Drag the River hits White Water

In terms of band names, Drag the River might sound like a drag. But for a Colorado band, it's a name that looked good on a T-shirt.

"A friend of ours came up with it and told us we should use it," says Jon Snodgrass, one of two founding members, along with Chad Price. "We kind of balked at it, and he started a band and gave it that name, but it soon broke up. And then we saw it on somebody's T-shirt and thought, 'Hey, that sounds good!'"

Snodgrass and Price, both Missouri transplants to Colorado but arriving separately, got together in 1996 and recorded some songs that were finally released in 2000 on an album they named Hobo's Demos. Since then, as a duo or as a larger band, Drag the River has released another 19 CDs, EPs, 7-inch singles and even audiocassettes. By 2013, the band finally got around to naming its latest CD after itself: Drag the River.

Snodgrass came from St. Joseph and Price from Kansas City, Mo., and they now call Fort Collins home. That's the place famous for New Belgium Beer, which Snodgrass acknowledges, noting he's not much of a beer nerd.

"I'm pretty busy with our two kids, ages 3 and 6 months," he says, in between interruptions to tend to the referenced tots. "When we get out on the road, Chad and I play acoustic guitars mostly. We've been called the Indigo Boys if we do too much of that, so I also bring along an electric guitar.

"We play mostly originals, with the occasional cover song, such as ones by the Bottle Rockets and Sam Cooke. We have learned never to put a cover tune on a live album, because then fans want to hear them at every show. We got so, well, sort of famous, I guess, for our version of a song, 'Indianapolis,' written by Brian Henneman of the Bottle Rockets, that he told us about the time that someone complimented him for doing a nice version of that Drag the River song!"

Drag the River has played Little Rock a few times, Snodgrass says, mostly at the White Water Tavern, where the band will return Sunday, and Vino's and Juanita's. He mentions having recorded a couple of songs with the help of Travis Hill of Last Chance Records.

As for what kind of sound they generate, Snodgrass has a ready answer: country and Midwestern music.

"I grew up a fan of Bob Wills," he says, "and I call that the best sort of Western music. And I cut my teeth on the music of The Beatles and Kris Kristofferson, thanks to my dad's record collection. Then I heard the Midwestern sounds of Husker Du, and early on, I went to a punk show in Lawrence, Kan., and the guys in the band seemed like really old guys, 30 or so, and I thought, 'I can do this!'"

Weekend on 01/08/2015