Arkansas’ Garage Ledger
A large part of getting into music is chasing ghosts. The artists we love leave artifacts like albums, concert posters, and interviews behind for us. These representations conjure up emotions that we use to construct ideas about who these people were. They also define the cities and regions we associate with them. Lou Reed and The Ramones gave me a better understanding of New York than high school US history ever did. Those artist make me want to go there and inhabit the space that made them and their art. I want to soak that in and be a part of it.
I think this is why so many punk bands leave Arkansas. It feels like we have no history to dig into, nothing to tie us down. Documentation is sparse and it can be hard to find if you’re young and/or not connected with the right people. Ghost hunting can be a bitch in the Natural State.
That is why I am blown away by the gravity and relative obscurity of the Lost Souls compilations. The series spans five volumes of Arkansas garage bands from 1963-1972, twenty-plus tracks per disc. The bands come from all over the state. Everywhere from Clarksville to Batesville to Pine Bluff to Little Rock. They all produced the kind of raw teenage manifestations of blue-eyed soul and proto-punk you would expect to find in Memphis or Detroit.
Harold Ott, who compiled the Lost Souls collection along with Cliff Farmer, made a film about the band which inspired his quest for Arkansas’ garage heritage, The Lost Souls (the film goes by the same name).
Ott is from Jacksonville. He discovered that the Lost Souls, “who made a haunting ode to teen troubles”, were from his hometown in the mid-2000s. Ott interviews the band members who were around at that time. They paint a picture of what teenage life was like in that era, their dedication to their project, and some of their career highlights like opening for James Brown in Little Rock. You also get to learn what a “woodsy” is (I think we should have one).
I highly recommend taking the time to watch this movie, although it can be slow at points. It’s amazing to see how hard these guys worked and how often they gigged. It’s either a kick in the ass to contemporary musicians or a reminder that it’s harder to get people to come see rock n roll bands these days. You can find the film in several parts here on YouTube.
One of my favorite tracks on Lost Souls, Volume 1 is “The Light Won’t Shine” by the Yardleys.
The track is defined by the repetitive pulsation of an organ motif that is as hypnotic as it is in your face. The drums are driving and bass heavy. The drummer’s consistent attack is really what holds the track together as the organ, bass, and guitar all have their own sporadic delivery.
The guitar takes the cake for me though. The guy is just slashing at the thing, trying to cut through. The chords hardly matter.
“The light won’t shine through, It’s all over for you.”
I was lucky enough to stumble across a couple volumes from the comp series at Goner Records several years ago, but I haven’t seen any physical copies since. It’s a real bummer that the CDs aren’t easier to find. The jackets provide a bio for each bands. This gives you an idea of what the rock n roll landscape was like during the mid-sixties, early-seventies in Arkansas. You can connect the dots between their recording studios, record labels, radio stations, and the cities they played. It makes you wonder how many bands are out there that Ott and Farmer didn’t dig up.
Luckily, certain volumes are available on Amazon, Spotify, and YouTube, so dig in! Walk with the dead. Breathe in the vapors of whatever was going on in that garage. Go to the woods after your next show and reclaim your rock n roll territory. Arkansas isn’t all banjos, there is a rock n roll specter here. The Lost Souls will make sure you know that.
For more information check out Psych of the South. This is Ott and Farmer’s enterprise that hosts the Lost Souls comps. They also have a lot of other great stuff that yours truly needs to check out as well. Go download The Lost Souls comps and turn a friend onto it. These guys deserve it!
-Download Lost Souls comps on Amazon.
-Stream Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, and Volume 4 of the Lost Souls comps on YouTube.
