wouldn’t say assistant, but he worked directly with Dale and his production company and came to my attention through Dale and we hired Jerone to join the band when Monte was gone on his medical issues. Jaron came into the band and a brought solid tempo, just a great player and in the studio this time around shined as a drummer in the Outlaws. He just did a sensational job. Monte, this is Monte’s kinda swansong, He had struggled for about a year, was gone from the band for about 8 or 9 months, came back and had a hard time out there on the road this past year and just kind of came to the conclusion that it just was not in him to do this kind of job. Monte played on two or three cuts on the record, I thought he did a great job. He played on “Southern Rock will Never Die” , “Overnight From Athens”, “Windy City Blues” and a couple others. It was a great record for Monte to go out on, so to speak, because Monte’s days on the road, I think are over. As sad as that is to me and the fans, ya know, but if you knew Monte, you would know how hard it is for him and out of the realm of possibility it is for him to be on the road.
He is a great guy. He is a great guy! The fans love him and rightfully so, he’s always been really good to the fans and he is a great talent and a true be- liever and an interictal part of the Outlaws success. I was there, I know what Monte did, I know how he believed in what we were doing and how he made the most incredible impres- sion musically on those first three or four records. But Monte’s tenure in the band is probably behind him.
He’s been working for so many years, I know people call music, they say “we going out to play,” and that confuses a lot of people. Going out to “play,” yes, but it’s really you going out to work your ass off. Yes, it’s a lot of hard work.
It really is and just being on the road, I’ve done it for three or four weeks on a bus and it nearly killed me. Yeah… No It’s a hard job.
You had mentioned at one point in passing I think. Didn’t Billy Crain play some on this too? He played the 3rd solo, the 3rd middle solo on “Lonesome Boy From Dixie,” that’s all Billy played on the album.
Oh okay. I just love that guy. When he was in the band, of course his playing is off the chain, but I guess it’s almost as much his being a showman as anything else, as far as throwing it back like a rock star Oh yeah.
I’m a big fan. His brother Tommy was my buddy, so I love the Crains. Tell us a little bit,the readers, about Dixie High- way, who produced it, etc I produced the record, I had some help from Dale, the band weighed in on arrangements. I compiled the body of work to record, I kind of kept a running tab of where we were with songs and I would book sessions, we would go in and cut two or three, maybe four things at a time. We did that two or three different times, once with Monte and twice with Jaron and one last time with Monte. The songs, ya know, they have a very historical perspective and a very optimistic futuristic perspective. I think that the story lines come from experi- ence, and one of my primary objectives as producer on the record was to make sure that we maintained true to the Outlaws musical personality. That is the same personality that I refer to from the first self-titled record to Lady In Waiting and Hurry Sundown. That was my impression of the Outlaws and so we remained true to that. We wrote about things we knew about, we wrote things we cared
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