Red Willow Band

Presenting themselves under the banner "The Best of Country Swing," the Red Willow Band cut a pair of LPs for Lost Records during the closing years of the 1970s while building a dedicated audience throughout South Dakota, the group's home territory. The self-titled debut was tracked in 1976 at Audio Etc. in Sioux Falls, S.D., and appeared on Lost the same year. The follow-up, Note for Note, arrived two years afterward; it had been laid down at Jack Clement Studios in Nashville, TN, during July 1978. That release yielded the sole chart entry, "I Wish I Had Your Arms Around Me," which reached number 97 on Billboard's Hot Country survey. In 1999 the two-fer compilation Way Back When collected both albums on a single CD. That same year the Red Willow Band regrouped for an appearance at the Sioux River Folk Festival in August. Among the lineup—Chris Gage (guitar/piano/vocals), Hank Harris (guitar/vocals), Kenny Putnam (fiddle/vocals), Marley Forman (bass/vocals), and Barry Carpenter (drums/percussion/vocals)—several members sustained careers afterward, most prominently Harris, who continued performing with various groups and as a solo artist into the early 2000s.