Country Gazette

When Dillard & Clark broke up in 1971, Berline and Bush started the band, and the guitarist and singer Kenny Wertz and Munde soon joined; Herb Pedersen wrote songs for the group and sang on its records but did not tour with it. That year the band recorded songs for the film Welcome Home, Soldier Boys, and in 1972 its members joined the Flying Burrito Brothers for the live album The Last of the Red Hot Burritos. United Artists released Country Gazette’s first album, A Traitor in Our Midst!, in September 1972, produced by Jim Dickson, with Berline on fiddle and mandolin, Wertz on guitar, Munde on banjo and Bush on bass, and Pedersen, Skip Conover and Chris Smith as guests. After tours of Europe and Britain came Don’t Give Up Your Day Job (United Artists, 1973), again produced by Dickson, with Clarence White, Leland Sklar and Al Perkins among the guests; its singles included a version of “Teach Your Children.”

In 1973 Wertz left and Roland White came in on mandolin and guitar. The band recorded a live album at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica in November 1974, with Conover guesting on Dobro, issued as Country Gazette Live. Berline left in 1975; Wertz returned, with Dave Ferguson on fiddle, for Out to Lunch, which Transatlantic released in Britain in 1975 as The Sunny Side of the Mountain and Ariola and Flying Fish issued in 1976, with Perkins on pedal steel. By 1977 Munde and White were the core of the group, and they made What a Way to Make a Living for Ridge Runner with guests including Berline, Richard Greene, Conover and Bill Bryson.

Joe Carr on guitar and Michael Anderson on bass joined in 1978, and that lineup recorded All This, and Money, Too (Ridge Runner, 1979) and American and Clean (Flying Fish, 1981), the latter with Sam Bush guesting on fiddle. With Bill Smith on bass in place of Anderson, the band recorded America’s Bluegrass Band in Nashville (Flying Fish, 1982). Bluegrass Tonight (1986) had Munde, White, Billy Joe Foster and the Dobro player Gene Wooten, and Strictly Instrumental (1987) added David Grier on guitar. The last album, Keep On Pushing (Flying Fish, 1991), had Munde on banjo, Dawn Watson on mandolin, Steve Garner on bass and Chris Vandertuin on guitar, with Joe Carr on fiddle and mandolin and Wooten on Dobro. Flying Fish also issued a compilation of the band’s 1975–1988 recordings for the label, “Hello, Operator… This Is Country Gazette” (1991), and in 2011 Sierra released The Four Album Collection, which included previously unissued recordings from 1973–1977.