Scott Link aka Diesel Doug - Acoustic Guitar and Vocals,
Charlie Gaylord aka Charlie Sunshine - Lead Guitar,
Scott Conley aka Scotty - Bass,
Jon Davison aka Skeeter - Drums,
Cartwright Thompson aka Big Bud - Pedal steel guitar
Influences
Solid Country Gold and Steve Earle about sums it up...
Sounds Like
Good ole shit kickin' road house honky tonk, music to drink to.
I edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4
In 1986 I heard Steve Earle’s album Guitar Town and it all fell in to place. I was twenty one, had already dropped out of Art School and was ready to drop out of liberal art school. And now I had a reason why. I was a songwriter. It didn’t matter that I had never written a song before or that I didn’t know how to play an instrument, I just knew that that was what I wanted to be. I grabbed my dad’s old Gibson B-25 and started learning chords. In 1994 I met Haakon Kallweit and hatched the idea for the Long Haul Truckers. After the typical shuffling of players, Charlie Gaylord came on board to play guitar, Jon Davison was on Drums and Scott Conley joined soon after to play Bass and the line up was in place.
Now it’s been ten years. Seems impossible. Ten years of bars, clubs, the occasional arena, glass ceilings, Wild Turkey, four dollar ASCAP checks, Geary’s Pale Ale, no sound checks, tiny stages, blown monitors, Gritty’s beer for free, rooms with 150 people in them who couldn’t give a shit, and rooms with 15 people in them having a great time. There were great shows like Lucky Ron’s in Ottawa where we opened for a modern rock band an utter mismatch and we absolutely blew the roof off the place. There was our first CD release party at Raoul’s, where it was so packed I couldn’t get to the bar before the set. Ted’s Wrecking Yard in Toronto, Toad in Cambridge, The Free Street Taverna, Gritty’s and Silly’s here at home in Portland, Dottie’s in Atlanta on Halloween, The True Brothers down in Greensboro NC come to mind as great shows for us. There were awful shows too like the Monday night in Birmingham Alabama when exactly zero people showed up. We played the set any way, that’s an awfully long way to go to not play.
All of these shows added to the ebb and flow of the changing local, regional and national Americana music scene. I think we got about as far as double A in the minor leagues of Alt-country music. But there was one glimpse of the show. It was July 1999 opening for Willie Nelson at the Bangor Auditorium, ah yes, the Willie show. I still have the bottle of Cuervo from our dressing room. There were four or five thousand people in the hall and we walked out on to a blackened stage to thunderous noise and applause (they thought we were Willie) I got chills. I could have gotten used to that.
I used to think it was that one show that made it all worthwhile. I thought that for a long time, but I was wrong. What made putting up with all the crap you have to put up with to do this, is that ten years later I think of all that stuff and it makes me smile and sometimes laugh, and ten years later I still get up in the morning and want to write songs, and ten years later I still see the same faces in the audience. I know who all of you are who come out to listen to these songs.
Thank you everyone.
Scott Link
AKA Diesel Doug
-From the liner notes to Mistakes Were Made.
Finally got the whole album on iTunes. Damn. I am the Dad who drank Christmas away. If, I had kids. So, for now, it's strictly for my own poverty. And my lass's.
