The Satyrs – Don't Be Surprised (2023) @ Flac

Members:

Jeff Phillips - guitar, vocals

Bucky Hanks - bass, vocals

Bruce Smith - drums

Rick Haynie - lead guitar

The Satyrs - Biography by Mark Deming

A teenage rock & roll combo from Asheville, North Carolina, the Satyrs were local heroes who belatedly gained a nationwide audience decades after they broke up. In the mid-'60s, the Satyrs played melodic rock & roll with a strong R&B influence and a dash of folk-rock, and after establishing an audience in their hometown, they cut a 45 for a local label run out of a hi-fi shop. The single was all but unheard outside of Asheville, but when a collector and disc jockey discovered a copy of "Don't Be Surprised" b/w "Blue Blue World," it led to the rediscovery of the Satyrs and the release of an album of rare and unreleased recordings, 2023's Don't Be Surprised.

The Satyrs were formed in 1964 by four high school students who were longtime friends -- guitarist and vocalist Jeff Phillips, lead guitarist Rick Haynie, bassist and vocalist Bucky Hanks, and drummer Bruce Smith. Phillips, at the ripe old age of 18, was the oldest member of the band. The group's tastes ran to early soul music and first-era rock, and they started out playing covers. A hard-working group, the Satyrs rehearsed frequently, and were soon booking gigs every week, playing teen clubs, school dances, and private parties. Covers were what got them work -- one of the Satyrs would say that they started learning Beatles songs less out of devotion to the Fab Four than the fact that knowing the songs would help them get jobs. But the members started dabbling in writing original material, making music that had engaging melodies with a moody undertow.

Hanks had written a song, "Don't Be Surprised," in part about his infatuation with two young women he knew, and when the Satyrs were given their first chance to record, it was the A-side to their debut single. A friend of the band knew the owners of High Fidelity Sales, a local shop specializing in home audio gear, and some of the employees wanted to learn how to record music and put out records. The Satyrs became their guinea pigs, and the group spent a wintry evening repeatedly playing "Don't Be Surprised" and another group original, "Blue Blue World," into a rudimentary two-track recording setup for the would-be recording engineers. The store's owners pressed up the single on their own Wal-Mor label; they knew nothing about marketing and distribution, so outside of 45s sold at the store, the record went nowhere, though each member of the Satyrs walked away with a few copies.

The Satyrs had all but forgotten the single when about a year later, they met Will Hammond, a musician and record producer who ran a small label, Panther Records. Hammond heard the Satyrs and was convinced they had potential, so he booked them into Mark V Studios, a recording facility in Greenville, South Carolina that at the time was the best equipped studio in the Carolinas. At Mark V, the group was able to get a clearer and more polished sound, and Hammond helped them come up with more sophisticated arrangements, adding keyboards and strings on some tracks. Hammond and the Satyrs felt the original songs and recordings were good enough to justify taking the next step toward becoming full-time musicians. At the time, however the United States military was drafting young men to fight in Vietnam, a situation that broke up many young rock bands of the era. First, Phillips joined the Coast Guard to avoid fighting overseas, while Smith became a Marine and fought in Vietnam. With half of the group away, the Satyrs broke up in 1966, and while the four friends stayed in touch, they were never able to reunite the group. Bucky Hanks played semi-professionally in a number of bluegrass bands and became an Episcopal priest; he also worked in dance bands with Bruce Smith. Rick Haynie settled in Alabama, where he played guitar in a jazz club in his spare time. Jeff Phillips worked as a radiology technician at a hospital in Asheville.

In 2008, Whitney Shroyer, a music archivist and garage rock fan, was looking through old 45s at an antique shop in Hendersonville, North Carolina, and he found a copy of the Satyrs' Wal-Mor single; he knew nothing about the band or their music, but took a chance on the record and was pleased when he played it. He shared his discovery with fellow record collectors and spun it on a radio show he hosted, and was also impressed that it came from Ashville, a city not known for its garage scene in the '60s. An Asheville newspaper, the Mountain Express, did some research and was able to track down Bucky Hanks, who was willing to sit for an interview and put the reporter in touch with his former bandmates. In time, garage fans became aware of the Satyrs' unreleased Mark V recordings, and in 2023 Sundazed Records issued Don't Be Surprised, which featured both sides of the Wal-Mor single as well as eight numbers for the Mark V sessions. Fittingly, Sundazed had the LP edition pressed at Citizen Vinyl, a pressing plant manufacturing vinyl records in Asheville.

Don't Be Surprised (2023)

01. The Satyrs - Don't Be Surprised (2:26)

02. The Satyrs - Get Out Of That Rut (3:04)

03. The Satyrs - It Won't Be Long (3:03)

04. The Satyrs - Ticky Tacky (2:32)

05. The Satyrs - Try Not To Cry (2:13)

06. The Satyrs - To Be With You (3:03)

07. The Satyrs - I Walk The Line (2:18)

08. The Satyrs - The Shortest Road To You (1:43)

09. The Satyrs - Blue Blue World (3:31)

10. The Satyrs - Don't Be Surprised (2:22)

Don't Be Surprised - Review by Mark Deming

In the 1960s, it seems every city and town in America had at least one band of teenagers armed with cheap electric guitars and the will to make them wail, and in the 21st century, folks are still rediscovering little-known but worthy bands who recorded for local labels in that fertile era. While Asheville, North Carolina was not a serious rock & roll town in 1964, it did produce the Satyrs, four high school buddies who formed a combo to play dances and teen clubs, and they were good enough to attract the attention of some guys at a hi-fi shop keen to put out records. The Satyrs' barely distributed debut single, "Don't Be Surprised" b/w "Blue Blue World," came out of an after-hours session at High Fidelity Sales in Asheville, but when a garage rock collector found a copy at a junk shop in 2008 and flipped for it, it kicked off a search to find the former teenage rockers, and when someone interviewed Satyrs' bassist Bucky Hanks in 2012, they learned that the band had recorded a bunch of stuff at the more professional Mark V Studios in Greenville, South Carolina that never saw release. Almost six decades after their first single came out, the Satyrs finally made it to LP, and 2023's Don't Be Surprised collects their sole 45 along with eight previously unheard tracks from their Mark V sessions. The initial recordings of "Don't Be Surprised" and "Blue Blue World" sound like what they are: a band being recorded live in a retail space by people with no experience in production or engineering, but the A-side has a scrappy energy that would be the envy of most teen bands of their day, the flip is admirably moody and well executed, and both tunes show the Satyrs were promising songwriters and capable musicians. The Mark V recordings boast a lot more clarity and polish, though they still have a lively, natural feel, and the jangly folk-rock of "It Won't Be Long" (an original, not the Beatles' song), the tough harmonica-fueled R&B of "Ticky Tacky," and the soulful strut of "Get Out of That Rut" are the work of a band who should have been destined for bigger things. Guitarist and vocalist Jeff Phillips, lead guitarist Rick Haynie, bassist and vocalist Hanks, and drummer Bruce Smith all had impressive instrumental skills, Hanks and Phillips were songwriters with great promise, and they were fine singers, individually and collectively. Life got in the way for the Satyrs (mostly in the form of the military draft) and they split after a memorable two years together. Don't Be Surprised shows what a shame that was -- they were more talented and sophisticated than the typical high school combo of the mid-'60s, and this should please nearly anyone interested in '60s garage-related sounds.

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