Continental Drifters
From L.A. to LA
by Pamela Murray Winters

We are all drifters
Singers and sisters
Brothers and lovers
and mothers and confidantes
We were born alone
We're alone when we're gone
So while we're here,
we might as well just sing along
— "Drifters" by Susan Cowsill and Peter Holsapple

You're probably familiar with "Meet on the Ledge "— the anthem of a long-lived and well-loved band that has endured personnel changes, personal crises, and business upheavals. A band that inspires its followers with a sense of place. A band that seems more like a family — sometimes functional, sometimes dys-, but always bound by some deep connection.

Think of the Continental Drifters as a sort of American Fairport Convention. The Drifters have many ties to their British counterparts: They even recorded "Meet on the Ledge" as a single a few years back. And they're major fans of British folk-rock. As a motorcycle revved past our interview site, the ever-puckish Peter Holsapple broke into Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning": "Said Red Molly to James, that's a fine motorbike…."

On a warm April night, pre-gig, Holsapple and fellow Drifters Vicki Peterson and Mark Walton sat on the levee at dusk at Algiers Point in New Orleans, drinking and talking about their journey from Los Angeles to Louisiana — or, as the band's song "Drifters" puts it, "from L.A. to LA."

The band's connections to one "LA" — Louisiana — came via founding members Ray Ganucheau and Carlo Nuccio, both from New Orleans. In Los Angeles, at the dawn of the 90s, they hung out with a crowd of musicians, including former Dream Syndicate members Steve Wynn and Mark Walton. Dream Syndicate, like its contemporaries in R.E.M., is credited with having restored a guitar sound to rock, after the synth-driven slickness of the 80s — along with the Bangles, it was dubbed a "paisley underground" band.

In 1991, from these jam sessions, a core coalesced, featuring Walton on bass; Ganucheau on guitars, banjo, and vocals; Nuccio on drums, acoustic guitar, and vocals; Gary Eaton on guitars, harmonica, and vocals; and Danny McGough on keyboards.

Walton, now the "oldest living Drifter," looked back: "There was just a bunch of us that liked each other, and somehow we remained friends, and we wanted to play music together…First and foremost, we wanted to sit around and play songs in a living room and learn each other's songs. And then we did it for maybe two or three months like that and we're like, 'This could sound so cool! Let's play a gig!' "

Early gigs were often at Club Lingerie in Hollywood, the name of which led to some interview confusion down on the levee. "We're trying to get a sponsorship," quipped Holsapple, leading Walton to ask his fellow Drifters: "White lace or black lace?"

"White boxer shorts," Holsapple replied. "Everybody in white T-shirts and white boxers — we're gonna look like the Go-Go's on the cover of…"

"Rolling Stone," Vicki Peterson overlapped with her bandmate. "Nineteen eighty…five?" (Sorry, Vicki — 1982, and it was briefs, not boxers.)

Walton got focused again. "There was not a lot of thought to it. We just wanted to play and hang out with each other. It just became a natural progression to want to play live and to share what we'd done in our living room. And when we were doing that, we said, 'Let's just invite friends down and play their songs, too.' "

Among those friends were Holsapple, Peterson, and Susan Cowsill. "I ran into Mark Walton at a rehearsal studio that he owned," said Peterson, "and we hadn't seen each other in a long time, since Dream Syndicate days on Mark's part. We started talking, and he told me about this collection of writers, singers, players." When she asked Walton what they called themselves, he stammered, "Uhhh…the Continental Drifters." (Nuccio had played in an earlier band with that name that evolved into the Subdudes.)

"We played every Tuesday night at a club called Raji's in Los Angeles," said Walton. "It had a bar with beer and wine —" ("And food!" the others chimed in) — "and we'd just get drunk — we didn't care who was in the audience or what they were doing; we just cared what we were doing onstage. It was infectious enough with these people that they wanted to come every week and be our guests, so eventually…they were in the band."