This new CD and digital mp3 reissue — a deluxe vinyl version is also available, with hand silk-screened/hand-stamped jackets, a download of record + CD bonus cuts, a “more jam for your bread” sticker, and inserts with liner notes and photos — is one of the recent discoveries by Nashville-based archival producer Mark Linn, who has previously unearthed hidden treasures like Kris Kristofferson’s early publishing demos, Please Don’t Tell Me How The Story Ends – The Publishing Demos 1968-72. Check out more about Riley, including a free mp3 from the record, after the jump.

Sometimes the story of how a rare find like Grandma’s Roadhouse is saved from total obscurity ends up being just about as interesting as the album itself, and this one’s no exception to that rule. A few years ago, Linn, a big fan of Kentucky-born honky-tonk singer/songwriter Gary Stewart, had made his way down to Fort Pierce, Florida, to the home of a friend of Stewart’s, Tommy Schwartz, in search of demo recordings he could release on his Delmore Recordings imprint. It was during his search that he came upon on a demo reel which contained the recordings released as Grandma’s Roadhouse (he didn’t realize they were part of Grandma’s Roadhouse record until last year). This discovery led him directly to the band’s main man, Riley Watkins, who had befriended Stewart in Fort Pierce back in the late 60s.

Watkins — originally a native of Burlington, North Carolina, who now makes his home in Tuscumbia, Alabama — had moved to Michigan with his family in the 1940s, and he’d even formed his own band there in the early ’60s. They were apparently good enough players that they backed big name artists like Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Del Shannon and Ray Stevens. At some point Watkins met Stewart down in Fort Pierce, and for a time Stewart joined Watkin’s band, who were calling themselves The Imps at the time, but even then Watkins could tell that his new bandmate was destined to become a star on his own, and their trajectories would be taking them different places. Watkins was right, of course; within five years, Gary Stewart became the so-called King Of The Honky Tonks, charting with hit country songs of his own like “She’s Acting Single, I’m Drinking Doubles.”

Gary Stewart- She’s Acting Single, I’m Drinking Doubles

Stewart would eventually move from Florida to Nashville — although he lived in a beat-up trailer near Franklin, Tennessee, according to the liner notes — eventually penning a handful of hit songs, with a fellow Fort Pierce songwriting pal named Bill Eldridge, for country stalwarts like Stonewall Jackson and Hank Snow. Their songwriting partnership also led to a handful of unsuccessful solo recordings Stewart made himself, for the Kapp label, in the late ’60s. Meanwhile, Watkins’ bar band slogged on. They played originals and popular cover songs in Michigan clubs and venues and worked typical day-jobs to survive.

Then one day, in late 1969, Riley got a call from his old friend Gary Stewart, who along with Eldridge, had begun working as engineer’s assistant at the famed Bradley’s Barn recording studios, which had been built in an actual barn, just outside the town of Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, by legendary record producer Owen Bradley. One of the benefits of working at Bradley’s Barn was that Gary and Bill were given carte blanche to use the studio in off hours to record their own stuff. Stewart asked Watkins to bring his band down to the hills of Tennessee and do some recording, explaining to his former bandmate that he and Eldridge had landed a publishing contract with Bradley’s Forrest Hills Music company and they needed a band to help him record their songs.

Over the next several months, into the new decade, Riley (the band) would play weeknights in Michigan bars and then hightail it down to Bradley’s Barn to record their songs, usually during the studio’s off-hours, and it was during these sessions that Watkins, Snead, Noveskey and Stewart recorded the songs which ended up on Grandma’s Roadhouse.

Stewart contributed four songs included on the album, and even sings lead vocals on two of them, “Drinkin’ Them Squeezins” and “Love, Love You Lady,” and duets with Watkins on the title track. Riley Watkins sings lead on the rest of the songs, his hearty, sometimes throaty vocals tending toward a bluesy style that might remind some of a more down-home David Clayton Thomas (of Blood, Sweat & Tears). One song from the album did eventually see daylight, when in 1976, Gary Stewart re-recorded “Easy People” in a bluegrass style for his second RCA album, Steppin’ Out.

The album wasn’t produced by Owen Bradley, but Bradley was apparently at some of the recording sessions and did make observations from time to time. Watkins claims that Bradley was looking for his own version of Creedence Clearwater Revival, who were racking up hit after hit in the late sixties and early seventies, but the famous producer didn’t think Riley were the band for the job and so Watkins and company ended up self-releasing these recordings on their own label, Mo Fok, in the spring of 1971. That same year, of course, four of Gary Stewart’s songs were simultaneously rated among the nation’s Top Ten country tunes, but his biggest hits were to come a few years down the road, in ’75-’76.

Within a few years, the members of Riley would each end up going their own directions. Riley Watkins would end up playing with Stewart off and on during the 1970s, even appearing with the country superstar on Austin City Limits in 1981. Watkins eventually became a born-again Christian and has reportedly not played any secular music since the mid-80s. Drummer Jim Snead went to play with country star Nat Stuckey and Charlie Pride for a time, and he’s still drumming, while Noveskey likes to play music for “shits ‘n’ giggles,” according to the liner notes. Riley and Snead have recently reunited and are rehearsing together and their first gig is next month in Nashville. Stewart, who lived a hard life with lots of ups and downs, took his own life back in 2003, almost a month after the death of his wife of 43 years.

We realize these recordings have a grits ‘n’ gravy texture that many others have perfected since the early 70s, but this one remains an interesting discovery nonetheless. Delmore Recordings have made one of the album’s best songs, a below-the-Mason-Dixon-Line paen to marijuana called “Field Of Green,” available to the readers of When You Awake as a free download, so please enjoy.

MP3: Riley – Field Of Green