Former West students kept playing after graduating

BY MICHAEL KNOX
SALISBURY POST

It’s hard to keep a high school rock band together when some band members move onto college leaving the others behind.

But somehow Chinese Cowboy has managed to do just that.

First formed in January 1998, the band has been able to keep playing despite losing members to different schools.

All of the band members went to West Rowan High School, but they have scattered to Georgia State University, Appalachian State University, Georgia Tech and other colleges.

Despite those distances, the band members still meet to play whenever they can.

Jonathan Armada, the bass player for Chinese Cowboy, thinks he knows how they’ve managed to do it.

“We’re good friends and Ithink we see it’s not a joke. I think we could go somewhere if we really really wanted to,”he said. The band has already gone somewhere — straight into the pages of Teen People magazine. They’ll be featured with four other bands in the September issue which goes on sale Aug. 4.

But if it weren’t for Armada’s girlfriend, the band may never have even entered.

“I was at my girlfriend’s house, and she was just looking through the magazine and found this contest and said, ‘You guys should enter,’”Armada explained. “I was like, ‘OK, whatever.’ It was free.”

He almost waited too late. “Two days before the contest I was like, ‘Oh man, we need to get this in!’ So Iput it all together and my mom took it to the post office and two-day mailed it and Ithink it made it there the day of the actual deadline,” Armada said.

He didn’t give the contest another thought until his brother Richard, also a member of the band, called to say they were semifinalists. “I’m like, ‘Shut up Richard. Quit lying, that’s just mean,’”Jonathan said with a laugh.

Daniel Pruette, the band’s drummer, had just about the same response. When his sister told him “some lady from Teen People called,” he first reaction was “What for?”

Pruette returned the call to Dawn Baxter, Teen People’s entertainment marketing editor. “She started talking to me about how we entered a contest and how were semifinalists,”Pruette recalled. “I couldn’t speak.”

They learned they already had won $500 from the magazine, which will help them return to Hit Music Inc. in Spencer to record another CD. They recorded their first CD, “Sound :Blankenship”there.

The CD’s title is partially named after Jerry Blankenship, who operates Rimfire Music Studio in Statesville and helped Chinese Cowboy get started by loaning the band his equipment.

“The first time we ever played, he came all the way from his house, and he brought all the equipment,” Steele said. “He just put a lot of effort into helping us out.”

The CD features Chinese Cowboy’s core members as well as guest appearances from other members. Lydia Steele, 22, who sings with Allyn Steele on “Brink of Living,” is on the CD as well as Graham Rabon who was guest lead guitarist with the group in the recording studio.

Rabon believes that their time at Hit Music Inc. has helped them better understand the music industry.

“You learn how everything works, how everything is recorded and put together, and you kind of get more respect for the producers and how they operate,”Rabon said.

The band’s sound has “gotten a lot more mature I think,” Allyn Steele said. “And it’s kind of got a darker sound to it, not necessarily bad dark, just kind of richer and a lot more mature. We’re all kind of moving on, doing our own things, experiencing change, and most of the lyrics and stuff come from first-hand experiences.

“We do as much as we possibly can with our music. We stretch it to our limit .... We may not be the best. We may not be the most extravagant, but we do the best we can to make it still sound good.”