Austin DeLone

Austin DeLone is a bit of an underappreciated rock & roll pioneer, a driving force in the back-to-basics movement that became known as pub rock in the early '70s as the leader of the band Eggs Over Easy. During the '60s, DeLone floated through several colleges, spending time at Harvard and the New England Conservatory of Music and Berkeley, meeting guitarist Jack O'Hara in the latter city. The pair started playing music, then headed to New York where they started Eggs Over Easy, a roots rock band that was eventually spotted by producer Chas Chandler, who brought the crew over to England to record a debut album and play a residency at London's Tally-Ho pub in 1971. During their time at the Tally-Ho, Eggs Over Easy became a word of mouth sensation, earning such fans as Nick Lowe, Ian Gomm, Brinsley Schwarz, Graham Parker, and Elvis Costello. The band Brinsley Schwarz soon started to pattern their set after Eggs Over Easy, eventually helping to bring pub rock to a larger crowd, but by that point, Eggs Over Easy had decamped back to the United States. A&M released Good 'n' Cheap in 1972, and although the record went nowhere, the band kept trucking, releasing the "Back of My Car" single on Buffalo Records in 1974, then finishing off their career in 1981 with Fear of Frying. Following their breakup, DeLone settled in Northern California and started gigging as a session musician -- his disciples Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello were happy to play alongside him, and he appeared on Lowe's 1990 album Party of One and played live with Costello in 1987 -- playing local shows and taking jobs as a sideman. In 1991 he released his solo debut, DeLone at Last, and 25 years later he teamed up with guitarist Bill Kirchen -- a fellow pub rocker and Commander Cody alumnus -- to release the duet album Transatlanticana in 2016. That same year, Eggs Over Easy received a long overdue retrospective compilation called Good 'n' Cheap: The Eggs Over Easy Story on YepRoc.
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