Nov. 20, 1971: Dick Lobdell and the Wanderers, or is it The Wanderers featuring Dick Lobdell?
Time to take another spin around the eternal debate as to what really is country music:
Nov. 20, 1971
Just Wander In
Hear Down-Home Music
“People come in and ask what kind of music we do,” says Dick
Lobdell. “And I tell them we do everything from ‘Cattle Call’ to ‘Aquarius’ to
‘Joy to the World.’ Tell me, what do YOU call it?”
The question skitters like a pinball off your cerebral bumper
stops. An endless rolling glittery sphere of possibility. Rock? No. It’s
country. Well … maybe more like easy listening. But … it’s kinda down-home,
too.
“The real followers, the people who appreciate good music,
they won’t try to strap us down,” Dick is saying from under that smooth full head
of hair and his moustache and goatee and all.
* * *
“THEY KNOW,”
he adds, “they can go and hear a good country band and hear the other songs
they like, too.
“There’s that one song by Kenny Rogers and The First Edition
– ‘Something’s Burning.’ And I don’t care if they’re younger or older, they’ll
stand up and clap for it.”
* * *
KENNY ROGERS
and The First Edition? Here come the mental pinball flippers again. What are
they? Rock? Folk? Easy listening? Country?
“We don’t do anything you can’t hear on WWOL,” says bearded
drummer Don McGreevey, who even looks a little like Kenny Rogers. “It’s modern
country. Like Poco. It’s the
“We work with WWOL all the time,” Dick says. “We were at
their jamboree last month for the United Fund. The station feels we represent
what they’re trying to get across to their people.
“And what we have here is two guys who are not country doing
country music. This guy is a rock drummer and this guy” – Dick points to
pianist and bass guitarist Art Lutz – “is a budding young classical pianist.
“And I’m an old-fashioned country hick,” he adds. “You should
see the practice sessions.”
* * *
IN BEYOND
the supper-club chandeliers and the carpeting and the sport coats and ties and
pantsuits at The Hub on South Park Avenue in Blasdell, Art tosses a stuffed
Snoopy dog at Dick and Dick clowns a little with it while Art plays piano music
like on the Charlie Brown TV specials.
Snoopy’s been Dick’s mascot ever since he started. There’s
three or four Snoopies around the stage and seven or eight more at home. People
have just come up and given them to him.
What starts the old mental pinball this time is the way the
band dresses. Matching outfits are nothing new to country music, but the
Wanderers are wearing threads that would do a commercial rock group proud.
And this being Saturday night, they change between every set.
“It gets so people are disappointed if we don’t,” Dick explains.
And the cerebral bumper pads go crazy in a succession of
numbers that start with Art singing “Aquarius, Let the Sun Shine” with his
commendable tenor. He picks out the high harmonies when Dick follows with a
pair of Hank Williams songs.
* * *
NEXT DON,
whose father is singing barbershop harmonies in
And half the room is up dancing to “Joy to the World,” that’s
right, with Three Dog Night harmonies. Don also does that old rock ballad,
“Then You Can Tell Me Good-Bye,” with Dick and Art putting on the weee-ooohs.
Then Dick, singing a good copy of “Sweet City Woman,” which,
he’ll tell you proudly, only he and Dale Thomas are doing for the country
crowds. And to close the set, a kick-it-out “Wildwood Flower,” like the other
fast stuff, a little too speedy and raggedy on the details this night.
The combination of tight commercial slickness and raucous
country fun must be spinning the pinball lights for Don, too. Because his rock
roots beckon him and he wonders. Except that rock didn’t pay anywhere near as
well.
“Just because we’re playin’ country music, I don’t think we
should be stompin’ on peanut shells,” Dick was saying that afternoon.
“I always wondered if it would work in a place where they had
banquets. This place tried rock, jazz, commercial – nothing happened. Then we
came in here. The only thing the owner asked was not to ruin his dinner trade.
We filled the place up.”
* * *
THE GENTEEL
touch shows. Art has a foot switch to control three little slide projectors
that work as pencil spotlights. And the group isn’t “Dick Lobdell and the
Wanderers.” It’s “The Wanderers Featuring Dick Lobdell.”
“I like that,” says Art. “I really get sick of so-and-so ‘and
the.’”
The Hub has been headquarters for The Wanderers for more than
a year. It’s close to their suburban homes and they found they missed it when
they did a stint in
They’ll continue there through New Year’s on Fridays and
Saturdays, then move to Dick’s brother Tony’s new place – Copper John’s on
* * *
“WE’RE KNOWN
for our harmonies,” Dick says, “and you don’t get it sitting home watching
color TV. When we do a song, we like to find out what sounds best with who
doing what. We’re showing people how much you can get out of three guys.
“For five years, I had a four-piece band until my steel
guitar player quit to become a Jehovah’s Witness minister,” he says, switching
on an old tape. “Listen to him there. I really miss that steel.”
What helps now, Dick explains, is that they all can switch
instruments.
* * *
“I USED to
be real country,” Dick says, “and then one day I thought hey, this is too easy.
And so I started keeping up with the new stuff and people followed my change
and they all liked it.
“Listen to the stuff coming out of
The box/sidebar:
Credit Dad’s Guitar
Pertinent information about
The Wanderers:
Dick Lobdell, 27, guitar, harmonica and leader,
Art Lutz, 19, bass, piano and vibes, Frontier Central, second
year music major at
Don McGreevy, 24, drums and occasional guitar, Timon High,
Army veteran, attends UB nights, married.
* * *
DICK picked
up country music from his guitar- and banjo-picking father, who was a farmer
before he moved to the
“Dad always had a guitar around the house,” Dick says. “He
showed me three chords and that got me started. I used to spend hours and hours
practicing.”
He started 10 years ago in the country places in a group in
which he played rhythm guitar and Dale Thomas played bass. He introduced Dale
to his girlfriend’s sister and the two are now brothers-in-law.
Around 1966, Dick was with Junior Tweedy for about a year,
playing with a part-time group of his own on Sundays. What made the group
permanent was a layoff from his day job and a five-night-a-week offer at the
Shinglehouse.
* * *
ART SAYS he
tried to be jazz-oriented, but couldn’t make any money at it. He played a while
with Eddie Bentley’s country group and met Don there and finally, two years
ago, put an ad in the paper. Dick’s was the best of 20 offers.
Don joined Dick about five months ago. He’d drummed for two
years with The Manchesters, a rock group. He was playing with Bentley and
trying to put another rock band together last winter, but it broke up when the
guitarist-vocalist got drafted.
Dick called his first group The Westernaires. “That sounded
too hickey,” he notes, “so I changed it to The Wanderers. It was quite true. We
were wandering around, playing here and there, from one end of the city to the
other.”
* * * * *
PHOTO CAPTION:
Dick Lobdell, center, and The Wanderers, drummer Don McGreevy, left, and bass
guitarist and pianist Art Lutz.
* * * * *
FOOTNOTE: Dick Lobdell continued to play clubs here
until the 1990s and eventually released an album. According to his Facebook page, he’s now
living in
Bass guitarist
Art Lutz still lives in
Drummer Don McGreevy also kept playing the clubs here for quite a while. He flashed back into the public eye 10 years ago as
manager of Michael Grimm, winner of the fifth season of “
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