He received a Bachelor’s degree in design from the University of Michigan in 1966 and a Master’s degree in Sculpture and Painting from the Rackham School of Graduate Studies of the University of Michigan in 1968. the West Virginia Creeper) on steel guitar.įrayne is also an artist. The classic lineup was “Billy C.” Farlow on vocals and harmonica John Tichy on guitar and vocals Bill Kirchen on lead guitar Andy Stein on saxophone and fiddle Paul “Buffalo” Bruce Barlow on bass guitar Lance Dickerson on drums Steve Davis (a.k.a. We played the Grande Ballroom in Detroit on the same bill with Canned Heat so, naturally, the audience hated us, booed us, you know.”įormed in 1967, the group’s founder was George Frayne IV (alias Commander Cody) on keyboards and vocals. It was when the psychedelic ballrooms were starting to be big. “We were just having a good time, picking and playing and making a few dollars on the side.
“We didn’t think of appealing to anybody,” says the Commander. And it was even harder in 1967 when everyone was just getting into acid and revolution and high-powered MC5 music and all the other things that have put Ann Arbor and Detroit on the map. But that devotion is not an easy thing to stick to in the Midwest where, chances are, you associate that type of music with the greasers at the drive-in who love to vamp on longhairs and inevitably wind up becoming cops. They have devoted themselves body and soul to country music and old-time rock and roll. It is this second restored car with which has Ryan toured.Ĭommander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, who were a Country-Rock group formed at the University of Michigan, never intended to be a famous band. However, at the time of this song’s writing, Ryan built a second car, this time with a chop-shop melding of a 1930 Model “A” Ford coupe and a wrecked 1948 Lincoln. Actually, it was a rebuilt car with the body of a Model “A” coupe set into the frame of a 1941 Lincoln, along with a “hopped-up” Lincoln engine block. Was there really a “hot-rod Lincoln?” Yes and no. Route 95 in Idaho) to the top of Lewiston Hill he incorporated elements from this race in his lyrics to “Hot Rod Lincoln”, but changed the setting to Grapevine Hill (a long, nearly straight grade up Grapevine Canyon to Tejon Pass, near the town of Gorman, California) to fit it within the narrative of “Hot Rod Race”. Ryan raced his hot rod against a Cadillac sedan driven by a friend in Lewiston, Idaho, driving up the Spiral Highway (former U.S. Ryan based the description of the eponymous car on his own hot rod, built from a 1948 12-cylinder Lincoln chassis shortened two feet, with a 1930 Ford Model A body fitted to it.
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