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No place like home for Home
Rangers
Cowboy band doesn't play very often, but it
has a lot of fun when it does get together.
By Diane Samms Rush
The Wichita Eagle
Trying to get
straight answers from the Home Rangers is like eating a big, wiggly
bowlful of Jell-O: Before you get to the substance, you have a lot
of fun playing.
To say that the four Wichita-area musicians who
comprise the cowboy band are quick-witted would be an understatement.
With the possible exception of one, each makes his living with his wits,
at least to some extent.
Orin Friesen, bass and harmonica player, is a
longtime Wichita broadcaster with KFDI Radio and a bluegrass junkie who
is an expert at filling dead air; Richard Crowson, banjo and Dobro
player, is The Eagle's editorial cartoonist and a student of the absurd;
David Hawkins, mandolin, bouzouki and guitar player, is an account
executive with an insurance company -- an occupation that surely must
require a measure of humor; and Stan Greer, guitar, mandolin and bass,
teaches sixth grade at Maize East Elementary School -- need we say more?
Each man is at least 6 feet tall, which has inspired
Greer to refer to the act as "almost 25 feet of fine music and
jokes."
At a rehearsal early this week, the Home Rangers
prepared for a big night, the band's CD-release party from 6 to 9
tonight at Old Town Barbeque & Chili Factory. The event is
free and open to the public.
After warming up with tunes such as "Sioux City
Sue," "Cool Water" and a ditty called "Glue in the
Saddle" that Greer swears he learned from his high school shop
teacher in Illinois, the band reflected on its three-year history and
its amorphous vision for itself.
The four agreed that they are "recovering"
bluegrass musicians who came together over their interest in cowboy
music. They also agree that Wichita was without a cowboy band when
the Rangers were birthed in March 1995.
From there, it gets murkier, depending on the
speaker.
"The way we see it," offered Greer,
"it all started with Waylon and Willie in Texas, then it came to
Oklahoma with Vince and Garth. We figure we're next."
Hawkins, however, may have put the band's ambitions in perspective when
he confessed that it had played somewhere between 12 and 15 gigs in
1997. That's not the level of ambition required to catch up with
the Willies and the Garths.
The dates were diverse, though. One was
Hawkins' neighborhood block party, and another was for a Chinese
delegation that visited the city. "They all wanted to put on
our hats and have their picture taken," Friesen said.
The foursome decided early on that everyone's diverse
work schedules and family obligations would prevent the Rangers from
being a traveling band. Even so, the band has played as far away
as Marion, Council Grove, Manhattan and Moundridge. The Home
Rangers had a spot at the past two Walnut Valley Festivals in Winfield,
and the boys are hoping for a third invitation.
The money the band earned last year was poured into
its CD, "Bad Boots." According to the liner notes, the
title song was inspired by Friesen as he soaked his feet. Real
celebrities Charlie Daniels, Rex Allen Jr., Red Steagall and Ray Benson
(of Asleep at the Wheel) are credited collectively on the CD as the
Reflection Ridge Riders. The name is apt because Friesen took a tape
recorder to the Charlie Daniels Celebrity Golf Classic at Reflection
Ridge and talked each of the entertainers into adding a phrase to the
song.
The CD is on the Hedge Apple label, a takeoff on the
Beatles' Apple label. Snippets of Fab Four tunes can be heard throughout
the CD, making it a sort of baby-boomers homage to four outlaw singers
from Liverpool.
The Home Rangers, it seems, is part hobby and part
serious pursuit. "It's a diversion from real life," Friesen
said. "It's a cowboy's dream -- playing banjo in a cowboy
band," added Crowson.
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