way, Al Anderson left the group (1994), replaced by Joey’s brother Johnny
Spampinato. And the band kept bouncing along on the road, including regular tours of
Japan, before finally taking a break in 2004.
That year, SpiritHouse Records released The Q People: A Tribute To NRBQ, an album
where artists paid homage to the lasting impact of the band. You can see, in the list of
people who jumped on board this project, how wide-ranging the influence of NRBQ has
been; along with longtime fan Bonnie Raitt (who not only recorded the Adams-Spampinato
song “Green Lights” as the title song for one of her albums and Adams’s “Me And The Boys”
as well, but calls NRBQ “the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world”), Q People brought
together Steve Earle, jam band Widespread Panic, alt-rockers Yo La Tengo, J. Mascis, Mike
Mills (from R.E.M.), singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith, and Spongebob SquarePants.
NRBQ has always been blessed with wonderful songwriters – Adams, Joey Spampinato,
Anderson, Ferguson, Ligon, McDonough– have all written great songs, making the NRBQ
songbook a one-of-a-kind treasure trove. Although none of the songs were ‘hits’ – “Me And
The Boys” (with the real-life line “Future’s no problem cause we don’t care, wherever we’re
going we’ll soon get there”), “Little Floater,” “The One And Only,” “I Want You Bad”
(covered by Dave Edmunds, Freedy Johnston, Dan Baird, and the Long Ryders), “Ridin’ In
My Car,” (covered by She and Him), Spampinato’s “Christmas Wish” (covered by Darlene
Love) to name a few – they are all, in any way that matters, classic. And the list of illustrious
‘Q fans not only includes the likes of Raitt and Edmunds (who’s also cut “Me And The Boys”
and “Green Lights”) but also Elvis Costello (who’s called their debut one of the ‘500 Albums
You Need’), Keith Richards, the residents of Springfield (NRBQ were the unofficial ‘house
band’ of The Simpsons – they not only appeared as animated characters in a Season 11
episode, but appeared as themselves in the same episode, playing Adams’s arrangement of
The Simpsons theme as the end credits rolled), Harry Shearer, Drew Carey, Paul
McCartney, Penn Jillette, Ian McLagan, and even a NASA astronaut, who flew a copy
of Grooves In Orbit into space in 2009.
In 2005, Joey and Johnny Spampinato left NRBQ to form their own band. From 2005-2008,
Adams released archival NRBQ projects, live recordings with Marshall Allen of the Sun Ra
Arkestra (Ten By Two), a collaboration with his original musical partner Steve Ferguson
(Louisville Sluggers) and new music under his own name (Rhythm Spell, recorded with
T-Bone Wolk and Tom Ardolino and Holy Tweet, recorded with Scott Ligon and Tom
Ardolino).
In 2007, Adams and Ligon (guitar) recruited Pete Donnelly (bass) and Conrad Choucroun
(drums) –and hit the road as The Terry Adams Rock & Roll Quartet. “I found musicians who
not only understand NRBQ’s past and traditions but who are open to future
impossibilities,” said Adams. “It’s important that their reason for being musicians in the
first place is real.”
Three years of touring and one live CD (Crazy 8’s) followed and the band recorded a new
studio album in 2010-11. The spirit of NRBQ was alive and well. In the spring of
2011, Adams announced the release of a new NRBQ album ‘Keep This Love Goin,’ said, “I
didn’t want to call the band NRBQ right away because I didn’t want Scott, Pete, and Conrad
subjected to unfair comparisons. It was clear in the spring of 2009 that we had it onstage,
but I wanted to wait until we had more road experience and a new studio album with new
songs that we wrote and recorded together.”
Tom Ardolino was one of the loudest champions of the new NRBQ line-up —"It’s time to
welcome to the world the latest version of NRBQ. Terry, Conrad, Scott, and Pete are playing
true music, which is what NRBQ is all about. All you have to do is listen to this band and you
will feel what they’re putting down. If you can’t feel it, I feel sorry for you. NRBQ is back!"
(Ardolino appeared with the band on stage as a second drummer as often as he could
during 2007-11, until his untimely death in early 2012.)
In a review of Keep This Love Goin’, critic Bill Bentley said that Adams has “proven that
it’s the passion inside a sound that matters as much as who is playing the instruments . . .
When the songs are flowing and Adams and his musical buddies are rolling, they let the
pride in one of America’s all-time great bands fly high.”
Keep This Love Goin’ was followed by the live recording We Travel the Spaceways in
2011, and then by another new studio album in 2014, Brass Tacks, recorded with Adams,
Ligon, Choucroun, and new bassist Casey McDonough. The Los Angeles Daily Times
gushed, “Brass Tacks is as accomplished and as spirited an album as the band has ever
made … The unalloyed joy that flows through a trio of breezy, heartfelt love songs —
‘Waitin’ on My Sweetie Pie,’ ‘Sit In My Lap’ and ‘Can’t Wait To Kiss You’ — will stop even the
most jaded listener dead in his tracks. Pop music this elemental and non-ironically
exuberant needs to be treasured as the rare resource it is … Brass Tacks is a terrific
addition to the band’s catalog, one that might even act as a gateway drug to NRBQ’s long
and rewarding back history.”
What comes through, seeing NRBQ live in 2015, is the same spirit and vision that has
always been there. At the center, the guiding force of NRBQ is, as it has been, Adams’s
sensibility, his idea of what a rock and roll band can encompass. Everything about the band,
its unusual combination of wackiness and dead-serious musicianship, its ability — but
more than that, its willingness — to move from genre to genre, to deliver the unexpected,
has been, as one fan put it, “an extension of Terry’s personality.”
NRBQ has been, since its origins close to 50 years ago, about the band and the audience
going on a ride together, without a musical map. Still touring with the Whole Wheat Horns,
an important element of NRBQ’s sound (the section has included original members Donn
Adams & Keith Spring, as well as Gary Windo, Sun Ra musicians Pat Patrick, Tyrone Hill,
Dave Gordon, and Knoel Scott, Jim Hoke, and today Klem Klimek and Carl Q), the band still
performs with no set list. Adams calls the songs as he feels them, the live show goes where
it goes, and that’s why the ‘Q in concert is never what you’d expect but always a joy to
witness. NRBQ music is made fresh and in the moment, every performance is authentic and
true. And the musicians in the band are up to the task, and the legacy. “I bring out the best
in them,” Adams once said of the players who have been members of NRBQ, “and they bring
out the best in me.”
Today, the sound and spirit of NRBQ is soaring. Don’t miss them.