BWW Interviews: Cameron Molloy releases 'The Drivin' Wheel'

The recent success of Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson's Django and Jimmie bucked the trend of the country music charts being dominated by pretty much anything but. The popular form that hijacked a large part of the sound in the early 1990's has left the rest on the fringe, or forced their reclassification. Americana is a catchall term that involves the combined elements of traditional and modern sounds, but does not fully fit every artist.

One who freely calls himself that is Cameron Molloy, a musician whose career has spanned 50 years. "I guess it would be Americana, for want of a better word," Molloy said recently. "It's not what they're shoving down people's throats as country music on the radio. It's kind of pulled in the blues, folk, country roots."

The native of southwestern British Columbia now lives in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Retired from the "working" world, Molloy remains active on the Midstate music scene, and last year released his latest album, The Drivin' Wheel.

To the listener, one gets traditional country right away, though Molloy says the songs are not strictly so. The tracks are a mix of new songs and some pulled from Molloy's past-"Pardon My Heart" and "Wild Rose" date back to the early Seventies. "Big Muddy River" has a blues feel, "Talkin' Louisianne" has Cajun influence, while "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" recalls cowboy singers such as Ian Tyson and Chuck Pyle.

The album is a walk through of Molloy's career, which dates back to his early days in an area of BC called the Kootenays, circa 1965. Musical influences for a young Canadian were largely familiar ones, which included Gordon Lightfoot, the Guess Who, and a curious band out of Toronto called the Poppers, which Molloy describes as, "quite a psychedelic group."

The music that really helped shape Molloy's direction were actually from the Seattle area. "The Kingsmen and the Wailers," he explains. "They toured up through there. The radio stations in those little towns, they played everything. On a Saturday night, I would sit home when I was in junior and high school, and you'd hear everything on the radio. Leroy Van Dyke to Marty Robbins, Neil Sedaka, and what happened to all of us, the Beatles ended up on The Ed Sullivan Show, and I (decided) that what I want to do."

An educational boost came from his mother, but the source material was a surprise. "I don't know where she got this from," Molloy recalls, "but my mom sat me down one afternoon and said, 'There's gonna be a show on the CBC tomorrow night. You wanna do this stuff, you gotta watch it."

What was it? "It was a two hour special on the blues: Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Willie Dixon, Lightnin' Hopkins, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. Until then," Molloy explains, "we'd heard the blues regurgitated back to us by the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds."

The Beatles and later Bob Dylan, during what Molloy called the latter's post-"Blowin' in the Wind" period also figured into Molloy's musical thinking. "Later on, I discovered Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia. Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, they're still two of my all time favorite albums."

Molloy began playing in what he admitted were a couple of "sloppy bands." He moved toward acoustic music in 1968-69, when in college. Molloy recalled one particular statement a friend made about his overall style. "There are guys who get up on a stage and make an entire audience of strangers feel comfortable. You do that."

Formative to Molloy was he and a friend joining a band led by a fellow named Nigel Pickering, once a co-founder of Spanky & Our Gang.

"He was looking for a guitar player," Molloy recalled. "He was an amazing guy because he'd been doing this since the 50's. He was part of that whole folk craze."

Molloy explains there was much more to the makeup of Spanky (give a close listen to their biggest hit, "Lazy Day," and you'll hear it). "They predated the Manhattan Transfer, the harmonies were that complex. So here he's got a couple of hillbilly boys from interior BC, and he's teaching us all these very, very sophisticated harmonies."

Pickering was above all a professional, Molloy recalls, and a taskmaster. "We grabbed some of it, you know," Molloy goes on, "but he was a tough old bird. I played lead on a tune one night, and he came up to me after, and he pointed to my guitar. 'Cameron," he says, "between this fret here (the first fret) and the 12th fret, you got six strings, you got 72 positions. That lead is among those 72 positions. Find it."

Molloy also credits the songwriting talents from several big names from Texas, which included Rusty Weir, the trio that first became known as the Flatlanders, then Townes van Zandt, Guy Clark and Rodney Crowell. "I recorded 'Pancho and Lefty' for my first album. I played it for Van Zandt, and he loved it," Molloy recalls with a laugh. "I just about floated out of the room, saying, 'You nailed it!'"

After years of travel that took Molloy from Alaska to Nashville, and numerous points in between, he settled into the Midstate of PA. Molloy remembers an introduction, of sorts: "I walked into this little bar in Hummelstown one night, and it was like stepping into Woodstock. Here were all these guys, 20 years, 30 years younger than me. There's a guy up onstage playing 'Freight Train,' with all the stumbles and everything. He's channeling Elizabeth Cotton! And there were guys all playing Grateful Dead tunes."

The host of the open mic was Mike Banks. A longtime fixture on the Harrisburg music scene with Flying Colors and other groups, Banks became involved in The Drivin' Wheel, as did several local artists.

With older-sounding music in the 21st century, Molloy is also bridging a gap between the old way you could get your music played, to the now. "(In the past), you could walk in any town, go down to the radio station with your 45 and boom! You'd be on the air, doing an interview."

The days of your local station are long gone, due to deregulation, a changed musical and technological landscape, not to mention a different economy. While Molloy admits he is not completely versed in the ways of cyberspace, he knows enough to have landed significant airplay for "Just One Tender Kiss," and other tracks on The Drivin' Wheel. Thanks to Airplay Direct, ReverbNation and Internet radio, Molloy is finding airplay worldwide, including his old stomping grounds of BC and Alberta.

"I might have to go back!" He exclaims with a laugh. "One of the neat things about it is it gets your music out to a lot of people," Molloy says. "Don't think you're gonna get a lot of money out of it, but it may be what it does on the other hand, is it gets you paying gigs."

Currently, Cameron Molloy and his band are doing local shows around the Chambersburg area, and he also has a residency at the Allenberry Playhouse. A throwback sound, perhaps, but an embrace of the newer method has kept Molloy's music and his career going strong.

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