The Lost Trailers are a new band that has earned success the old-fashioned way: they write great songs, they all sing and play, and they out-work other bands by taking their music straight to the people. The Trailers spent most of the last four years on the road, having their trailer loaded with all of their equipment stolen not just once but twice (hence the band name), playing to audiences that might have been just a handful of people at first, but grew into several dozen and then a couple hundred with each successive visit.
"We love the road," says Ryder Lee, the Atlanta-based band's co-founder along with Stokes Nielson. "I think everyone in the band knows how important it is for us to connect face-to-face with an audience and win them over. That's our great strength, so we felt that we had to get out and start touring America from the get-go, just like our heroes, artists like Willie Nelson, Alabama, Johnny Cash, the Allman Brothers and Bruce Springsteen.
That ethic and attitude, not to mention those influences, go a long way toward explaining the seasoning and timelessness in the sound of this young band. The group caught a break early on when Willie Nelson heard a copy of the first Lost Trailer demo project "The Story Of the New Age Cowboy" and immediately added the unknown band to his 4th of July Picnic concert in Texas.
"Once Willie booked us, we had the confidence that we could really do this," Nielson says. "So we basically started calling clubs all around America and booking our own shows. We'd play any club that would have us, from Austin to Boston, and all points in-between." Lee (vocals/keys), Nielson (guitar/songwriter/vocals), drummer Jeff Potter, and bassist Andrew Nielson, have been playing music with each other since high school, and rhythm guitarist Manny Medina was added shortly after they started touring.
"It's really like a family," Lee says." We play hard, we party hard, we fight hard - everything is done to an extreme. But no matter what happens on the road, we're all in the same family. We stay at each other's houses and we eat at these huge tables and everybody's laughing and having fun, and I think that feel comes across in the music as well."
In the fall of 2004, producer Blake Chancey (Dixie Chicks, Montgomery Gentry, David Allan Coe) caught a performance of The Lost Trailers at the famous country dancehall, Billy Bob's Texas, and immediately offered his help in producing a record. The chance to return to Nashville (2004's Welcome to the Woods was recorded in Los Angeles) with a respected producer was an offer the Trailers immediately jumped on.
"We get a lot out of Nashville," Lee says. "All of our early stuff was recorded right off Music Row, and it allowed us to learn how to play and write songs, because we were constantly surrounded by amazing musicians. For us to come back to Nashville and make a record with someone like Blake Chancey was a great opportunity."
The band started recording with Chancey in the spring of 2005, and by the fall they were signed to BNA records by famed record man Joe Galante.
"Joe and his A and R head Renee Bell heard the songs we were doing with Blake, then they caught a show", says Nielson, "Before we knew it we were signed and making a record for the man who helped shape Alabama's career. As someone whose first public performance was "Dixieland Delight" at a high school talent show, that was a pretty momentous experience. Plus he was adamant about us making the record we wanted to make."
The Lost Trailers will start 2006 by bringing their style of straight-from-the-hip country music to a much broader audience. Their first single to radio will be released in the spring, and a tour will start shortly after.
