Eugene weekly., November 08, 2012, Page 13, Image 13

GRACIN DORSEY, KEVIN DAVISON
SAVE
THE MUSIC
BY ALEX NOTMAN
The Wayne Drury Project brings modern-day folk song revival to Eugene
S
aturday, Nov. 3, at the Axe and Fiddle was
an event 40 years in the making. Hundreds
of people filled the pub, occupying every
table, lining the staircase overlooking the
stage and some even finding spots on the
wood floor. Hundreds of faces basked in the
glow of flickering tea lights gaze upon the stage as a soft
voice filled the cavernous space. Wayne Drury, squeezing
his blue eyes shut, leans forward in his wheelchair to the
mic as he sings “Cimarron Rose” over the strumming of
his former band mates, Rob Anderson on guitar and Randy
Crawford on banjo. It is the first time the three men,
members of the alt-country band Jackdaw, have been
together in the same room since 1972, let alone shared a
stage. The last wisps of the outlaw tune leave Drury’s lips
and the crowd jumps to their feet in a raucous standing
ovation. A woman in the crowd cries out, “Bob Dylan’s got
nothing on you,” over the hooting and hollering. This is
the Wayne Drury Project and Wayne Drury is the folk hero
you have never heard of.
The Wayne Drury Project is not a band, nor is it just an
event; it is a full-blown modern-day folk song revival.
Nov. 3 was one of a series of shows that the collaboration
of musicians known as the Wayne Drury Project will
perform in order to save the nearly-forgotten music of
Drury, an alt-country musician before there were alt-
country musicians, who, after being diagnosed with
multiple sclerosis in the ’70s, followed later by a stroke
and the removal of a kidney, has struggled to keep playing
the private folk canon he created. The canon is filled with
catchy and haunting melodies guided by Drury’s silvery
Neil Diamond-esque voice, and peppered with plenty of
twang, folk and rock ‘n’ roll to nest it firmly in the now-
recognized genre. Local musician Gregg Vollstedt (lap
steel guitar and vocals for Whopner County Country All-
Stars, lap steel guitar for The Whiskey Chasers), who has
been greatly influenced by Drury’s music, has spent the
last year herding musicians from around the country (the
count at press time was 19) and running practices for a
project that culminates with a show Nov. 10 at the WOW
Hall — the old stomping grounds of Drury and Jackdaw.
The story of the Project doesn’t begin in Eugene; it unfolds
somewhere in between London and New York City and
Oregon across a span of 65 years.
Last Cowboy in Paris
Around the turn of the millennium, Rob Anderson was
stumbling around his flat’s attic in London when he came
across some old Jackdaw LPs — the LPs that he and Drury
had recorded over 30 years ago when they snuck into
Raspberry Records at the former Oakway Mall (now
Oakway Center). Anderson knew the sound engineer who
agreed to let them in one night (without the owner’s
knowledge) and record in the 16-track studio, where they
laid down the tracks “Cimarron Rose,” “Gas Station Girl,”
“New York Central Line,” “Separate Ways,” “Country
Song” and “Step Right Over.” He listened to the LPs and
an idea struck him — he had to revive the music. Anderson
WAYNE DRURY
only had infrequent contact with Drury since hopping the
Atlantic in 1989, first to Paris and then to London. Drury
had visited Anderson once in Paris, after which he wrote
the song “Last Cowboy in Paris” about his friend.
“I contacted Wayne and asked if anything had happened
with the songs. Wayne said nothing had been done,” says
Anderson, over the phone from London. In the three
decades that had passed since that night at Raspberry
Records, Drury had been diagnosed with MS, followed by
a stroke, which made both speaking and holding a guitar
problematic. “I realized if I didn’t do something with
them, they would just evaporate.”
Anderson got to work and rallied his own group of
musicians, including English folk music legend Wizz
Jones and the Spokane-based folk singer-songwriter
Laddie Ray Melvin (who flew to London from Washington
for the project), none of whom knew or knew of Drury, to
shake the cobwebs from his tunes and perform them at
heritage folk venues like The Troubadour, Wizz’s Sitting
Room and The Ivy House. “It was just magical the way it
happened,” he says. “It was driven completely by the
belief that the songs were worth saving.” Each gig they
played had a larger audience as word got out around old
London Town. “Everyone that came responded incredibly
to the music, a number of people that came up afterwards
were in tears,” Anderson says.
Before long Vollstedt, who went to see Jackdaw
perform as a teenager and later would join the band
Chicory with Anderson, caught wind of the London-based
project and decided that something needed to be done
closer to Eugene, closer to Drury.
Country Song
“Alt-country?” Drury says, sitting upright in his bed at
the Coast Fork Nursing Center in Cottage Grove. “What
the hell is that?” Vollstedt and the project’s public relations
representative, Kaitlin Anderson, sit in folding chairs on
either side of the bed, laughing. A collage of the past and
eugeneweekly.com • October 25, 2012
13