This is Songwriters & Tour Riders, a music podcast from KOSU and Oklahoma State University and hosted by Matthew Viriyapah.
RC Edwards is from Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and is probably best known as the bassist for the Turnpike Troubadours. However, this year he put out a new album under the name RC & the Ambers with long time friend Amber Watson and produced by fellow Troubadour Hank Early.
The album, Big Country, is named after former OSU and NBA basketball player 'Big Country' Bryant Reeves and puts together stories and musicians around Tahlequah and Sequoyah County, Oklahoma. With a new band, he says it feels like reliving early days with the Troubadours.
Listen above to hear RC talk about working with Amber, writing a folk song about Bryant Reeves, and how he thought about experimenting with a new group.
We've always been really proud and love Oklahoma and so it kind of works its way into our music and stuff. We always had people trying to get us to move somewhere. To move to Austin or move to Nashville. And we sort of just looked at the map and were like 'we're in the center of the United States. If we honestly want to be a touring band, there's not a better place to live than Oklahoma.RC Edwards
On recording a new album and starting a new band
My main partner is Amber Watson. And we've been buddies for ten years and kind of always liked playing with each other, especially when I wasn't busy with Turnpike, and we started doing some shows around, local stuff mainly.
So with the combination of Turnpike taking a break and then everything being shut down for COVID the last year, we kind of got it a little more organized and put together a really good band of just all local Tahlequah people... talked about making a record for years and I guess we finally had the time and the means.
Hank Early, the steel player from Turnpike, he made a studio here in Tahlequah and was looking for some projects to get started with, and we were lucky enough to be one of his first ones.
This isn't Turnpike. You booked RC and the Ambers, we're a sketch comedy group!RC Edwards
Before the record was out, people are booking me. They might have not ever heard of us before. They don't even know what we do. Who's to say we even play music? We might show up and be some weird performance art piece I've put together.
You're getting to play some of the same venues that the Turnpike Troubadours started out playing in. Got some new friends and some younger guys in the band, and it's really fun showing them around the stuff we used to do.
On 'Big Country' Bryant Reeves
When I was a kid, he was just a local hero — pretty much a folk hero at this point. And you're a little kid, and he's seven feet tall and that's a giant. That's a real giant that just walked by you there. I think it might have started with watching Game of Thrones. They had giants on there. There's some part where one of the guys didn't believe in giants, and they were like that's just because you've never seen one before.
I took that idea and then applied it to 'Big Country' Bryant Reeves and that's sort of how the song started because I have seen a giant before.
Hank put some early announcing clips from some of his highlights. And one of them is Dick Vitale.
I'm pretty sure we're the first and probably the only country record to feature Dick VitaleRC Edwards
Music featured in this episode:
- RC and the Ambers - Astronaut
- Turnpike Troubadours - Fall Out of Love
- RC and the Ambers - Fall Out of Love
- RC and the Ambers - Drunk High and Loud
- RC and the Ambers - Big Country
- RC and the Ambers - Oklahoma Beach Body
- RC and the Ambers - The Assassination of Ned Christie
- RC and the Ambers - Let the Whiskey do the Talking
- Hank Williams Jr. - The Blues Man
- Shovels and Rope - The Human Race
- Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
- RC and the Ambers - Compass
- George Jones - The Blues Man
- RC and the Ambers - The Blues Man
- RC and the Ambers - Gravy and Biscuits
- RC and the Ambers - Oologah (Romance at the Iron Horse)
- Dion - Runaround Sue
- RC and the Ambers - Astronaut
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