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Cheyenne Winter
Second Thoughts / Sit Awhile - 7"
Molten - 1970
Michael Panontin
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Cheyenne Winter were the first band to release a record on Randy Bachman's now long-forgotten Molten label, which the former Guess Who guitarist founded along with Wes Dakus. Bachman had seemed to be on top of the world, what with the classic trilogy of Wheatfield Soul, Canned Wheat, and American Woman riding the charts on both sides of the border. But with the band's crummy deal with RCA (he would later tell Classic Bands, "We've sold a million records and we've only got a cheque for four hundred dollars.") and with his gall bladder starting to act up, he abruptly decided to strike out on his own in May of 1970. He got down to business almost immediately, taking on former Wes Dakus and the Rebels singer Barry Allen and a gaggle of young Edmonton musicians for his newly established imprint.
Though the first two releases on Molten are listed as by Cheyenne Winter ('Second Thoughts' MM1) and Barry Allen ('A Wednesday in Your Garden' MM2), it is essentially the same group. "Cheyenne Winter weren't really a 'band' in the sense that 'we formed a group and we're all in this together, one for all, all for one, etc," bassist Ken Dangerfield explained to CM. "The musicians in the group were selected by Barry and Wes to form a backup group for Barry, more or less as sidemen."
The players - Dangerfield along with guitarist Jordan York, keyboardist Brad Carlson, drummer Dave Mitchell and a horn section of Earl Seymour (saxophone), Lorne Peet (trumpet) and Ed Gilchrist (trombone) - were given Bachman's punchy 'Second Thoughts' to record. Bachman's production resume was hardly a long one, with a few local credits back home in Winnipeg that included the Gettysburg Address, the Mongrels and the Lyme, but he at least had the good sense to take the guys down to Chicago's professional RCA Studios. For the boys, it was a bit of a trial by fire. "Wes Dakus preferred the 'cold and fast' approach, by which I mean we - the rhythm section, that is - were not given the songs or arrangements in advance of the sessions and did not rehearse them before going into the studio. We did a few run-throughs on the studio floor and then tape rolled (it was all analogue back then) with as few takes as possible. And of course the vocals, horns and other overdubs were done after that."
Both 'Second Thoughts' and 'A Wednesday in Your Garden' came out of those sessions, though as Dangerfield reminds us, it is essentially the same musicians on the two. 'Second Thoughts' was not that different from dozens of other records at the time, belting out run-of-the-mill roots-based rock and roll and then buttressing it with a brassy horn section. But with Bachman himself working the controls, toning down the horns and coaxing out a sound more along the lines of Moby Grape, they surely must have thought they had at least a regional hit on their hands.
Neither record bothered the charts much. 'Second Thoughts' limped to an unimpressive #49 showing on RPM's Top 50 Canadian Chart for a couple of weeks in July (the 4th and the 11th), while the Allen disc peaked at #30 during the first week. Bachman managed just one more disc on Molten (Painter's debut single 'Daybreak') before closing up shop for good.
For Allen it hardly mattered. He was already busy relaunching his career with a move south to Calgary to host the popular TV show Come Together, taking on a different bunch of musicians as Cheyenne Winter as his on-air backing band each week. Together, as Barry Allen and the Cheyenne Winter, they managed a cross-Canada tour, including stops in Toronto and points further east. He would enjoy more success strumming guitar for Painter, whose 1973 hit 'West Coast Woman' cracked the top 20 up here in Canuckistan. Ditto for Bachman, of course. After the failure of Molten, he formed the country-rock band Brave Belt, before taking care of business of a different sort with the gazillion-selling BTO and their string of sixteen charted singles and five top-ten LPs.
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