Concert Watch: OMD works without a net E-mail

WHAT: Ozark Mountain Daredevils
WHERE: SC Grand Dinner Theater, De Pere
WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30
COST: $29
INFO: ozarkdaredevils.com, scgrand.com, supeline.com

Back a “few” years ago, when I was a carefree hippie type, I thrived on the music of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. Even though I’ve matured some, I am still in love with their down home tunes! With a vast repertoire, OMD is best known for the radio hits “Jackie Blue” and “If You Wanna Get To Heaven.”

Current members of OMD include five original members Steve Cash (vocals, harp, percussion, harpsichord), John Dillon (vocals, guitars, mandolin, fiddle, piano, harp, auto harp, dulcimer, jawbone, percussion, keyboards), Mike “Supe” Granda (vocals, bass, acoustic guitar, mandolin, percussion, chicken squawks), Randle Chowning (vocals, lead electric & acoustic guitars, harp, national steel, mandolin), Larry Lee (vocals, drums, acoustic guitar, synthesizer, piano, percussion, saw & board), plus Ron Gremp (drums,) and Dave Painter (guitars, lead guitar).



ozarkRecently I spoke to Mike “Supe” Granda about OMD’s latest activities while he was taking some time off from touring, resting up at his home in Nashville.

JS: Ok, let’s start with the obvious question. Where does your nickname, “Supe” derive from?

SG: I wore a Superman suit when I went away to college. Everyone said ‘Oh yeah, you’re – um, what’s his name...Supe, Superman, Supe Guy.’ That’s why it’s spelled S-u-p-e. Short for Superman. It’s stuck with me ever since, although I don’t wear the suit anymore. It doesn’t fit my expanded torso! (Laughs)

JS: The OMD are reportedly semi-retired.

SG: Semi-retired is kind of a nebulous term. All those years, we went and we played. They said ‘Oh, you gotta go to Florida, the record’s hot in Florida!’ We just dashed down to Florida, played around Florida. Then they’d say, ‘This month you’re really hot in Arizona!’ We’d rush out to Arizona and play. The next week we were ‘really hot in Boston!’ Basically played when we had to. Now, we’re a bunch of 60-year-old men, and we really don’t have to play anywhere. We play when we want to, instead of when we have to.”

JS: OMD’s music has such a diverse range. How would you describe it?

SG: I would sum it up in one word: genreless! (Laughs) That was our forte in the beginning. Those fans, like you, who were true fans, enjoyed that. But, when we started going out, and our music started spreading out into the world, it confused people. The first big single was “If You Wanna Get To Heaven” and the second big single was “Jackie Blue.” How much more different can the two be? Those of us, like you, still enjoy that diversity. Others didn’t. They just didn’t know how to handle it. They wanted, when the Eagles come on, you know it’s the Eagles. When Bob Seger comes on, you know who it is. We could’ve gone in and done that. And after our success with “Jackie Blue,” we could have rushed right back in the studio and recorded “Jackie Red.” But we didn’t approach our music like that and we weren’t about to change at that point. We continued down that diverse path and though we probably could’ve made a lot more money had we gone the formula route, it’s a lot more satisfying to do what we did, cuz that’s what we do.

Another thing that came into play was when we got lumped into the Southern Rock category. “Jackie Blue” got included on this “K-tel” record – remember them? “Southern Rock hits of the ’70s!” They would have the Allman Brothers and it would be ‘doo-doo-doo-doo’, Lynyrd Skynryd would go ‘doo-doo-doo-doo’ and Molly Hatchet would go ‘doo-doo-doo-doo.’ Then the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, we went ‘boom-boom...boom...boom.’ We were just so different that we kind of always felt uncomfortable with that moniker of Southern Rock.

Now we did play some rock-n-roll music and we did a couple songs that could be classified as classic rock. But “Jackie Blue” wasn’t. All the country music we played wasn’t. It was straight country music. But, because we were from that time period, because we were one of those bands with a real long, goofy name and because we were a bunch of long-haired hippies from Missouri – which isn’t a southern state, by the way – we got lumped into it. No matter how un-Southern rock our latter albums were, we still couldn’t shake it. We still got invited to festivals with Lynyrd Skynyrd. We would show up and they would have two million tons of equipment and we’d just have a couple little bitty guitar amps. Because of that, we always did really well in the Northern states. The people in the Northern states, Wisconsin included, seemed to understand a little bit more what we were doing. We thought, cool, let’s just keep going to the Northern states. Let’s just try not to go there in February! (Laughs)

JS: Who wrote most of the songs?

SG: We had five writers and we had five lead singers. On the “It’ll Shine, When It Shines” album, which is our second album, our biggest album and the album that contained “Jackie Blue” – we had just that, five writers and five lead singers. I can’t think of any bands that were like that. We enjoyed that and took pride in that diversity you were talking about earlier. The songwriting and singing got divided up. It was great cuz we’d go out and play somewhere and one guy didn’t have to carry the whole night! Back then, it was a songwriting cooperative. It’s how the band started. It wasn’t like ‘OK, we’re going to have a band and here’s our marketing plan.’

JS: Tell us the story of “Jackie Blue.” How did it come about?

SG: For the first year, “Jackie Blue” was a man. When we first worked up the song, the lyrics were ‘Ooh ooh, Jackie Blue, he was this and he...doo doo. He went here, he did this; he went there, he did that. He was...doo doo...Jackie Blue.’ For the first year. We played it in concert. When we came to record the song, our producer took Larry Lee aside and said ‘Larry, this is a number one record, but Jackie must be a girl. Now you and Steve Cash go in that other room and write some new lyrics.’ They went into the other studio and came back about four hours later with a whole different set of lyrics. ‘Jackie Blue lives her life from inside of a room.’ That’s a story that really doesn’t get told much. That’s another reason why I wrote my book – to answer little questions like that, that people might be interested in. When the song got released, it just zoomed right up the charts. The record company asked us to go out. ‘Just give us six months. Just go on tour for six straight months while “Jackie Blue” is hot. We’ll make a bunch of money, and then we’ll follow it with “Jackie Green”!’ (Laughs) So we said ‘No, we’re not going to do that. Sorry.’ We have this strict 17-day limit policy for touring. The record company was not happy.

JS: Talk about your adventures with Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols.

SG: (Laughs) We had a British engineer when we made our Don’t Look Down record. When it came time to mix, he asked if we would mind mixing the record at his studio. So we went to London to mix the record at AIR Studios. We were in there for about three weeks. That just happened to be at the height of the punk rock movement over there. During our time there, the Sex Pistols rented one of the three studios there for the week to make their first record. So for that whole week, those guys were tromping up and down the hallways and doing what guys in the studio do. One of those guys was Sid Vicious. At that time I wore my beard very long. When Sid saw it, he could’t resist, he just reached over and yanked on it. He was a mess, an absolute mess. The thing is, I loved the Sex Pistols’ music. I loved their record.

JS: You penned a book, It Shined: The Saga of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. Pretty ambitious undertaking!

SG: It took about five years solid to complete. The story is so unique. We were just a bunch of guys from rural Missouri. We didn’t come from New York or L.A. I ended up with 34 chapters. I published it myself because I couldn’t find a publisher. It was a labor of love. I tried to put in the flavor of the times. The ’70s were different. We still had to think about Vietnam. So I tried to include a little of that spice in the story, because it was not only the story of the band – it was the story of the time period.

JS: OMD now has a 2 DVD set, Live at the Gillioz.

SG: We got everybody together about 3-4 years ago. We all sat down and started to sing and play together again. We played a couple of gigs and then recorded this DVD at the Gillioz Theater. It was a lot of fun.

JS: Any thing else you’d like to share, Supe?

SG: Like I said earlier, we get together and play when we want to, not when we have to. We came to Wisconsin a hundred times before. Remember when I said that that we used come to play in the Northern states. We came to Wisconsin a lot. We always had a really good time and the people of Wisconsin were always very kind to us and very supportive. That’s another reason why one of these gigs we’re doing is in Wisconsin.

Jane Spietz is a social worker and community activist. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .