A complete wasteoid, Burnt River Band was a biker band that only released a live album in 1981. It’s hard to describe music without thinking of all those fun B flick movies that makes Summer days even sweeter. It’s simple, it’s fun and its rollin’ and tumblin.

The band was formed by of Stanley “Blues” Nicholas on guitar, harmonica and lead vocals, Clyde “Boogie-Woogie Red” Deubel on bass and vocals, Danny “Flash” Young on guitar and vocals, and Jon “Indian” Lewandowski on drums and vocals.

The Burnt River Band has, over the past 4 or 5 years, developed a reputation as a “Biker Band.” I guess that’s because whenever we play, there’s always a hundred or more scooters and the tramps that rode ’em (weather permitting). In the summer, we play outdoors a lot, at swapmeets, barbeques and runs of all kinds, sponsored by clubs, bike shops or a bunch of buddies just having a blowout. During the winter, we’re in the bars. We don’t play conventional rock clubs for two reason 1) they won’t hire use because of our reputation, and 2) all them creepy mothers’ want to hear is sissy fag sh-t, anywhow. We enjoy our music and we enjoy our friends to the max. I think that we have more excitement on a Friday night than a lot of citizens have in their entire lives
Sincerely. “Blues”

A special note of thanks to Dave Adorni, without whose support, this album would not be. Our sincere thanks to Gary Carlton and all of our friends at the swapmeet. RIDE HARD & RIDE SAFE

Stanley “Blues” Nicholas had a stroke in 2017. He sadly can’t play guitar due to the loss of use of his left hand and arm. He has difficulty walking, but he managed to share a few details about those times.

Originally there was no plan to release an album back in the 80s, but I had a studio set up in my house. In my homemade studio we had organized practice sessions and we would work on arrangements and try to put professional arrangements together and polish them up many times. Did we think it was ready for the public? Not sure. Studio album came out in the 1990s and it was titled ‘Boogie With The River’.

Burnt River Band | Courtesy of Mr. Mlynarczyk

The 1981 release of the album ‘Recorded Live At Carlton Harley Davidson’ was a live recording done in a big Swap Meet at a Harley Davidson dealership. We had a lot of fun doing that, but we were young and just starting out kind of nervous for that.

Burnt River Band | Clyde “Boogie-Woogie Red” Deubel, Stanley “Blues” Nicholas, and Danny “Flash” Young

We did have competition on the local scene. Everybody saw the success we were getting by being a so-called “biker band” and there were a lot of copycats out there. You had Armstrong, Bearcat, Ted Riser, and now the other bands that I have long gone under.

Stanley “Blues” Nicholas with David Crosby

I think the weirdest gig we ever did was a nudist camp. We played there several times, and the answer to the most obvious question is, no we did not have to undress while we played.

Burnt River Band Stanley “Blues” Nicholas

The highlight of all of my career was playing the Buffalo Chip in Sturgis for 22 years. We shared the stage with many legendary bands like ZZ Top, Mötley Crüe, Charlie Daniels, Blue Öyster Cult, Ted Nugent, et cetera. I’ve seen many of my childhood role models. We even opened up for Nancy Sinatra. That was weird.

Klemen Breznikar

Headline photo: Burnt River Band at Buffalo Chip in Sturgis (1995)

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