The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street
The Rolling Stones are probably my all-time favourites and I have been fortunate in my life to see them live with Charlie Watts. Exile on Main Street was the Stones tenth studio album and features some of their all-time great tunes including Rocks Off, Tumblin’ Dice and Sweet Virginia, which the Outlaw Orchestra covered in our first covers EP in the middle of the Covid Lockdowns. The whole album fizzes with an Americana-tinged energy – I love that it is quintessentially British but also undeniably American. Take a walk down Broadway in Nashville and you’ll still hear snippets of this record floating out of the honky tonks any night of the week.
"Their music soundtracked
our wedding"
Lord Huron - Lonesome Dreams
On a rainy winter day in late 2012, I was on a first date. We picked our way through East London, eventually rolling into Rough Trade, the gin taking effect. At the listening station we discovered Lord Huron’s debut album ‘Lonesome Dreams’. The album shimmers – full of interesting percussion, beautiful guitar work, unique sounds and haunting tones. It’s an album to get lost in, another world where things ain’t always what they seem. We brought a copy of the record – and the band have become one of the pillars of our lives, their music soundtracked our wedding and we’ve been to every UK tour, as well as in the US. I’d recommend checking out the full back-catalogue – every album is really special.
AC/DC - Back in Black
When I’m not rocking, I’m running. Fitting in training with a busy tour schedule can be a little challenging – I’m often up early and sneaking out of our hotel room after a show before the boys wake up so I can squeeze a run in. Marathon training involves a lot of long slow runs, and you have to keep the mood up. Enter AC/DC! They never lose that groove and Back in Black is a prime example of an album that punches you in the face in the first second and doesn’t let up. They are also a huge influence on our records – we always base our recorded drum sound on AC/DC records as they always reach the gold standard for drum tones.
The Offspring - Americana
I was ten years old, and this was the first album I ever bought. Pretty Fly (For a White Guy) had crossed over into the pop charts in the UK and I finally felt like there was music out there that might be for kids like me. So, I saved up my pocket money and dragged my dad into the independent record store in Maidstone, Kent. I remember he saw the Parental Advisory sticker on the front and stood in the store reading through the lyrics before he let me buy it. It only made me want the album even more! All credit to my dad, he also took me and my kid brother to the show when they toured in the UK, which was our first proper gig – I got the bug and never looked back.
"The first album I
ever bought"
"A path that would shape
my adult life"
The Thrills - So Much for the City
As I mentioned, I was a punk rock kid growing up. Punk’s second wave was in full flow and bands like The Offspring and Green Day soundtracked my life. But The Thrills’ debut, So Much for the City, knocked me sideways and would ultimately start me down a path that would shape my adult life as a musician. This is the first time I can recall being conscious of banjo, mandolin and pedal steel sparkling alongside electric guitar, bass and drums. The Thrills also give a masterclass in this record around how to drive the energy not just through the gain on a guitar amp, but by utilising dynamics, harmony and creating thick, complimentary layers that occupy the full spectrum of frequencies. It’s a joyful album.
Calexico / Iron & Wine - In the Reins
I didn’t hear this record until I was already into my second year of university studying music, a year after it came out. I’d never come across either Iron & Wine or Calexico, let alone this collaboration. I remember working over scales in my room and hearing the title track of the record bleeding through the walls as my classmate listened. He lent me the record and I never gave it back. It was the incredibly intense pulsing of the opening track with complex harmony that spoke to me. The pedal steel holds back and doesn’t come in until 1:22 with this beautiful, haunting swell that makes you want to cry. It still does 15 years later. And that’s before the Mariachi singer comes in and takes a mournful solo. It’s powerful stuff. The pedal steel on this record was what really spoke to me. A day after first hearing it, I brought a lap steel and the journey into Americana really began for me.
Robert Randolph & the Family Band - Got Soul
If The Thrills and Iron & Wine / Calexico led me into the house of pedal steel. Robert Randolph blew the roof off it. It’s pedal steel, but not as you know it. Randolph comes from a long gospel tradition of pedal steel - it ain’t twee, trad-country. We’re talking about high gain, noisy, visceral guitar and lap-steel led music with huge vocals that sounds like it was recorded in one magical take by some of the most virtuosic musicians on the planet. Robert Randolph’s playing doesn’t just sing, it screams, belches, shouts and rocks.
Kill It Kid - Kill It Kid
It’s a crying shame that Kill it Kid never really found the success they deserved. Their self-titled debut is one of just three records the band ever made. Two members went on to form the excellent Ida Mae, but the Kill It Kid records will always hold a special place in my heart. Imagine virtuosic noisy blues guitar, haunting Piano and Wurlitzer, Bluegrass fiddle and rock bass and drums capped off with huge male and female vocals. I didn’t know it when I first heard it but Kill It Kid would give an insight into how to mix heavy electric instruments with acoustic bluegrass tones that would serve the Outlaw Orchestra well further down the line.
Bio
Pete Briley - AKA Banjo Pete - is 1/3 of The Outlaw Orchestra, contributing banjo, lap steel guitar, pedal steel and guitar. He lives on the South Coast with his dog and wife and when not touring with the Outlaws he can mostly be found running along the river, hiding away in his studio or drinking in his favourite pub, The Butcher’s Dog.
