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Not long ago, I had the opportunity to talk with Trick Pony’s guitarist, Keith Burns,
before the band’s performance at Fantasy Springs Casino. The band was on its way to do a benefit for Florida hurricane victims, then Keith and bass player Ira Dean were joining a motorcycle ride for charity.
Trick Pony is Keith, Ira, and Heidi Newfield, who provides lead vocals, raucous blues harp, and rhythm guitar.
The trio has a history together as one of the hardest working and touring bands in existence, at times doing upwards of 300 performances per year. The band’s forte is a high-energy, honky-tonk stage act, with accomplished musicianship and a stage act forged over years of touring. They have a new soon to be released album, “R.I.D.E.”
As for their connection to the hi-desert, it may be hard to find. That is,
unless you picked up a hitchhiker in Yucca Valley, as I did about four years ago. The young man I gave a ride to climbed in my truck and told me a story about his being raised almost as a surrogate member of Johnny Cash’s family.
He spun a nice tale of feeling part of that family, spending holidays with Johnny and June Carter Cash, and concluded by informing me that
his band going to release its first album soon. Johnny had told him that he would be glad to perform on the album, and he was obviously excited about that prospect.
Three years later, while interviewing Ira, I got to hear that tale again—exactly word for word.
A sense of déjà vu took me back to that ride I gave years earlier. When I met Ira (again) this year, I remarked, “I still think I gave you a ride a few years ago.” While his puzzled band mates looked on, he replied, “I believe you did.”
And on Trick Pony’s first album, Johnny Cash (along with Waylon Jennings) joins the band on a rollicking rendition of his song, “Big
River.” Once again, things move in their own way— right on through the hi-desert.
So, Keith, do you like motorcycles?
I love ‘em.
Give me a track and I’ll ride. Give me an open road and I’ll ride. But as far as driving with traffic, I’m not interested. They (cars) just don’t see you. It’s very frustrating. The very first time I got on a bike I got ran off the road twice. You know what? This just ain’t gonna happen.
I’d appreciate it if nobody killed you — and think of everybody else.
Yeah, and I’ve got kids.
How many?
I’ve got four. They’re 18, 16, 15 & 12.
So you’ve endured a lot.
I’ve endured everything there is to endure, my friend.
I’ve endured a divorce. I’ve endured 10 years of marriage. That right there was enough to kill me.
Fantasy Springs is a treat for your fans. The lounge only holds 450 people. It’s real intimate—the kind of place where people come up and
hand you drinks.
That’s great. I love places like that. People can get in real tight and you just get to see everybody up close.
Maybe we’ll just stick around and drink beer. We’re going to have a good time.
We’re having a ball right now. Heidi just got married. She got married and FedEx lost her dress, and at the same time we came out with a
song, “The Bride.”
Ira’s still single, isn’t he? You think anybody’s ever going to fall for him?
Women fall for him all the time—co-dependent women. You know which kind I’m talking about, the ones that go, “I think I can make him
stop partying.”
You just go, “Shut up, you ain’t gonna make him do anything. If you like him, you like him. Don’t try to change him.”
Everybody who falls for Ira tries to change him. And Ira is Ira.
He’s gonna have a party, about every other night, he’s gonna fall off the wagon and just throw down most of the time, and that’s just Ira. You’ve gotta take him for what he is. He has a great time, he’s a good guy, and he’s got a big heart. But he’s crazier than hell.
As far as musicians on stage, he’s probably the best one out there.
He’s studied jazz, but his roots are in country and his heart’s in country. He plays anything and everything.
Me, I’m a little more country than that. As far as what I do, I like old rock and roll and I like country.
That’s pretty much the extent of what I like and that’s the extent of what I know.
A long time ago I discovered Waylon Jennings and I kind of got my own style out of that and went, “This is it. This is what I want to
do.” I don’t really want to learn much jazz or learn a bunch of other stuff. I just want to do what I do and do it as well as I can do it.
You’re touring history is awesome.
Well that’s what we’re known for, certainly.
We’ve had some success on the charts and we’ve had some success with our videos and our album sales. We went platinum on our first album and we’re heading toward gold on our second. But realistically, we know what we’re known for and that’s our live performances.
This third album, I think we got closer to the live sound than we’ve got before. It doesn’t go all the way, in my opinion, but you
know what? Maybe the fourth album we will. We just keep working trying to sound like we’re live. That’s hard to do.
It’s hard to capture that energy.
It really is. It’s easy to sound the same, but harder to capture the energy.
It makes a big difference. Tell me about this new album.
The new album is the best album we’ve done. It’s got some great stuff on there and we’re very excited about it.
We’re doing about six songs off that album live right now. It’s going over great. “The Bride” is in the 20s, the video is doing great, the charts are kind of stuck right now, but everything looks really good. We’ve got some great things we’ve cut and feel real strong about.
It’s good old honky-tonkin’, and it’s got a lot of hits on it.
It’s got more commercial hits on it than on the second album. But it’s honky-tonkin’, it’s what we do best.
We work hard at what we do. Hopefully that comes out on tape and the people will respect that and give it a listen.
Why are there periods between every letter on R.I.D.E.?
Because it’s an acronym.
And what does this acronym stand for?
It stands for Rebellious Individuals Delivering Entertainment. We named the album Ride, and Heidi and Ira said it needs to stand for
something. They were going, “Ridiculed, Insulted, Depressed and Emotional.” And I went, “Guys, what are we trying to do? Depress everyone? Make everyone think we’re down? We ain’t down,
we’re kickin’ butt. So I just said, “Rebellious individuals delivering entertainment.” That’s what we do. They just went, “Oh man.” They gave me the high-five on that.
You collaborate with different people on your albums. Who’s on this one with you?
We had Darius Rucker, of all people. The lead singer for Hootie and the Blowfish came in, and I met him at Farm Aid.
So we sat on his bus and started swapping songs back and forth, and I played him some. He’d play me like a Townes VanZandt song, and I’d play him one of mine. And he’d play me a Nanci Griffith song, and I’d play him one of mine. He finally went, “Who’s songs are those?” I went, “Well, they’re mine.” He said, “Well that ‘Sad City’ song, if you go in and cut your next album, I want to sing on that.” I said, “Done.”
So we went in on the next album, and of course we cut “Sad City.” Basically (in the song) everything’s OK, you know. During the day,
he’s got a job on an assembly line.
Everything’s fine during the day, but when those shadows come across the wall, he’s knows it’s comin’. It’s a sad city when the sun goes down. Then, hearts breakin’ as the world goes round, when the moon goes up, tears go down, it’s a sad city when the sun goes down.
I wrote that out in LA with Mark Oliverius, the guy who wrote “Whole Lotta Gone” with me and “I’m Not Thinkin’ Straight Anymore” off the
second album. Darius—you’ll be amazed at how well he sings. He sings country as well as anybody. He sings country better than most country singers sing country.
He’s authentic. I don’t care what kind of music you’re doing, as long as it’s authentic to me, I’m fine with it.
I don’t like anything that’s processed. I like it to sound like it sounds when you’re sitting down in the room playing guitar. That’s the way I like it and that’s the way it should sound.
You guys seem to be a lot more than band mates. You seem to be friends.
We are friends. We’re like a married couple, Steve. A married trio. You go through your ups and downs. It’s very tough sometimes because,
you know, you’re married, how tough is it? You tell me how tough it is sometimes. Some days you just don’t want to be around that person. No matter how much you love them, there are days you just don’t
want to be near them.
Do you get a break from each other?
This week we’ve got five days off and we’re excited about that. But as a rule, you just find your place on the bus, you go to your
bunk, or go do what you want to do and you have to do that.
You have to find space. During the daytime I’m always gone. I work out during the day and there’s my two or three hours apart from everyone else where I get my head on straight. You’ve got to stay away from each other.
When you started, you were doing hundreds of gigs every year.
We were. We worked harder than any band out there and it got us to a position now we still work hard to take it to the next level.
Hopefully that’s going to happen soon. Babies need new shoes, my friend. I’ve got four that all have their hands out.
You guys are very tight on stage. At a previous show, you just took your Telecaster and chucked it to one of the stage crew. You didn’t
even look.
You know, we put together a different show every year.
We try to keep everything fresh and to keep everything moving. We can’t stand a lot of ballads, that’s why we have such a high energy show. But we also make it a point to keep everything fresh. We’ve got to know where everybody is at every second. I’ve got guitars flyin’, Heidi’s jumpin’ off cases, Ira’s jumpin’ off cases. I go out in the crowd, we have our merchandise guy come over and I jump off stage and land on his shoulders and he goes out in the crowd with me on his shoulders. That’s why we don’t drink before the show. We really focus on what we do. Afterwards, we have a big party. That’s what we do.
On stage we’ve got to stay focused. When I throw a $3,000 Tellie across the stage, he’d better be there to catch it. W
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