Celebrating 50 years, Minnesota rock legends Gypsy release a COVID-fueled album

Even though he was in the throes of COVID-19, veteran Minneapolis rock singer James "Owl" Walsh refused to go to a hospital.

"With what I heard about being intubated from my doctor, I said no," explained Walsh, who was concerned about his singing voice, not to mention the atrial fibrillation he'd been contending with.

So he suffered at home, and after two weeks, he experienced something unexpected: Songs started coming to him.

"In the middle of the night, I got up and I had a song in my head. I went to the piano and I played it until I remembered it because I don't write anything down," he recalled.

"The next night, another song came. And this went on for a couple of weeks. I had eight songs in my head, and I knew I had to record them."

That was last December. This summer, Walsh's band Gypsy — still celebrating the 50^th anniversary of its 1970 debut album, including a show Saturday at Crooners in Fridley — released the new material on "Red Stone Line."

"It's Gypsy's grown up," said Walsh. "We are taking it from a less starry-eyed view and more of a musical position."

The Twin Cities' original prog-rockers, he and his bandmates were fearless. They headed to California in the glorious late 1960s and hung with Jimi Hendrix and other stars as the house band at Hollywood's most celebrated rock club.

They became the first Minnesota group to land an album deal and then determinedly recorded daring music, including the epic 11-minute hit "Dead and Gone."

Gypsy now favors a still-adventurous but less long-winded sound. Influenced by Steely Dan and early Chicago, the songs are still trippy, eclectic and philosophical. This time around, singer-songwriter Walsh even gets a bit political.

"The first song ('Screams of a Dying World') is very political," he said. "I've lived through several presidents in my life and I'm not sure what's going on now. Hopefully they'll straighten it out soon."

On the album's closing song, "The Garden Is Dying," he sounds downright pessimistic, decrying people who tell lies.

"It's not just political lies, but it has to do with the drought situation and the famine situation and everything that's going on in the world that could be easily avoided if enough people cared," he said.

The album features one cover tune, Walsh's take on Jackson Browne's "Late for the Sky." It was a favorite song of Gypsy cofounder Jim Johnson, the guitarist/singer who died of cancer in 2019.

"Red Stone Line" opens and closes with nods to Gypsy's heyday. The opening track begins with a harmonized "Warning, warning" — the first words from Gypsy's self-titled debut — while the finale references the band's second album, "In the Garden."

Gypsy emerged in 1968 as an outgrowth of the Underbeats, one of the Twin Cities' most popular rock bands then. At age 16, Walsh joined the group on keyboards, and wound up dropping out of Edison High School because he was gigging almost every night — and "making more money than my dad."

The Underbeats headed to Los Angeles, the land of golden music opportunity, and renamed themselves Gypsy, a hipper moniker in hippie times. Featuring singer-songwriter-guitarist Enrico Rosenbaum, the group became the house band at the Sunset Strip's famed Whiskey A Go Go from 1969 to mid-'71.

"The joke on the bus on our way to California in '68 was: We were going to go out there and get a record deal and we'd retire in '73 and cut our hair," Walsh said. "So here I am. I still haven't cut my hair, whatever I have left."

Despite an offer from big-time Atlantic Records, Gypsy signed with Metromedia Records, which had made boatloads of money off teen heartthrob Bobby Sherman. The band's debut was a double album, a rarity for a new act.

In the heyday of free-form FM radio, Gypsy caught on in the Twin Cities, thanks to KQRS playing "Gypsy Queen Part 1" and "Dead and Gone" with its lush, Poco-like harmonies. And in St. Louis, the band still sells out theaters for multiple nights thanks to airplay there from KSHE.

Better known as a TV and radio company, Metromedia didn't effectively promote Gypsy, Walsh contends. However, the band spent more than two years on tour opening for the then-hot Guess Who.

"We were flying and traveling with them, but not making a lot of money," said Walsh. (A few years ago Gypsy opened for Guess Who lead singer Burton Cummings at the Medina Entertainment Center. Walsh said they had "an hour and a half laugh on his bus.")

At the Whiskey, Gypsy made lots of friends in the music community, opening for such acts as the Kinks and Little Richard.

"Jimi Hendrix came to see us and apologized for using the name Band of Gypsys," said Walsh. "We didn't care. He came to the [Gypsy] house for a few days. We jammed a little bit, hung out mostly."

Of course, Gypsy has lots of friends in its hometown, where Walsh returned in the mid-'70s and then resurrected the band after Rosenbaum's drug-related suicide. Gypsy drummer Bill Lordan went on to join Sly & the Family Stone and then Robin Trower, while bassist Willie Weeks toured with George Harrison, Wynonna Judd and others.

At a recent gig at Crooners, the audience for "little Jimmy Walsh from 31st and Pierce Northeast," as he says, included his brother and sister, former classmates from Edison and boomer fans from back in the day. Last month, Gypsy drew 900 people to the Medina for a gig with Crow, a Twin Cities band that made its name in the late '60s.

"I'm as thrilled to play Crooners as I was the Fillmore East and West," Walsh said. "It's still the same feeling every time. It doesn't make a difference if it's 50 people or 350,000 that we played for at the Atlanta Pop Festival."

At 73, Walsh keeps Gypsy going despite his heart issues and knee replacements. He still rehearses twice a month with the group. Five members have been with him on and off for 30 years; four others signed on this year.

"He's mellower now," said drummer Stanley Kipper, who first worked with Walsh in 1974. "He's a more reflective, kinder guy. He's gotten more wise and worldly, and I think he realizes how precious everything is right now."

Walsh turned his life around when he was 38 and his girlfriend got pregnant. She wanted an abortion; he committed to raising the baby without her. So, Walsh got a job as manager of Metro Studios in Minneapolis' Warehouse District and worked on more than 100 CDs, including one by Sheryl Crow.

Now, Walsh has six children and 20 grandchildren — and a heart pacemaker and replaced knees. He works one day a week in a Roseville piano shop.

"The new hardware in the heart has brought his energy back," said Kipper. "He's still out there on the golf course hitting low scores. We always rehearse like crazy people. There is a commitment to the music and to still keep it fresh. Owl deserves to have his vision seen."

Drummer/singer Bobby Vandell has admired the Underbeats since he was a 12-year-old in St. Cloud. Walsh tried to recruit him in the 1980s, but he didn't start gigging with Gypsy as a harmony vocalist until this year. He is honored, he said, and impressed with Walsh.

"He's like a proud papa," Vandell said. "He is Gypsy. He lives it and breathes it. He's had divorces in his life, but he's never divorced Gypsy. He'll work at it until it puts him in a grave."

Like the song says, until he's dead and gone.

When: 7 p.m. Sat.; 8p.m. Dec. 30; 9:30 p.m. Dec. 31

Where: Crooners, 6161 Hwy. 65, Fridley.

Tickets: $35 and up; croonersmn.com.

Twitter: @JonBream 612-673-1719