Alan Munde and Country Gazette

Country Gazette had been started in Los Angeles in 1971 by the fiddler Byron Berline and the bassist Roger Bush. Munde, who had known Berline at the University of Oklahoma, joined after playing banjo and electric guitar on the Flying Burrito Brothers’ European tour of January 1972, and with Kenny Wertz on guitar the four made A Traitor in Our Midst (United Artists, 1972). Its “Keep On Pushin’” made the charts in the Netherlands and Britain, and the same song gave the 1991 album its title. Through two decades of changes, with Roland White in the band from 1973 into the late 1980s and Berline gone in 1975, Munde played on every Country Gazette album, for United Artists, Transatlantic, Ridge Runner and Flying Fish.

By the end of the 1980s White had left, and Keep On Pushing put Munde’s name in front of the band’s. Alongside the title song it mixes vocal songs such as “Rosa Lee McFall,” “Pretty Boy Floyd” and “Going Back to Alabam’” with the instrumentals “Picking at Snuffy’s,” “Marching Through Georgia” and “Durang’s Hornpipe.” Carr, a Texas guitarist, had been in Country Gazette since 1978 and also played with Munde outside it; they recorded Windy Days and Dusty Skies as a duo in 1995. The same year as Keep On Pushing, Flying Fish issued “Hello, Operator… This Is Country Gazette,” a compilation of the band’s recordings for the label from 1975 to 1988.

Munde, by then teaching in the bluegrass program at South Plains College in Levelland, Texas, later led a band under the name Alan Munde Gazette. He entered the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2024.