Yes Depression:

Country Dick RIP

Record review by Clark Humphrey for The Stranger, 8/6/96

Dan Mclain, known to two generations of indie-fans as Country Dick Montana, was one of the leading lights of San Diego punk and cow-punk. With his ex-Penetrators bandmate (and now Seattle resident) Gary Heffern, Montana was one of the pioneers in the post-rock, neo-country “no depression” thang. In between his eight albums as drummer and part-time vocalist for the Beat Farmers, he collaborated with Mojo Nixon and pursued his own side projects, the Pleasure Barons and the Petting Zoo. Diagnosed with throat cancer, he called on some of his pals in the biz (including Dave Alvin and John Doe) to play on (and advance him recording funds for) a solo CD, which he rushed to finish while he still had a larynx. Appropriately for his hard-livin’ persona, he died with his boots on, of a heart attack during a Beat Farmers gig in a Vancouver suburb last November.

The record, The Devil Lied to Me (Bar-None), is finally out. About half its 19 tracks work as almost completely straight alterna-country, proving Montana knew the rules he was breaking. David and Douglas Farage wrote many of the songs, with a few choice covers (Tom Petty’s “Listen to Her Heart,” Joe Bob Barnhill’s “Party Dolls and Wine”). Indeed, Paul Kamanski’s opening road ballad “Indigo Rider” would be a perfect high-rotation pick for a non-schlock country station, if there still were any. Montana’s prematurely weary voice is low and gravelly, lower even than that guy in the Statler Brothers. When he sings about admiring a woman for giving him temporary shelter from the travails outside, his sincerity almost negates that new genre label of “No Depression.”

The first hint of Montana’s wild side pops up in a couple of between-song asides, during which he improvs on a piano while two California Girls reminisce about how the alcoholics in high school got all the dates. By the time Montana, Nixon, and co. give a sincere thrashing to Jim Lowe’s pop standard “Green Door,” all proverbial heck has broken loose. The comedy highlight, “King of the Hobos,” delightfully toys with both classic and modern images of bum-dom (“Uncle Barney, I have to pee!” “Go ahead, it ain’t my car”). By the time he finishes up with a demented sea shanty, it feels like you’ve witnessed a guy presiding at his own roof-blowing wake.