Love Makes A Perfect Landing

by Anne Jones 10.2023

I once read that if   you’re asked what made you fall in love with someone, and you immediately list some specific reasons, it’s not true love. That sounds about right. True love is ineffable, right? And since it was 2:43 am and I had recently discovered Chat GPT, I had to ask it “write about how you can’t write about love.” No sooner had I typed that last e, than a list of pretty good reasons populated my screen scarily fast, defying its own premise, sort of. My favorite was that it’s like “trying to paint the wind.” And so it goes with music reviews, and with trying to describe a band I’ve been in love with for almost 50 years. I can hardly do them justice with dissection and words, but I’ll try.

I fell in love with Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen the very first time I heard them, when my brother brought home Lost in the Ozone and Live From Deep in the Heart of Texas. I mean, what was not to love? As a sheltered, un-cool 14 year-old I might not have understood then that they were some of the original architects of Americana, that they brought together hippies and rednecks, that they mingled hard-core blood-and-guts country with rock’n’roll and folk, and consequently were at least as ground- breaking as the Byrds or the Flying Burrito Brothers, that they threw in Texas swing and Bob Wills just to make me love them more, and that they played with such a mix of musical virtuosity and reckless, kick- ass fun that they were impossible to resist. I just knew I loved them. I couldn’t paint the joy.

Fast forward 50 years and I’m still in love. Though they disbanded in the late 70’s and everybody forged

their own musical and professional paths, and though the Commander departed the planet a couple of years ago, the Airmen never really left, at least not in the hearts and psyches of their fans. And through the years, on various stages in various iterations the Airmen have come together - at the Birchmere in DC or in upstate New York, or most frequently at their old stomping grounds in Berkeley CA. That’s where I saw Bill Kirchen, John Tichy, Andy Stein, Buffalo Bruce Barlow, and Bobby Black together again, playing “My Window Faces the South” and “Wine Do Yer Stuff,” and “Back to Tennessee” and so many more, aad it was literally the stuff of dreams, a religious experience. And now, those Airmen have bottled that lightning, that magic, that unmistakable sound with the release of their new reunion CD, Back From the Ozone, out 10/27 from The Last Music Company. It’s their first release in 52 years. And it’s not just a nostalgia-fest; these guys are some of the best musicians on the planet, at the top of their game, a true supergroup. It’s all we could ask for.

I could tell you about how they managed to capture the old appeal by sounding better and fresher and tighter than ever with their classics, like the three mentioned above and Git It, and Oh Momma Momma and Ain’t Nothin’ Shakin’ on the opening track with John Tichy just taking off from the get-go, and they’re off and rockin’ and swingin’ before you can grab your hat, or how the second track is a new one by Kirchen (and his wife Louise, also on vocals, and Austin de Lone) - Out of My Mind, with clever words and Bill’s old country, kinda Bakersfield voice that’ll break your heart, and make you feel like you’ve heard the song your whole life, and make you believe the wishful thinking that you really might recover from a broken heart, or how Tichy, whose nickname is the Rockin’ Professor because he was head of the Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy and whose idea it was to begin with to do the CD, has written two songs (Feel Like I’m 21, and I Can’t Get High) that honor the old LPA classics and manage to lament and ultimately celebrate getting older all at once, and how My Window Faces the South is so great it’s unbearable, and how Andy Stein, a composer of symphonies and 20-plus year veteran of Prairie Home Companion, plays sax and fiddle throughout with equal measures of soul and skill, and how Bobby Black on steel guitar is the oldest, and perhaps the most gentlemanly Airman with stories and chops from the beginnings of country music, and how honorary Airmen Paul Revelli, Peter Siegel and old pal and songwriter and producer Austin de Lone, on drums, steel guitar, and piano, respectively sound like they were there from the beginning, and how there are some song lines that are stand-alone works of art - like from Kirchen’s other new original - Olivette: “hope springs eternal in the hillbilly heart,” or from the oldie Back to Tennessee: “next time you look at me cross-eyed I’m headin right out the door,” or in real-life cowboy Buffalo Bruce Barlow’s original cowboy song that trots and yodels and eases us to the happy end of the CD, “my best friend - that’s my horse!” But if I told you all that I’d just be trying to paint the wind, or the joy, and you’d think it isn’t true love, which it is.

So instead, to steal another great line from the old and beautifully rearranged Little Bitty Record, just go downtown and "buy a little piece of happiness" because it turns out it is for sale.

Get your copy of Back From The Ozone at the Tin Pan in Richmond on November 28 - at Bill Kirchen’s Honky Tonk Holiday Show - Bill’s with the Silent Knights, his all-star Texas band with Rick Richards and Jack Saunders.