Ohio's The Cowslingers have been called a lot of things, most of them good and pertaining to the band's music, a high-octane blend of rock, punk, country, rockabilly, blues, arena rock, preaching, booze and lust.
Singer Greg Miller prefers to keep things simple.
"A realistic definition of what we do is rock and roll; I ask people what they listen to and try to relate what we do from there," he said by telephone one gloomy Sunday afternoon just after the band returned from a European tour ("I'm dredging through the mail," he noted). "I sometimes say what we do sounds like what would happen if Johnny Cash and the Ramones played together; take all of the good things out of rockabilly, country and punk and leave out the filler; nothing but meat. In the end, there is music people like and music people don't like."
Following 11 shows in 12 nights in Europe, 10 in Germany and one in Belgium, the Cowslingers are touring around here on the heels of the release of the band's new CD, "Coast to Coast," on Shake It Records, including at the annual Americanarama, June 21-23 at Mohawk Place, 47 East Mohawk St., Buffalo.
The new CD was produced by John Keane, who has produced such CDs as REM’s "Out of Time" and recordings by Uncle Tupelo, Bottle Rockets, Cowboy Junkies, Widespread Panic and the Indigo Girls: "It's good, it's really good. It is always nice to work with a grown up," Miller said with a laugh. "We went to Athens, Georgia, to record the CD."
He was quite pleased with the European tour.
"We played in Germany last year and Spain before that, and we played a lot of different places, which I liked," Miller said. "Germans are reserved; for the first 20 minutes of the shows, they kind of stand there and stare at you, then they start to bob their heads. They give you a lot of applause, but they don't move as much as crowds in the U.S. But they were applauding a lot, and we were doing two to three encores a night and playing a long time each night. We'd basically play one set; I’d rather play one long set.
