When a lifelong, guitar-playing country music musician hangs up his cowboy hat, he doesn’t hang up just one. He hangs up 15.
When he stops stepping into cowboy boots, he doesn’t leave just one pair behind. He leaves a closet full.
When Edmonds’ Sandy Sanderson, of the Sandy Sanderson and the Rhythm Riders Band, stopped performing publicly earlier this year, it wasn’t just his guitar that was missed at senior center, churches, and venues across Snohomish County, it was all 550 pounds of his band’s equipment.
Since the Rhythm Riders band first appeared on the local county, western swing and gospel band circuit in the 1990s, it played at least 487 performances, according to Sandy, as he likes to be called.
Ultimately, it was the equipment that did Sandy in, he said.
Loading his van was getting harder. Unloading it was getting slower, said the vocalist and rhythm guitarist.
“I have these two big speakers, and I used to be able to carry one under each arm,” Sandy said. “But I started finding out I could only do one at a time.”
The band’s final performance was Feb. 16 at Lynnwood’s Brighton Court retirement community.
A new DVD of the performance, complete with liner notes and a customized case, was completed this week. Copies are available by contacting the band at rhymrdrs@comcast.net.
“I’m going to miss playing a great deal,” said Sandy, who has turned down nearly 30 show requests since February. “It was always fun to watch the kids and people having a ball and dancing to our beat.”
Sandy’s band was a local western swing institution. It played state fairs, Aqua Sox games and on local TV’s Northwest Music Scene. It played over 150 venues since 1990.
Sandy himself is also a force. In 2004, he was inducted as a “Pioneer” into Everett’s Western Swing Society, an honor that required over 30-years in the music scene.
His career started when as a student at the University of Washington, he used to play in widely known acts like the Curly Booth and the Swingtime Cowboys band. Back then, he’d made about $3.50 an hour playing guitar.
Later, while in the military in the early 1950s, he participated in an NBC radio nationwide county western talent search — and won — even though he was terribly sick and could hardly sing.
It was a true honor, he said.
The truest honor might be the continued shows requests Sandy gets for his Rhythm Riders band. Sure as rain, they keep coming in, from churches and other venues he’s played for more than a decade.
“A lot of people don’t necessarily know that I’ve quit,” Sandy said. “And I am not happy about it. But it is what had to happen.”
Reporter Chris Fyall: 425-673-6525 or cfyall@heraldnet.com
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