Riders Stick to Their Guns With Mayhem <i> and </i> Music

Riders in the Sky’s latest album, “Riders Go Commercial,” on MCA, opens with a comedy skit set in the label’s corporate offices: A company bigwig callously broaches the idea of selling commercial time on the trio’s new record. It’s the only way, the executive reasons, to justify keeping a group that specializes in music of the American West and doesn’t sell a fraction as many records as label mate Tiffany.

“We have commercials in all the other media--radio, TV, magazines, even movies and VCR tapes--why not records, and why not now?” the crotchety voice suggests. “To begin with, I think maybe half commercials and half music. I realize that may be a tad excessive, but eventually we can probably . . . phase the music out altogether !”

Well, it’s said that truth is funnier that fiction, and according to Riders’ leader Ranger Doug (“The Idol of American Youth,” as the group would make him known), MCA really would prefer that these guys stick to commercials--the comic ones that punctuate the album, at least--and leave their renditions of cowboy classics out on the lone prairie.

“To them we are a comedy act,” Ranger Doug said by phone Wednesday from Santa Cruz, where he, fiddle player Woody Paul and upright bassist Too Slim logged their 2,000th performance together. On Sunday night, they’ll make it 2,002 at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano.

“We’re marketed as a comedy act, not as a Western music act. . . . They don’t care if we don’t put any music on (our albums) at all. So I was quite happy when we were able to get five songs on the new one.”

Goofy routines--from whimsical old-time radio-style ads for the likes of “Deadwood Darlene’s Prairie Lubricants” to public-service announcements listing the warning signs of creeping Polkaholism--indeed are integral to the Riders’ act and have been from the beginning.

But since making the jump from Rounder Records, the folk-music specialty label that released the group’s first half-dozen albums, to major-label MCA, which has issued three Riders albums since signing the group in 1987, the Riders have been upping the comedy ratio steadily.

Ranger Doug is a little concerned that the music, which all three performers truly love, might appear to be taking a back seat to all the, ahem, horseplay--at least to the record-buying public.

“But,” he continued, “all (people) have to do is see one show and they’ll see that the music is for real. If that weren’t the case, the comedy would look like a spoof. One makes the other possible. You can be funny only if you are really good at the music.”

In that department, the Riders need make no jokes, nor apologies, for each is as versatile and dexterous an instrumentalist as any jazz player. Routines and all, they remain the leading promoters of traditional Western music these days.

“The live show is very much music,” Ranger Doug said. “Sure--every second or third piece we’re going to do something funny. But there is plenty of music in there. I realized long ago that I’m not going to make a mark as a singer and songwriter of tender romantic ballads. So I’m happy if we can slip one or two into a show as a varied part of our many talents, if I may be so immodest . . . our many limited talents, such as they are.”

The shows give each performer wide latitude in selecting material, which helps retain an element of freshness and spontaneity even after 1,999 previous engagements. But the real reason “we’ve kept our enthusiasm is that we are playing music that we really love,” Ranger Doug said. “It’s not like we’re backing up a singer who’s playing his songs. This is what we would be doing on the back porch if we were not doing it professionally.”

The Riders spiced up the musical recipe on the latest record with the addition of an accordion player, identified on the record only as “Joey (The Cowpolka King).”

“He’s a great addition,” Ranger Doug said. “Musically he’s got us all juiced, especially Woody, because he’s another melody player. He’s very tasteful--he doesn’t run you over with dexterity. He knows when to make a musical joke and when to play it serious. He has the instinct as well as the talent.” Although Joey occasionally joins the Riders in live performances and on radio, he won’t be on this weekend’s Southland leg of the tour.

With or without Joey, the Riders are riding higher than ever as, this month, they mark the 11th anniversary of their first hitting the road. Not only has MCA recently renewed the group’s contract option, guaranteeing at least one more album in the coming year, but the Riders are planning this fall to launch a second year of their public radio series, “Riders Radio Theater.”

“Doing ‘Riders Radio Theater’ has really kept us on our toes,” Ranger Doug said. “You can’t go back after three weeks and do ‘That’s How Yodel Was Born’ again. So we’ve been going back and redoing a lot of songs we haven’t done in five, six or eight years, as well as writing some new ones.”

Meanwhile, the ever-growing Riders in the Sky cottage industry continues unabated in the guise of “Too Slim’s Mercantile.” Besides the records, tapes and CDs they ride herd over as they cross the country, they sell Riders T-shirts, buttons, jackets, bolo ties, bumper stickers, hat pins, sweat shirts, badges and most anything else they can find a spot to put their brand on.

(And, as Ranger Doug is quick to add, “if you don’t want to be seen leaving theater with Riders merchandise, you can order from Too Slim’s Mercantile by mail and your package will be delivered to you in a plain brown wrapper by a uniformed agent of the United States Government.”)

Not everything is Happy Trails. The pressures of spending so much time on the road--the Riders play about 200 shows a year--makes personal relationships difficult to sustain, and both Woody Paul and Ranger Doug went through divorces this year.

“It’s tough having any kind of relationship,” Ranger Doug said. “I think I’d have a lot of interesting things to offer to a woman, such as a glamorous career, but there’s also a big negative, which is being gone 210 days a year.”

He remains committed to his children, as are the other Riders. They all try to bring the kids along on the road when it is feasible. “We love our kids so much. . . . We are the dullest guys in the world at home. I take my kids to the ballgame. People will ask me, ‘Did you go to this club or that club last night?’ And I say, ‘No, we worked on homework last night.’ That’s what’s important to me. The happiest times in my life are the times I spend with them.”

If that sounds like an exceedingly traditional, painfully square way to live, it’s the same straight-shootin’ “cowboy way” that makes the Riders’ music hit home for such a wide range of listeners. “It has for me--and I hope we convey this--a sense of freedom, a respect for nature, a love for the outdoors,” Ranger Doug said.

“So the guy who is beleaguered by crime in the city, a hairy mortgage payment or troublesome teen-agers can come to one of our shows and ride away to a wonderful fantasy world where it was just a cowboy and his pony in the great American West. That has always appealed to people and it’s why Western music was so popular in the ‘30s and ‘40s, not just in Wyoming and Texas, but all the way to Connecticut and Florida. That’s it to my mind . . . that’s the spirit that moved me first and keeps me writing and performing.”

Riders in the Sky play at 8 p.m. Sunday at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: $18.50. Information: (714) 496-8930.