Don’t Give Up Your Day Job (United Artists UA-LA090-F, 1973) was Country Gazette’s second album, after A Traitor in Our Midst (1972), and like it was produced by Jim Dickson. Byron Berline and Roger Bush had formed the band in 1971, and the lineup here is Berline on fiddle and mandolin, Bush on bass, Kenny Wertz on guitar and Alan Munde on banjo. Herb Pedersen sings on five tracks, Clarence White plays on five (guitar and dobro), and Leland Sklar on bass and Al Perkins on pedal steel appear on a few.
The twelve songs mix bluegrass and songs from outside it: Stephen Stills’s “The Fallen Eagle,” Graham Nash’s “Teach Your Children,” Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s “Honky Cat,” Don McLean’s “Winterwood,” and Flatt and Scruggs’s “Down the Road.” The band’s own instrumentals are Berline’s “Huckleberry Hornpipe,” and “Deputy Dalton” and “Snowball,” both written by Berline and Munde. On “Teach Your Children,” Perkins plays pedal steel, Sklar bass and White dobro behind the vocals of Pedersen, Wertz and Berline.
Tracklist
- 1 Huckleberry Hornpipe alt version 4:14
- 2 The fallen eagle 2:00
- 3 I don't believe you met my baby 1:58
- 4 Deputy Dalton 2:07
- 5 Teach Your Children alt version 2:39
- 6 My Oklahoma 2:31
- 7 Down the Road alt version 2:40
- 8 Winterwood 2:45
- 9 Honky cat 2:39
- 10 Snowball 2:25
- 11 Lonesome blues 1:43
- 12 Singin' all day and dinner on the ground 2:04
