Lawdy Rolla
The Guerrillas
Polydor, 1969

It’s June and I’m driving through Cornwall. Slowly, with the windows down. On the back roads, the roads without numbers, without names. Where everything gets slow and wild. And I’m singing along to Lawdy Rolla by The Guerrillas.

I bought this record years ago and didn’t, right away, get it. I liked it, I kept it, but I put it away and forgot about it. That’s the way things go sometimes. You stare perfect joy in the face and see nothing.

It was a couple years later that I really heard it. I came across it, wondered what it was, put it on the turntable and then, finally, I heard it. It leapt off the deck and slapped some sense into me. I marveled at it, played it over and over, danced around the room and played it again.

I don’t know anything about it or who the Guerrillas were or where they recorded it, but it’s a hellava great record. A groove that’s a mile wide.

And now, here I am, in Cornwall, listening and driving and singing and thinking: how often do I stare perfect joy in the face and see nothing?

Jeb Loy Nichols
Jeb’s Jukebox archive

Jeb Loy Nichols will be playing among our guests at this years Port Eliot Festival.