The Beat Farmers: The Rise and Fall of a San Diego Rock n Roll Band
In the dim glow of the warmly lit Belly Up Tavern of Solana Beach, across from the red-eyed Great White Shark hanging from the ceiling, a group of middle-aged rockers, who call themselves 'The Farmers,' perform for their 12th annual Hootenanny. Standing above a crowd of middle-aged music heads wearing Beat Farmer t-shirts and holding bottled beer, The Farmers bring to life an era in San Diego music; before Blink-182 or Thee Sacred Souls, San Diego had The Beat Farmers.
Formed in 1983, The Beat Farmers were a San Diego-based rockabilly band that dominated the local scene around San Diego State University. What started as just a couple of guys drinking beer and making music became a cult phenomenon. After a residency at the Spring Valley Inn and winning San Diego's Battle of the Bands in 1984, the band was signed to Rhino Records and recorded their first album, "Tales of the New West," released in 1985. While the band doesn't fall under the "one-hit wonder" moniker, "Tales of the New West" was (and still is) the band's best album.
This album's strength lies in its likeability. A combination of covers and original songs, the light-weight, roots-based songs have a consistent air of fun about them, characterized by a lack of gloss in the production that lends to the album's feeling of familiarity, casualness, and hootin' and hollerin'. An understated element of their sound is also due to the engineering of Steve Berlin, whose engineering places this album in a similar soundscape as Los Lobos, whom Berlin plays saxophone for; it's a subtle aesthetic, but any Los Lobos fan will recognize it.
The success of "Tales of the New West" led to The Beat Farmers being signed to a seven-record deal with Curb Records in 1986, which is when things started to go south. By 1986 the band had a solid line-up consisting of Country Dick Montana, Jerry Raney, Rolle Dexter, and Buddy Blue. Frustrated by demands from their new record label, Buddy Blue quit the band and was replaced by Joey Harris.
From 1987 to 1991, the band released three more albums with Curb Records, "Van Go," "The Pursuit of Happiness," and "Poor & Famous," as well as a live album, "Loud & Plowed and… LIVE." They were finally released from their contract with Curb Records and signed to Sector 2 Records to record their next album, "Viking Lullabys." That album was released in 1994, and the next year, they released their final album with this line-up, "Manifold."
From here, the story of The Beat Farmers goes from a struggling American rock band to tragedy. While on a 1995 tour, band founder and drummer Country Dick Montana suffered a heart attack three songs into a show in British Columbia, and the group disbanded three days later. He died on stage from what was later identified as an aneurysm. Trying to capitalize on Monatan's passing, Curb Records released "The Best of the Beat Farmers," a greatest hits compilation, without permission or acknowledgment from the rest of the band members. On their website, the band describes this release as, "It was (and still is) a very poor retrospective of the band that was packaged, put together, and released without the band's knowledge (sound familiar!)." Montana, who had been recording a solo album at the time, had his album, "The Devil Lied to Me," released posthumously in 1996.
As far as fame goes, this was the end of the road for The Beat Farmers. The rest of the band disbursed into other small side projects: The Farmers, Joey & The Mentals, and Buddy Blue worked as a music journalist for The San Diego Reader and the San Diego Union-Tribune until he died suddenly of a heart attack in 2006.
But the light did not die on The Beat Farmers. In 2010, the remaining band members began the tradition of a yearly Hootenanny hosted at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach. Raney performs with his band, The Farmers, Harris plays with Joey Harris and the Mentals, and then The Beat Farmers reunites to round it all out. The spontaneity of it, and its scheduling through Facebook, makes it feel like a family affair. The 2024 Hootenanny has still to be announced, but The Farmers are still around playing shows at "the bars they have yet to be kicked out of," Joey & The Mentals are on a small tour in 2024, and The Beat Farmers are doing two reunion shows in March at the Hopmonk Tavern in Novato, CA.
