Christian Parker, Earl Poole Ball & Patrick Cleary - American Cosmic Revival, Vol. 1: Back At Home (feat. Jaydee Maness) (2025)

This is a tribute to Gram Parsons & his International Submarine Band’s “Safe At Home” (1967) – started almost 60 years ago. I often thought Gram named his band after a live radio performance in a Little Rascals episode. The Little Rascals’ band name was coincidentally The International Silverstring Submarine Band. Gram would’ve been the right age to have seen this.

Musically, the spirit of this music is all Gram Parsons (the “hippie-hillbilly”) & it’s quite impressive. “Blue Eyes” opens the set & the musicians managed to negotiate the Parsons influence & country-inflected sound. Parsons wanted to introduce the rock audience to Country music without the corniness & silliness of Little Jimmie Dickens, Minnie Pearl & the Hee-Haw types.

Instead, he focused on seriously written songs that wrangled the Country & Western charm of the genre. There are 10 recipes for the country-rock that characterizes Parson’s aim. All performed with ingenuity on American Cosmic Revival Volume 1 – Back At Home, produced diligently by Christian Parker & Patrick Cleary.

It was recorded in Syracuse, NY, with many tune covers of both Parsons & artists he enjoyed covering in his career. There’s Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone,” along with a medley of Cash’s “Folsom Prison,” coupled with an Elvis Presley’s early Big Boy Arthur Crudup tune “That’s Alright Mama.”

Then there’s a song Gram’s partner Emmylou Harris recorded — “Luxury Liner.”
It’s a rich set of Parson-styled country that morphed into a new dynamic for the genre. It gave birth to artists like Gram’s Flying Burrito Brothers & onto the Byrds, Pure Prairie League, Poco, Ozark Mountain Daredevils, the New Riders of the Purple Sage, West & probably stimulated the later country excursions of Jerry Garcia & the Grateful Dead. It motivated the Rolling Stones (“Wild Horses”).