More than 300 people turned out Sunday afternoon at Batavia Country Club for a free concert by the Ghost Riders, celebrating the group's 30 years of providing Genesee County with a hardcore country soundtrack.
Charlie Hetrick sitting in on bass (in place of Bill Pitcher). Hetrick was one of several local musicians and former members who sat in for some songs during the concert. Keith Worthington, foreground, on lead guitar. Photo by Howard Owens.
A recent Ghost Riders lineup: Jimmy "Steel" Duvall, Bill McDonald, Kay McDonald, Bill PItcher, and Bob Norton. Submitted photo.
There were some sharp elbows involved, says Bill McDonald, and Bill Pitcher's brother didn't expect the partnership to last when the two "Wild Bills" of the local music scene came together in Batavia 30 years ago to form the band that became the Ghost Riders.
But the partnership has thrived, producing some great music and some great memories for all involved as the Ghost Riders prepare for their 30th Anniversary celebration show at Batavia County Club at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 27.
By the time 1993 rolled around, both McDonald and Pitcher were veterans of the local music scene, with McDonald even venturing well beyond Genesee County's borders to pursue a musical career.
When he returned home, it was with the intent to take care of his family in their new home in Darien. Then a friend suggested he needed to start a country band.
He found a guitarist, and they started inviting in established musicians they knew who would fit into the hardcore country style they were after.
After a few rehearsals, they lined up a first gig and then the bass player had to hightail it to Florida because of some legal issues to resolve there, and then the lead guitarist quit to join an established gigging band in Buffalo.
At the same time, Pitcher's band Bullseye was running its course. The pedal steel player decided it was time to retire, and another member moved to Buffalo and another to Florida.
"So my band was dissolving right at the time that Bill needed a bass player and guitar player, so we kind of morphed into a good group of guys," Pitcher said. "We had all the elements we liked."
But still, no name for the band and gigs already lined up, including gigs originally booked for Bullseye.
Also, part of that original lineup was Jimmy Duval on pedal steel (Duval has played with McDonald for 40 years), Larry Merritt, and Jimmy Symonds.
The first gig was a long-gone tavern, Confetti's, located on property now occupied by City Centre.
"We played on a Saturday night, and it went over great," McDonald said.
"We’re hardcore country, country with a twang, with steel guitar and lead guitar, and we sang harmonies," Pitcher said.
McDonald said they drew on influences such as Merle Haggard.
"We wanted to keep real country alive," he said.
It was a few gigs into the band's career before they came up with a name.
One evening, the band was booked at the South Byron Fire Hall, and they decided to hold a band name contest. They invited fans to write new suggested names on a card. Then the band reviewed about 20 submissions and narrowed down the field to three "we could live with," McDonald said.
They read the names off to the crowd, and Ghost Riders, taken from the name of a song they played, and suggested by Fred Ferrell, was the overwhelming favorite.
"It may not be the most unique name, but it stuck," McDonald said.
In those early months, the Ghost Riders were a cover band even though McDonald was an established songwriter. The original songs would come later.
"It just was so hard to put all that together in a short period of time," McDonald said. "Everybody knew all the other songs (the covers), so it just made it easier. We learned (the originals) as we went into the studio to record an album. Then we practiced all of the original songs that we had. That's when we did our rehearsing, right in the studio. Yeah, that was pretty cool."
The Ghost Riders, in their career, have released five studio albums. None, of course, were big sellers, but they kept the fans happy, and there were always plenty of fans.
Pitcher remembers that on the first CD, the band included Ghost Riders in the Sky. They had to pay royalties -- eight cents for each CD sold. He ended up sending a check for about $3 to the publishing company in New York.
The band has also released another four live CDs, mostly compiled by Pitcher. There is a collection of songs recorded over a three-year period at the Stafford Carnival. There is another set recorded at a venue in Buffalo through the sound system onto a cassette that Pitcher said has just amazing fidelity considering the available technology.
Rarely, over the past 30 years, has the band traveled much beyond Western New York, but there have been gigs in Pennsylvania and Virginia.
"We never got a national booking agency involved with the band," McDonald said. "We had some chances to do it, but we booked our own stuff. We were getting up there. As I said, I was 30 when we started the band. He was 40. So we weren't a couple of youngsters."
McDonald had had his time on the road. As the frontman of Slim Chicken and the Midnight Pickers, McDonald toured throughout New York before moving the band to Texas (with a year at the end in California).
He even had his shot at a major record deal. One snowy winter night, his band was booked into the Cafe Espresso in Woodstock. That was a place favored by Bob Dylan and The Band at one time. The place was dead because of the winter storm. There was one customer, a man sitting by himself shuffling papers and just not leaving.
"I kept saying to the guys, why won't they close the place up and let's get the hell out of here?" McDonald said. "The owner said. 'We've still got a customer.' And he sat there all night. At the end of the night, after we played our last song, he came up to me and he told me, 'What are you guys doing tomorrow morning? Busy? I ask him who he is, and he says, 'I'm Harley Lewis. I'm from RCA Records in New York City."
He was an A&R man, and he wanted Slim Chicken and the Midnight Pickers in the studio in NYC the next morning to cut a three-song demo.
The band was in the studio and cut the demo, but the deal didn't come through.
McDonald said RCA decided to sign Pure Prairie League instead.
McDonald started his musical journey in Batavia with some friends and the band T&T and the Explosions, followed by Lookout Bridge and then Beethoven's Dream Group.
Pitcher’s musical journey began when he was five years old. His dad was a guitar and harmonica player who attached his harmonica to his guitar, not on a rack around his neck like Bob Dylan would popularize. As Pitcher and his brother, known locally as Uncle Rog, were growing up, their dad mostly played house parties, maybe six or 10 couples at the parties, maybe two or three times a week. He was a school teacher who drove truck in the summer.
When the Pitcher boys -- from Pavilion -- got older and had a band of their own, Dad would sometimes sit in.
"He never took a nickel for playing ever because he loved to play."
Then they formed a family band, Family Plus One. That band included another Pavilion boy, Charlie Hettrick, and Pitcher's mom, who bought her own Git Fiddle, which was a wire connected to a stick and a bell on top. She would hit the floor on the downbeat and pluck the string. Uncle Rog played drums.
By then, Pitcher was playing a little melody on guitar, which would give his dad a break on harmonica.
Most of the time, they played in Fulton County, where both of Pitcher's parents had extended family.
They would go into a bar and ask the bartender if they could play a bit.
"We had a good time in the bar," Pitcher said. "You know, in a half hour, 45 minutes, people would gravitate in. Somebody would make a couple of calls or something, and we would end up playing for two or three hours."
Before Bullseye, Pitcher was the leader of The American Countree Four. He was known as Wild Bill.
And McDonald, in Slim Chicken, was Wild Bill.
For years, fans would get them confused, both McDonald and Pitcher said.
"People would start talking to me, and I would figure it out -- 'oh, they mean a gig that Bill played,' and I'd tell him, and then he'd go, Yeah, somebody talked to me at a wedding reception, he thought that he was me," Pitcher said.
That's one reason Pitcher's brother didn't think these two guys used to leading their own bands would be able to put away the sharp elbows long enough to make music.
The first compromise was Pitcher, a few months older than McDonald, became "Mild Bill" while McDonald remained "Wild Bill."
Over 30 years, the Ghost Riders have played a lot of gigs. Most of them paid. There was a time when a good local gigging band could make a living in the warmer months playing lawn fetes and carnivals and picnics and parties. Every community had at least one annual event back then that needed live music.
Now it's much harder to find enough gigs, McDonald said. The band has also started other projects. McDonald and his wife Kay (who is also now a member of the Ghost Riders), for example, also tour as The Old Hippies. Pitcher has a few side projects, including a bluegrass musicians collective in Pavilion. Still, the Ghost Riders have some of the same gigs they play every year and have for 20 years.
One thing they've always done is play for free in support of good causes.
"We did a lot of civic stuff," McDonald said. "We thought when we started, we wanted to do what we could for the community for no money. You know, just do whatever we could do."
All along, the Ghost Riders have been all about the love of the music, both musicians said. That's the real secret to keeping the band going for 30 years.
"We just, we'd enjoy it," McDonald said. "We love playing music. And this is what gave us the opportunity."
Pitcher added, "My answer to why we're playing is because that's what we do. We love it. It's part of us. It comes from the heart."
All photos courtesy of the Ghost Riders.
The Ghost Riders Play at Batavia Country Club on Aug. 27 from 3 to 6 p.m. The current Ghost Rider members are: Gene "Sandy" Watson, Bill McDonald, Kay McDonald, Bill PItcher, and Nino Speranza.
One incarnation of the Ghost Riders: Jimmy "Steel" Duval, Bill McDonald, Brian Graz, Bill Pitcher, and Bob Norton.
The Ghost Riders can often be seen participating in local parades, picking their songs on a flatbed trailer.
Bill Pitcher, Batavia, Jimmy "Steel" Duvall, Waller Tx, Jim Sweet, Buffalo, Bill McDonald, Batavia, Bob Norton, Union City, Tennessee.
CDs released by The Ghost Riders during their 30-year career.
With many music traditions in Batavia, the Ghost Riders continue playing over 30-plus years and highlighted last evening's Jackson Square concert series with a packed crowd. Mild Bill Pitcher and Wild Bill McDonald founded the band decades ago and would play 100 plus concerts from May to August.
Since COVID-19 came present in 2020, they cut it down to about a dozen gigs in the summer months and traveling back and forth to Florida has increased for some members also.
For the last eight years, Bill and Kay McDonald continued in the winter months as the "Old Hippies." With some changes, the duo decided this summer to perform a home-to-home concert series. Wild Bill said, they plan two mini jam series on Aug. 8th and Sept. 12th in Jackson Square, and Aug. 22 in Elba.
The Ghost Riders and the Ghost Riders Drum and Bugle Corps put on a unique show Friday night on Main Street.
The bands performed right on the sidewalk next to Larry's Steakhouse (the show's sponsor) and music fans, maybe about 300 hundred of them, gathered around standing or finding seating as best they could.
The music was great, of course.
The Ghost Rider's great pedal steel player Jimmy "Steel" Duvall.
The Ghost Riders and The Ghost Riders Drum and Bugle Corps team up again for another free concert in Downtown Batavia at 7 p.m., Friday.
The venue this time is Larry's Steakhouse -- well, the concert is outside on the sidewalk and Ghost Rider Bill McDonald encourages music fans to bring their lawn chairs.
Larry's will be serving drink and food specials for the event.
It turns out there are two sets of Ghost Riders in town, and both will play at Jackson Square tomorrow night.
Batavia resident Dough Mellenthine, one of the directors of the "other" Ghost Riders, describes it as a miniature drum and bugle corps and a "brass choir." They play everything from patriotic tunes to chorales to "fun-filled, good time music" (as worded in a press release).
Formed in 1996 to compete in the Drum Corps Associates (DCA) "World Championship," which is held every year at various locations throughout the country, the Ghost Riders have distinguished themselves numerous times. They have appeared in championships for 15 consecutive years, won the New York State American Legion Crown, and, last year, won the Silver Medal and position of first runner-up at the DCA World Championship with a score of 98.0.
Mellenthine co-directs Ghost Riders along with Rod Keppel. Music is arranged by "World Drum Corps Hall of Fame" and "Buglers Hall of Fame" member Donny Allen. Group members are professional musicians whose experiences range from education to judging music competitions.
"This is not beer tent stuff," Mellenthine said. "I believe we're Batavia's best-kept secret."
Ghost Riders will perform from 8 until 8:30 p.m. at Jackson Square tomorrow night. Mellenthine said they've been practicing all year for this performance, so it ought to be good!
To learn more about Ghost Riders, visit their Facebook page.
Here is the next video in our Countdown to the Ramble series: The Ghost Riders performing "Honky Tonkin'." See our previous post for more about the countdown.
