New Riders Of The Purple Sage

New Riders of the Purple Sage grew out of San Francisco's psychedelic scene in 1969, a country rock band with a Grateful Dead family tree. The original lineup borrowed several Dead members, most famously Jerry Garcia, who played pedal steel guitar with them until 1971, with John Dawson and David Nelson also in the ranks. Fellow Dead men Phil Lesh and Mickey Hart appear on the band's roll call too.

When Garcia stepped back, Buddy Cage took over the pedal steel, and Dave Torbert held down the bass. The band's self-titled album from 1971 is where they staked their claim: cosmic cowboy songs with the lazy swing of a Bakersfield honky-tonk and the long-haired looseness of the Haight. "Henry" remains the track that keeps turning up on rock radio countdowns.

The lineup kept changing over the decades, with Spencer Dryden and Skip Battin joining at various points and Cage returning more than once, and the New Riders, or NRPS to the faithful, rode on long after the psychedelic dust had settled.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.