What Goes Round...

[October 15th, 2008]

Outside of Oregon—or the peculiar world inhabited by rock critics and musicians—the Holy Modal Rounders isn’t necessarily a name spoken in the same breath as other iconic groups of the ’60s.

If the name comes up at all, it’s due to the self-proclaimed “psycho-delic” group’s minor pop culture successes: the inclusion of the anthemic space-folk song “If You Want To Be A Bird” on the soundtrack to Easy Rider, an appearance on the campy, psychedelic TV comedy cavalcade Laugh-In, or the many spins Dr. Demento gave to their goofy ode to mammary glands, “Boobs a Lot” (“Do you like boobs a lot?/ Yes, I like boobs a lot/ Boobs a lot, boobs a lot/ Gotta like boobs a lot”).

Here in Portland, however, the Rounders’ name and irreverent spirit are positively sacrosanct, sunk deep within the walls of venues like the LaurelThirst and the White Eagle and carried on by groups like the Freak Mountain Ramblers and the Lewi Longmire Band (both of which feature Rounders or Rounder collaborators in their ranks). And this Saturday, Oct. 18, the Rounders are being bestowed with the highest honor possible: induction into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame. The band, along with jazz pianist Dave Frishberg, guitarist Marlon McClain and Music Millennium head Terry Currier (also president of the OMHOF board of directors), will receive this distinction at a ceremony at the Roseland Theater.

This kind of honorific is a bit of a rarity for a band that, in the words of former Rounder—and current Rambler—Dave Reisch (who spoke to WW via telephone), “[was] never really given any awards. We were never considered strictly a rock band or a country band or a blues band. We were somewhere bouncing around in the middle.”

That statement carries a lot more weight for the long-running group than you might suspect, as their genre-hopping exercises and willful disregard of the usual musical protocols have both cursed them as cult figures and made them heroes in the eyes of those folks who have fallen under their singular spell. “They’ve always been right on the fringes of the music business,” says Longmire, an acolyte and friend of the band. “They always talk about how, just when they reached some of their best possibilities to break over into mainstream success, it would just fall apart.”

To be fair, the band never had a particularly radio-friendly sound to begin with. Founded in New York by Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber, a pair of folk/old-time-music devotees, the Rounders began with a rather traditional sound—a heavy reliance on banjo, acoustic guitar and fiddle—but slowly morphed into a full-blown blues-boogie outfit. The band’s finest records—1968’s The Holy Modal Rounders Eat The Moray Eels and their 1976 collaboration with fellow mindbending folksters Michael Hurley and Jeffrey Frederick, Have Moicy!—melded those two aesthetics together, creating some brilliantly off-kilter songs undercut with a healthy dose of irreverence and occasional raunchiness (they did pen the song “Snappin’ Pussy,” after all).

While they were welcomed into the folk and psychedelic music scenes on the East Coast, making friends along the way with the likes of Dave Van Ronk and the Fugs, they were often held back by their self-destructive tendencies. While most bands stuck to a diet of marijuana and psychedelics, Stampfel and Weber headed straight for the methamphetamine and heroin, respectively. As Reisch, who joined the group full time in 1970, saw it, the two “were only one step removed from being street junkies.” The heavy drug use took a toll on them physically as well, particularly in the case of Weber, whose lean physique degenerated into the rail-thin figure—Longmire likens it to being “made out of rubber bands”—that he carries around to this day.

It was because of the duo’s voracious drug use that the least-addled members of the group (a lineup that included some of their longest-standing members: Reisch, guitarist Robin Remailly and drummer Roger North) made the executive decision to move the band away from temptation, pointing their tour bus toward Portland. Stampfel refused to go with them.

“There was all kinds of squabbling about what direction the band would take,” the 68-year-old Stampfel said recently, speaking to WW from his apartment in New York, “and I really didn’t want to go to Oregon, though it would have been interesting if I did.”

It was here in Portland that the band really found a home for its freewheeling sound and lifestyle, playing regular slots at the White Eagle Saloon and the Purple Earth Tavern while living in a rickety house on East Burnside Street or out of its tour bus. “It was a rollicking time, to say the least,” says Currier, who at the time was forced to listen to the band from outside the venues (he was underage). “Their shows were pretty wild, with everybody getting all liquored up and worse.”

While bootlegs from that period showed the Rounders to be as inventive and impressive as ever, relationships within the band were slowly fracturing. “You know, Weber kept getting loaded,” says Reisch. “Not showing up or showing up in bad condition, not writing any new tunes. We just got tired of it.”

Although Reisch places the official year the band broke up at 1978, all the members of the group remained musical partners in some capacity. Reisch, Remailly and North went on to form the Freak Mountain Ramblers while Weber and Stampfel continued to record and perform onstage together in various permutations. As well, the Rounders continued to reunite on an annual basis here in Portland: Just a few weekends ago, the band played a series of shows at a variety of McMenamins locations, culminating in a triumphant two-night stand at the Mission Theater.

There was, however, one Rounder missing this time around: Steve Weber. Following what he perceives as his unfair portrayal in Bound to Lose, a 2007 documentary on the band, Weber has cut off all contact with Stampfel and the other members of the group and is supposedly holed up on his girlfriend’s farm in West Virginia.

In spite of all the setbacks, roadblocks, and speed bumps in their 40-plus-year career that have kept them from being anthologized and memorialized as frequently as their peers, the Holy Modal Rounders have survived, and have kept their handmade freak flag flying proudly. “Greil Marcus talked about Dylan’s ‘old weird America’,” says Longmire of the band’s adherence to its own personal brand of musical nonconformity. “Dylan may have documented that personality style, but these guys are actually living it.”