The eponymous second LP from Nashville combo Teddy and the Rough Riders, which hits shelves Friday via Loney Hutchins’ Appalachia Record Company, could just as well have been made in 1972. No thematic or sonic telltale sign identifies the 12-song collection as something contemporary — and that’s how the band’s co-founders Ryan Jennings (bass and vocals) and Jack Quiggins (vocals and guitar) prefer it.
Reached via phone after wrapping up a Tuesday night shift at newish West Nashville nightspot Otto’s, Jennings walks the Scene through his and Quiggins’ working relationship. “We grew up here together, and are 30 now,” he explains.
A decade ago, they played in The Paperhead — a lysergic meeting-of-the-minds with Walker Mimms keeping the beat and Promised Land Sound’s Peter Stringer-Hye on vocals. That group enjoyed a fruitful run lasting through the mid-2010s, and its catalog includes records on the late, great indie Infinity Cat as well as Chicago’s Trouble In Mind. One of the first results when you google The Paperhead is a 2011 story from Grateful Web declaring them “teenage psych wonders.”
Eventually, though, the time felt right for Jennings and Quiggins to plot their next move. They envisioned a “a weird country-garage-rock thing” — Flying Burrito Brothers served as a creative North Star — and proof of concept came while the two briefly attended UT-Knoxville together. Jennings remembers this period for one thing and one thing only: “Woodshedding, woodshedding, woodshedding. Our neighbors didn’t mind it, thankfully.”
The band is named for the motley crew of ranchers, students and other young military volunteers who served under Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish-American War circa 1898. This Music City collection of Rough Riders — rounded out by drummer Nick Swafford and, until recently, pedal-steel player Luke Schneider — are dyed-in-the-wool music appreciators whose enthusiasm for everything analog appears to be matched only by their love of their hometown (its older establishments, in particular) and excitement about the next gig.
A while back, Teddy and the Rough Riders took promo photos in the overgrown ruins of the since-demolished Greer Stadium, disused since the minor league Nashville Sounds moved to their new park in Germantown for the 2015 season. Most Sundays, you can count on seeing Jennings & Co. holding it down as members of Santa’s Ice Cold Pickers, who play almost exclusively at South Side karaoke mecca Santa’s Pub.
The Rough Riders just completed their longest tour yet, supporting Sub Pop Records’ preeminent masked romantic Orville Peck. They capped the seven-week cross-continental jaunt by knocking a show at the Ryman off their bucket list. Making sure requisite friends and family were taken care of was a far bigger to-do than the actual set — that, Jennings says with a laugh, “was about as stressful as playing a gig at Brown’s Diner.”
Having cleared the debut-album hurdle with 2019’s The Congress of Teddy and the Rough Riders, the group enlisted friend, colleague and retro-country maven Margo Price to produce the follow-up. The band will celebrate its release Friday at Third Man Records’ Blue Room, with Price making a guest appearance and Caitlin Rose opening; tickets are only $10.
The new LP is an eclectic, colorful collection of songs, more streamlined than previous efforts, that encompasses classic-rock six-string excursions, outlaw country stylings, barroom-piano boogie and beyond. The gently loping and horn-kissed “Livin in the Woods” looks at different varieties of heartache — the romantic kind and the kind that comes when your city doesn’t feel quite like home anymore. The elegiac groove of “Hey Richard” — which reflects on the final years of Little Richard, some of which he spent in Nashville, reportedly in the Hilton Hotel on Fourth Avenue South off Lower Broadway — wouldn’t seem out of place on Invisible Pictures, the recent LP Price produced for her husband Jeremy Ivey.
“I’m pretty solely influenced by older music, and playing what we play has always felt natural,” Jennings says. “But we’re hoping that this time, it comes out in a somewhat more modern kind of way.”
