Live in Kansas 1986 is a two-disc recording of the concert Hot Rize gave on 15 March 1986 in the Winfield High School auditorium in Winfield, Kansas. Acoustic Disc released it in 2011. Orin Friesen introduces the band, and most of the show is Hot Rize in its long-running lineup: Tim O’Brien singing lead and playing mandolin, Charles Sawtelle on guitar, Pete Wernick on banjo and Nick Forster on bass. Forster moves to guitar for “Land’s End.” The Hot Rize sets include “Radio Boogie” and “Untold Stories,” the title songs of their 1981 and 1987 albums, alongside “If I Lose,” “Leather Britches” and “Shady Grove.”
In the middle of the concert the four come back as Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers. This is the band’s alter ego for 1940s and ’50s country music, and, as Hot Rize tell it, a group that rides in the back of the Hot Rize bus. O’Brien becomes Red Knuckles on vocals and guitar, Forster becomes Wendell Mercantile on “take-off” guitar, Wernick becomes Waldo Otto on steel guitar, and Sawtelle becomes Slade on bass. Their set runs from “In the Jailhouse Now” and “Slade’s Theme” through “Sleepwalk” to “Waldo Talks.” By then the Trailblazers had released records under their own name: a live album on Flying Fish in 1982 and the studio album The French Way, recorded in France in 1984.
Tracklist
- 1 Introduction By Orin Friesen 4:05
- 2 Blue Night alt version 2:23
- 3 Hard Pressed alt version 2:36
- 4 Band Intros 2:08
- 5 Wild Ride 2:33
- 6 Walk the Way the Wind Blows alt version 3:38
- 7 High Road 3:33
- 8 If I Lose alt version 2:38
- 9 Radio Boogie 3:17
- 10 Untold Stories 5:07
- 11 Footprints So Near 6:09
- 12 Leather Britches alt version 3:44
- 13 Trailblazer Intro 2:14
- 14 In the Jailhouse Now alt version 3:36
- 15 Slade's Theme/I Know My Baby 3:45
- 16 Red Remebers The 60's 2:44
- 17 Your Red Wagon 4:46
- 18 Sleepwalk 7:22
- 19 Waldo Talks 2:12
- 20 Land’s End alt version 3:18
- 21 High on a Mountain alt version 2:38
- 22 Shady Grove alt version 2:59
- 23 Midnight on the Highway alt version 2:44
