Reigning Sound
Leapin' Lizards...


Greg Cartwright is a southern soul punk legend. His seminal work with the Oblivians, as well as with the Compulsive Gamblers and the Reigning Sound has helped define the garage rock movement. But the Reigning Sounds' newest LP, Home for Orphans, is a straight-up tear-in-my-beer opus.

Home for Orphans is comprised of tracks that were left off of the last couple releases, including some alternate versions of songs that have already been released. Unlike the bombastic (and aptly titled) Too Much Guitar which preceded it, Home for Orphans finds the band in country-soul mode, delivering sob-inducing performances that bring to mind Charlie Rich or Dan Penn.

"The thing that kind of pulls them all together is the fact that most of them are ballads, and most of them are slower songs, moodier songs, lilting country-type things," Cartwright said.

Though Too Much Guitar came out first, some of the songs on Home for Orphans were recorded first, with bass player Jeremy Scott, organist/guitarist Alex Greene and drummer Greg Roberson. That album was finished—until Cartwright called the band to the Memphis record store he ran at the time to listen to the mixes and got a surprise.

"Everybody liked the mixes, and then the keyboard player said 'Well, I'm pretty much going to have to quit the band,' because they were about to have a baby and he had a lot of responsibilities coming up on him – which I totally understood," Cartwright said. "But at the same time I was a little miffed because we had recorded this record the week before and I had just mixed it. I felt it was a pretty poor choice of timing to tell me that he was thinking he had to leave the band. I was thinking 'Man, I wish you had told me this two weeks ago."

Cartwright is a stickler for continuity in an album—all of the Reigning Sound records have a common theme, or a shared dynamic.

"I thought well, at the same time I don't want to release a record that is not a true representation of what this band is going to sound like live. If the keyboardist was leaving, that meant the band was going to go down to a three–piece," he said.

So the pared-down lineup went back in and recorded a whole new album. "It sounded drastically different," Cartwright said. "If you remove one component from a band or a mathematical equation, the answer's going to be different."

While Cartwright is closely associated with his hometown of Memphis, a couple years ago he relocated to Asheville, N.C. with his wife and kids. The rest of the band followed.

"I have a lot of people say 'How could you do it? How could you leave Memphis? I do miss it a lot. It wasn't the easiest thing I ever did," Cartwright said. "But I also realized something once I moved and I transplanted myself here in North Carolina. Memphis is so engrained in me that it really doesn't matter where I live at this point. It's so inside me that no other music has made an effect on me like Memphis music did."

Or, put another way: "If a Martian landed on earth, he's still a fucking Martian. It doesn’t really matter where he is," Cartwright said.

The band is recording a new record and working on a project with Eddie Kirkland and another in Muscle Shoals with George Soumi, Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham.

"Those are the guys who I really look up to, they're my idols," Cartwright said. "They're the saints of my religion."

—Brian J. Bowe December 2005

Photo by Doug Coombe