Country Rock More Harmful Than Heroin - Study Shows

Ace country fiddle player Byron Berline has had a varied career. His first public appearance was as "Bouncin' Byron, Teen Cannonball" in the popular Saturday morning kids' TV show Hiram Haystack's Hootenanny [Wikipedia is your friend - Ed.]. His parents soon tired of driving frantically around the TV studios with a net stretched across the bed of their pick-up. "We'd miss him, or he'd overshoot, more often than not," chuckles father Keats, "and crash hats were a mite expensive." Retiring from TV before concussion retired him from everything, Byron hoped to capitalize on his TV celebrity with a traveling trampoline show, but failed to draw an audience. On the suggestion of his mother, Byron added fiddle playing to the act, and he soon attracted an enthusiastic public. It was at the Crawfish County Fair that country music legend Bill Monroe spotted the talented teen rising momentarily above the heads of the crowd whilst playing Orange Blossom Special. The rest is history, and history, as PT Barnum said, is bunk.

Today's Catering Pack O' Country Rock© serves up a sizzling selection of Bouncin' Byron's best! The Sundance album is a little-known beauty from '76, just gorgeous, but sales were disappointing. "I should have hung on to that trampoline!" jokes Berline today. "Not in a literal sense - I don't see how that would work - but it might have made folks take notice."

Also included is the swell Warped Records compilation of twenty-seven - count 'em - pre-Sundance Country Gazette tracks, apparently recorded between albums, which you need like air.