Album Review: New Riders of the Purple Sage - Hempsteader: Live At The Calderone Concert Hall, Hempstead, New York, June 25, 1976
Forty-eight years after the fact, listeners can still hear the excitement that swirled around New York’s Calderone Concert Hall in 1976 when New Riders of the Purple Sage opened the show with “Panama Red.”
The gig is out on the sonically pure Hempsteader: Live At The Calderone Concert Hall, Hempstead, New York, June 25, 1976, and captures an era as well as a night of music.
Most of it is grand, though the blatant sexism of the day is evident in songs like “Annie May” and “I Heard You’ve Been Layin’ My Old Lady” and that is disturbing enough that even Hazel Dickens’ “You Put Her There” cannot cleanse the aftertaste of such material. On a happier note, the big-bang of rock-country also played songs by Delbert McClinton (“Honky Tonkin’ (I Guess I Done Me Some)”), Chuck Berry (“You Never Can Tell”) and the Rolling Stones (“Dead Flowers”) among others and transplanted them to rural settings.
Nonconformists from the get-go, the original Grateful Dead spin-off group got the hit out of the way and then got down to exploring its back catalog and promoting its 1976 MCA Records debut, New Riders. There was also the matter of breaking in bassist Stephen Love, who joined electric guitarists John Dawson and David Nelson; pedal steeler and MVP Buddy Cage; and drummer Spencer Dryden after they’d recorded the aforementioned LP with former Byrd Skip Battin. The new lineup hiccups now and then, but previews its strengths on such highlights as “Fifteen Days under the Hood” and “Glendale Train.”
Grade card: New Riders of the Purple Sage - Hempsteader: Live At The Calderone Concert Hall, Hempstead, New York, June 25, 1976 - B-
5/21/24