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Nashville West was a short-lived United States country rock quartet, that was briefly together in the late 1960s. The group comprised multi-instrumentalist Gene Parsons, guitarist Clarence White, singer-guitarist-fiddler Gib Guilbeau and bassist Wayne Moore. Parsons and White left the band to join The Byrds while Guilbeau and Parsons later joined the Flying Burrito Brothers.
Along with the International Submarine Band, The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, Nashville West was among the pioneering groups of the country rock genre.
An album by Nashville West was released in 1978, about ten years after the band had broken up. The material on the Nashville West album was recorded during a club date in 1968. The album was released again 2003 on Rev-ola, a division of Cherry Red Records.
In the course of their session work, Parsons and White devised the B-Bender, or Stringbender, a system installed on White's Fender Telecaster that made the instrument sound like a pedal steel guitar.
Eventually, Parsons, Guilbeau and White became a band, joining with fellow session player, bassist-vocalist Wayne Moore, who played in the Castaways with Parsons and Guilbeau.
The group was known by various names, including The Reasons, Gib Guilbeau and The Reasons, the Gary Paxton Band or Cajun Gib and Gene. The Nashville West moniker was taken from the name of the El Monte, California club where they sat as the house band, and was the name of an instrumental song composed by Parsons and White.
When the original line-up of The Byrds reunited in March 1973 to record Byrds, White left the Byrds to join the bluegrass supergroup Muleskinner. He also played on a package tour with several other country rock pioneers at the time, including Gram Parsons. White then reformed his old band, the Kentucky Colonels, with his brothers, but was killed on July 15, 1973 in Palmdale, California, when he was struck by a car driven by a drunken driver."Car kills Topanga musician", Long Beach (CA) Press-Telegram, Monday, July 16, 1973, p. 13 (A Topanga musician loading instruments aboard his van was struck and killed Sunday...")
Guilbeau went on to play sessions with Linda Ronstadt and joined a band called Swampwater. He also played with Sneaky Pete Kleinow in a group called Cold Steel. In 1974, Guilbeau and Gene Parsons joined the Flying Burrito Brothers.
The songs include an instrumental reading of Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe".
"I had a Sony two-track, and I hooked it up, partly to the sound system and partly to the microphones, and just let it run and recorded the whole night," Parsons said. "There's a lot that never got on the album, thank goodness."
The album was reissued on CD by Sierra in 1997, and added four more tracks not included on the LP edition: "C.C. Rider", "Greensleeves", "Mom and Dad's Waltz" and "Columbus Stockade Blues".
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