The cast was John Belushi, Bill Murray, who was the new kid at the time, Laraine Newman, Jane Curtin, the amazing Gilda was great. I think that there were a lot of great line-ups, but it was the first bunch sans Chevy Chase. I think it was during the third season, which was awesome because it was one of the classic line-ups. Then, he returned the favor and had us as a musical guest on Saturday Night Live a few years later, which was great. Steve was actually our opening act for a long time. They were buddies all through school, then, later on, John's brother Bill-who was our manager for a long time-was also Steve's manager, so there was an association through the late '60s and early '70s. John taught Steve a lot about playing the banjo and I think Steve taught John a lot about telling a joke. He and John McEuen when to High School together, actually, and they traded a lot of tricks. We were combining that sound with a rock sensibility. (laughs) You see a lot more Marshall stacks on the road in country music these days, which is fine, but what we were doing was geared more towards the sound of The Everly Brothers and those groups. I think now it bears a lesser resemblance to Buck Owens and the Buckaroos and more of a resemblance to some hybrid between AC/DC and I don't know what. Then, of course, there was the bluegrass influence from Flatt and Scruggs and The Greenbriar Boys, and a bunch of other acts that we were really big fans of back when we were teenagers, so the shift that we made way back in '69 really formed what we do now, you know? But, as a point of reference, country-rock in 1969 has nothing to do with country-rock today. That was something that worked really well for us because we grew up cutting our teeth on The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, and Buck Owens. Then, in 1969, we sort of reinvented the band as a country-rock band. We did that whole thing for about three years. We were playing music that was mostly written in the '20s and '30s with all acoustic instruments, a washtub bass, and a washboard. We were a bunch of folk puppies, basically. Of course, they didn't have a term called "roots" back then, but I do think it's a great term because it covers a lot of bases and I totally get what it means. JH: Well, it started in 1966 in Long Beach, California, and we began as a jug or roots band.
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