June 12, 2009

For a music fan, sitting down for a cup of coffee in the East Village with Buddy Cage beats anything a trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or reading a Robert Greenfield book could possibly offer to them.

Not to take anything away from either of those experiences, but as a self-proclaimed “lifelong freelancer” who for years served as Jerry Garcia’s hand-picked fill-in on his original pedal steel side-project, the New Riders of the Purple Sage, and has long been known as a first-call steel player, performing on albums with a diverse range of artists such as Bob Dylan, Ryan Montbleau, and even Anne Murray, Buddy Cage has more stories in his years than a sequoia and loves nothing more than to share them with a curious listener. And by “share” them, that means you get the unadulterated, R-rated version complete with gory details.

On the New Riders and the new album, Where I Come From

The New Riders of the Purple Sage are quite an amazing story in longevity, a band that has spanned around 40 years and 24 different members. In fact, amazingly enough, the predecessor lineup from 1982 to 1997 actually shares no common members with the current reformation.

For Buddy Cage, after originally joining the New Riders in 1972, both he and keystone member David Nelson decided to hang it up in 1982. “We were shot: physically, mentally, shot. There was no new material coming in and we were becoming our own damn knock off band, playing smaller and smaller venues.”

READ ON for more of Ryan’s interview with Buddy Cage of the NRPS…