The Stumbleweeds by Carl Brown

The Stumbleweeds are an enigma

It seems, as far as anyone can tell, they started out in 1968 Jamming in the garage of frontman Rod Hooley somewhere in the suburbs of Clarksville, Tennessee. From the few pieces of video footage we can see the recording equipment they were known for experimenting with. This came from Rod’s father who worked in advertising, and Rod would later steal it when he left home, moving in with the other boys from the band: Bass player Charlie “Boochy Boy” Boon and drummer Earl Mackie. Other members would come and go when needed, none staying around for more than half a year. The Stumbleweeds never seemed content with their sound, always choosing to record in new ways, finding different setups, morphing from country pop to soundtrack style work to everything in between.

The first finished recording that has survived to the digital age is a tape simply titled “The Stopped Buck”. Intended to be used as a soundtrack to a friend’s film, the boys found a double bass, organ, and created a slow lurching theme to set a serious tone. After a long hiatus, we find a much straighter sound in “Absence”, with the band wanting to break into the country mainstream, with problem of the absence of a vocalist. Then, using entirely different gear we have the catchy pop piece “Sinner” blah blah etc. None of this matters, I don’t even care about writing it at all, it’s all nonsense anyway. City Deal is pretty fun though, experimenting with a bit of narrative and diving into something funkier. Flailing would be the last jam recording of fiddler Finnie Gray, who would later succumb to madness, convinced he was an entirely fictional character who could only express himself through overdriven harmonics.

Pioneering and inventive, The Stumbleweeds seemed to have a strange self-aware style, and never settled on a particular sound for too long. Some music historians have pointed out it’s as if they were never one single band at all, more a disparate set of ideas created after the fact by a guy who doesn’t even listen to or enjoy country music and just wanted to experiment with some tracks in between other projects he actually cared about.

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