Sugarfoot

1) Born in Hamilton, Ohio, about 20 miles north of Cincinnati, in 1943, Leroy Roosevelt Bonner grew up poor, the oldest child in a large family. After running away from home at 14, he wound up in Dayton, where he connected with the musicians who would form the Ohio Players. The band’s lineup changed over the years, but its instrumentation and sound remained basically the same: a solid, driving groove provided by guitar, keyboards, bass and drums, punctuated by staccato blasts from a horn section. Assisted by Roger Troutman and his Zapp brethren, Sugarfoot went solo in 1985 with Sugar Kiss - the same year Zapp released The New Zapp IV U (featuring “Computer Love”), while Shirley Murdock was on the verge of scoring with the Troutman-produced “As We Lay.”

Vocals were a secondary consideration. “We were players,” Mr. Bonner told The Dayton Daily News in 2003. “We weren’t trying to be lead singers.” The core members of the band did not originally sing, he explained, but “we got so tired of having singers leave us that we decided we’d just do the singing ourselves. I used to play with my back to the audience in the old days,” he added. “I didn’t want to see them because they were distracting. Then the first time I turned around and opened my mouth, we had a hit record with Skin Tight. That’s amazing to me.”

Wistful, westward-longing tales woven by strings of pedal steel, acoustic folk, and weepy slide guitar, ever in harmony with the band`s psych-pop roots.

2) Sugarfoot is a band project formed by long-time musical partners Øyvind Holm & Hogne Galåen. After four albums of 60s influenced psych pop together in the band Deleted Waveform Gatherings, they both felt an urge to step aside for a moment to explore their common love for folk-rock and country music.

In the early parts of 2012 they finished up and recorded 14 new songs. To add to their new won excitement, they invited a bunch of their favorite musicians to join in and contribute to the project. «We wanted the album to sound like something more than DWG with a pedal steel,» Holm says. «So involving as many musicians as possible outside our own band was an important part of our vision.»

Among the musicians playing on the record are:

Bent Sæther (Motorpsycho, The International Tussler Society) • bass

Even Granås (Moving Oos, The International Tussler Society) • drums

Alexander Pettersen (The South) • slide guitar

Roar Øien (Too Far Gone) • pedal steel

Håkon Gebhardt (ex-Motorpsycho, HGH, The International Tussler Society) • banjo

Lars Lien (The International Tussler Society) • piano + mixing of the album

Thomas Henriksen (Dipsomaniacs) • organ

Øyvind Smidt • violin, mandolin

Anbjørn Viem (Deleted Waveform Gatherings) • backing vocals, mandolin

One of the new songs also has lyrics written by the

very prolific songwriter, Martin Hagfors.