Southern Comfort

Just two weeks prior to his passing, Thomasson’s iconoclastic band The Outlaws performed at last year’s New York State Fair’s Chevrolet Court. Since then, the band has gone through a period of grieving that ultimately led to a reconnection with Henry Paul, the Outlaws’ original guitarist and vocalist. Paul left the band in 2005 to pursue his own musical interests in Blackhawk,
to showcase a more subtle style of songwriting than the raucous,
full-force Outlaws rock. The reconstituted and rekindled Outlaws will
perform again at Chevy Court on Sunday, Aug. 24, 4 and 8 p.m.

Hughie Thomasson: The Outlaws will perform at
Chevy Court this week without their recently deceased frontman. MICHAEL DAVIS PHOTO

Thomasson’s last public interview appeared in the Aug. 22, 2007, edition of the Syracuse New Times.
At the time Thomasson seemed energized as he excitedly discussed the
perpetual evolution of the Outlaws since its formation in 1972: “We’ve
always tried to do something different on every record, and to reinvent
ourselves and make ourselves sound like the Outlaws.” Thomasson also
said his group was primed to release a new studio album, somewhat
eerily titled Once An Outlaw, later in the year. After
Thomasson’s passing, however, the imminent CD was left in limbo,
leaving fans to wonder what had happened. 

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In a telephone interview, however, Paul
explains that the band has decided to move on, and to even continue the
evolution that Thomasson so emphatically described. Paul hit on the
idea to use the same lineup for both his new incarnation of Blackhawk,
as well for the Outlaws staff. 

According to Paul, “{Drummer} Monte Yoho
called me the night that Hughie died and said, ‘What the fuck am I
going to do?’” Paul remembers. “I said, ‘We’ll just put a new group
together and it will be OK.’ And I’d hire {Yoho} for Blackhawk, and it
will be one band, and that was good for him because it’s his job.”

Paul enlisted Blackhawk guitarist-vocalist Chris Anderson and bassist Randy Threet,
who had both logged time as Outlaws in the past, to fill the spots
vacated by the 1995 deaths of original guitarist Billy Jones and
bassist Frank O’Keefe. Paul further fleshed the lineup with guitarist Billy Crane and newcomer keyboardist Jon Coleman. The band rehearsed material last December, then, as Paul puts it, “We lit out on the road in January.”

The new two-act/one-band scenario
initially seemed odd to fans of both constituencies. “When I decided to
do it, there were some doubts and some supporters,” Paul says.
“Eventually what we did was we kept our mouths shut, and kept our head
down, and we put the work necessary into it. When we went out on stage
with the new band it was like ‘Wow! This is really good!’” 

Paul then took the band into the studio
to rerecord many of its hits with the intent of releasing a
forthcoming, fresh take on the greatest hits concept, as well as to
reintroduce the group to fans in its new form. That, in part, answers
the mystery of the Outlaws’ final recording with Thomasson: “We’ve been
living on the legacy of a 35-year-old musical moment,” Paul affirms,
“and we felt we needed to bring it in to a musical issue, {with} new
voices and new players.”

Comfortable after eight months of touring, which included a show at Verona’s Turning Stone Resort and Casino
last March, Paul is already brandishing the same ol’ rebellious spirit
that has made Southern rock the pisser that has always been. He’s also
gleefully dissing classic-rock holdouts who can’t adhere to the spirit
of constant reinvention that Thomasson made clear was at the heart of
the Outlaws. After all, Paul allows, “Sometimes classic-rock bands
can’t get past the past.”

“When you listen to classic rock,”
Thomasson says, “it’s like {Ozzy Osbourne’s} ‘Crazy Train’ and {Lynyrd
Skynyrd’s} ‘Freebird’ over and over. Doesn’t anyone write music
anymore? Why are we still going back to what someone did 20 or 30 years
ago? And that was my goal: to try and write some new, classic, American
rock music, in the mold that we grew up writing.

“So the records that the Outlaws will
make in the future,” Paul continues, “are going to get widespread
attention from the popular musical community, because it’s already full
of songs, lyrically and musically. The Outlaws are set up {well}
because there are such vital, creative forces in the group that still
have clarity and a sense of talent with regard to songwriting. We’re
going to write and record records that people are going to go ‘Wow!’
instead of ‘Yeah, it’s all right, but I really like ‘Sweet Home
Alabama’.’” 

Admission to the concert is free with State Fair admission. For more information, call (800) 475-FAIR.

—Matt Mumau