The Flying Burrito Brothers

Graham Parsons was a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who was in a few different bands, including the International Submarine Band, The Birds for one album, but one hell of an album.

and the Flying Burrito Brothers.

He famously left the Byrds either due to his opposition to the group going to apartheid South Africa and playing for segregated audiences, or because he wanted to hang out more with his good friend Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, depending on whose story you go with.

In the early 1970s, Graham had serious, well, he had problems with his demons, we'll say, which waxed and waned depending on the year.

While he was with the Flying Burrito Brothers, he visited Joshua Tree National Monument and fell in love with the place.

He visited the place a lot as the years went on, and during a funeral service for a friend, he told his road manager, Phil Kaufman, that should he die an early death, he didn't want to be buried in the ground.

Instead, he wanted to be cremated and his ashes spread in the desert of Joshua Tree.

Of course, Viva Las Vegas by Elvis or whoever you want to, whatever version you want to use.

maybe a little bit less obvious, just a little, is Sin City by the Flying Burrito Brothers from their 1969 debut album, Gilded Palace of Sin.

This, of course, is the band with Graham Parsons, Chris Hillman, Chris Etheridge, Sneaky Pete on Pedal Steel, one of the greatest albums of all time.

Graham was trying to get this kind of shit going in The Birds.

No one was taking Graham Parsons seriously.

So he went out and did his own thing and created the granddaddy of alt country, the granddaddy of the alternative 90s era country rock, this record.

This is where Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, Sunvolt, Bottle Rockets, Jayhawks, all those bands came from, Flying Burrito Brothers.

And the song on here is Sin City.

We had a great time.

And afterwards, we went up to a club called The Scene, where the Flying Burrito Brothers were playing.

And Bill, by this point, had gotten to be friends with Chris Hillman.

And so we all went up there, and I said to myself, well, this is kind of what we were doing, this kind of mix of country and folk and whatever.

Cosmic America is a philosophy of music that goes all the way back to Graham Parsons.

Grant Parsons, of course, was a co-founder of the Flying Burrito Brothers, played in the Birds, had two slept-on solo albums, and then sadly died of a heroin overdose at Joshua Tree National Park in 1973.

But he... was constantly fighting this idea that his music should be put into genres.

And he would be asked, like, what genre does his music belong to? And he would always say cosmic American music.

This is their attempt maybe at going country rock.

I think this album came out a little bit before the Flying Burrito Brothers album, Gilded Palace of Sin.

I'm not quite sure, but I'll know before we record.

That's for 100%.

I was like, who do I have Grammy? Well, Julie Doiron, a Canadian, uh, singer, has a song called Grammy, but I don't have that album.

Gram Parsons, I've already featured the Flying Burrito Brothers and B- Buffalo Springfield.

Mm-hmm.

So I thought, "Okay, I don't have Grammy." Then I thought, "Are there any Canadian awards? Okay, the Juno Awards.

Sweet.

A tribute to Woodstock and Flying Burrito Brothers and Beach Boys and Janis Joplin and

Jimi Hendrix.

That sounds incredible.