Tony Mantor's : Almost Live..... Nashville - The Evolution of Cimarron 615: From Poco to Nashville's Harmony Masters

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

Michael Webb of Cimarron 615 shares the band's origin story and their deep connections to legendary country rock band Poco. The Nashville-based quartet brings harmony-driven California country rock to life with their unique blend of musical expertise and collaborative spirit. • Band name combines "Cimarron" from Rusty Young's classic Poco song with "615," Nashville's area code • Members Michael Webb, Jack Sundred, Rick Lono, and Ronnie Guilbeau connected through Poco and the Flying Burrito Brothers • Their musical style emphasizes rich vocal harmonies inspired by bands like Crosby, Stills & Nash and the Eagles • Recently released their second single "The Truth," co-written by Jack Sundred and Nashville songwriter Kent Agee • Album release show scheduled for February 28th at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville • East Coast tour beginning in March with shows in Virginia, New York, Philadelphia, Louisville, and Cincinnati • The band prioritizes connecting with fans through live performances over extensive social media presence Come see Cimarron 615 on their upcoming East Coast tour starting this March. Visit cimarron615.com for all show dates and information.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My career in the entertainment industry has enabled me to work with a diverse range of talent. Through my years of experience, I've recognized two essential aspects. Industry professionals, whether famous stars, or behind-the-scenes staff, have fascinating stories to tell. Secondly, audiences are eager to listen to these stories, which offer a glimpse into their lives and the evolution of their life stories. This podcast aims to share these narratives, providing information. information on how they evolved into their chosen career. We will delve into their journey to stardom, discuss their struggles and successes, and hear from people who help them achieve their goals. Get ready for intriguing behind-the-scenes stories and insights into the fascinating world

of entertainment. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Almost Live Nashville. Joining us today is Michael Webb. He is one of the members of Cimarron 615. This group connected through the legendary country rock band Poco, which created a rich tapestry of music and memories. You'd be hard pressed to find a band with a more impressive collective resume than Cimar on 615. Michael is here to share the story of how the band came together, what they've accomplished, and their exciting plans for the future. We're thrilled to have them here with us. Thanks for coming on. Oh, thanks having me on here. Oh, it's my pleasure. So I'm interested. How did you come up with your band name? Well, we had three of us, and the band had toured with Rusty Young as Poco.

And Rusty Young died, and we went out to L.A. to record the DVD and an album kind of covers of some of the songs he wrote with Poco, and we had done a solo album up there near you and Hendersonville at Cash Cabin for Rusty. And we'd done a Poco album called All Fired Up. Anyway, after we had finished recording all that, the label blew along asked us about doing our own album. And we did it and we got to recording and then we were having trouble finding a name because it's not as easy as it used to be. Everybody ties them up in every little town. Our first like 20 stabs that names were already taken and just little ideas we had that

we thought would be appropriate. And then Rusty Young, one of his classic songs is called Rose and Cimarron. It's been covered by many people. Emmy Lou Harris had a great version and We would do it every show with Poco, and it was a big piece. At first, we thought, well, that can be kind of good. That could be a good fit. And then 615 being the area code of Nashville, because we're really all from Nashville. We do our recordings in Nashville. So we threw that one out, and everyone loved it.

The trademark people loved it. The label loved it. And it fits us to a T because we are of the Poco Heritage. and with 615's towns that kind of kind of young it either. Yeah, it does sound cool. I always like to get the

origin of a band name because there are so many names out there where people just wonder where it came from and the thought process behind it. Yeah. It was quite a ride because with anybody trying to come up with a name,

it's kind of like signing yourself a type of song to write. You have to wade through a few levels, you know? That's how it came about. Yeah, I can understand that completely. So give us a little information, who's in the band and how it kind of formed. Well, I joined Pocault back somewhere around 2008, or I can't remember.

I toured about 10 years, and our bass player had toured with Rusty and Pocco for 30 years. His name is Jack Sundry, S-U-M-D-R-U-D, Jack Sundered. And he once had a band that toured out of it, had a record deal named Great Plains. So he and I really hit it off when we toured and recorded together as Poco. And then our drummer is a guy named Rick Lano, L-O-N-O-Dat. Rick Lano and I've known each other since the very beginning of the 90s when I first minute here started playing. He's a drummer both in sessions and live.

And he moved here from California and he had not done countless sessions together and played live here in Nashville, together, rock, singer-songwriter, originals, we're musical brothers. At one point, Poco was on hiatus, and when we were talking about getting back together, Tyler retooling. Rick Lano also sings, it's a high big vocal band. So he was the logical choice, and at that time, we had already in between Poco touring, Jack and Rick and I were already playing once a months or so at a club called Duckless Corner that's dawn now. Yeah, I certainly hated it when that closed.

Yeah, and we would play and have guest musicians and guest writers. And in that band, we had on guitar, Rick's old running buddy that he had toured in the Burrito Brothers with named Ronnie Gilbo, G-U-I-L-B-E-A-U. Ronnie's father, who was Give Gilbo, the classic Tiddle Player and a member of the Fon Burrito Brothers, they were fixtures of the Kibb-E-A-U-R-B-E-A-U-R-Rour. They were fixtures of the California scene before they even moved here. So when I first met Rick Lano, he and Ronnie had already been playing in California. So they kind of moved here together.

They also happened to co-write, Pocco's second biggest hit, it's All It Luck that came out in the early 90s or late 80s. It was a AAA hit. So Ronnie and I had also done a lot of work together over in Barry Hill and the studio. world back in the late 90s and the 2000s. And we just think alike. We were musically similar. So basically, in between Poco gigs, while Rusty Young would be back in Missouri,

Jack and Ronnie and Rick and I would play a devil's corner. And we were already going to you to Blackbird and, you know, recordings and demos and things like that. And then when Poco got that kind of retooled and we took Rick back out with us, I kind of put that band on a bit of a hiatus, and then we kept recording with Rusty Young. And then, similar around 2019, Tokyo went on another little bit of a hiatus. And during that time, I took a touring on the road with Hank Williams Jr. That's how we all came together, through Poco and the Barreto Brothers.

Oh, that's great. Now, you bring those four people up with all the different styles and different entities, gives you a wide variety and style of music to play. So with that said, what did you develop into and what are you doing now? During the course of all this time, through Poco, we really are harmony-driven. This is to come and link to all the bands of the California,

country, rock, is that harmony. So a lot of people can play that style. You have to have fairly imaginative, committed harmonies on every single song. And we all love that. And we all love the challenge of coming up with harmonies or background vocals that lift every song, give it its own personality. And we're all versatile. And we all really get a charge out of that as much as we do being adept at our instruments.

So that's one of the things in this band. We really appreciate the commitment to background vocals that the bands are cross. We stills and the Naxe and the Eagles. And they raise the bar. We really take that seriously, and that's the most fun part of every album we've done after the tracks and after the lead vocals getting together and we'll sometimes spend half a day just on one song. We love it. Yeah, I love it.

I love harmonies. There are several bands over the years that, I hate to say this, they weren't the greatest musicians in the world, but their harmonies was spot on, and that just made all the difference. Yeah. That's just a really great thing. to have in a band, and that's great harmonies. We love it. We take a lot of pride in it and blending, not just parts, but finding our vocal blend. You know, we've been around living in Nashville. You get to witness and participate with the

best of the best in everything we do. So we don't look at it as competition, but learn that. It's kind of like going to school. We try to do our own version of living up to those who we get to see here in Nashville as well as the past. For instance, we're all friends with Marty Stewart's band. They're so excellent, and we get to see them in various forms on a pretty regular basis.

So having that is just the contemporaries. It's pretty honest with their own sense. Yeah, that's so true, and that drives everybody here in Nashville. So what label was you on again? We're on a label out of Los Angeles

called Blue Align. Okay. ELA and blue like the color, blue a line. They have a good variety of artists. We have Air Leitaj. They have Chris Schifflett, the guitar player with the Sioux Fighters, Morgan Miles, and one of the ways. I guess we're their country rock man, Jennifer Magnus, who's a blues icon, really. And they have a really varied roster. They believe in a variety of music. It's been a lot of fun. Yeah, that's great. So what are the plans moving forward. I've seen where you either are going to release a new single or you have released a new single. What's going on there? The second single is out right now. It's called The Truth. The first single came out in the fall. It's called Butler Rose. It's kind of Cajun flavored

and had a lot of accordion on it. And the new one is when that Jack Sundred co-wrote with a writer named Kent Agee. It's an interesting story. Ken Agee is a well-established natural finger songwriter. He's just had every level of success you can have as a music row writer and then as an artist himself.

And during COVID, I don't know when he exactly began, but that's when we all were aware of it. He's for writing poetry. He was Facebook or Twitter or wherever. Just different poems. He didn't put the pressure. trying himself to turn him into songs.

Anyway, he wrote one. It was called The Truth. Jack Sundred saw it. He could see where we could put music to it, and there would be a good song for us. Right away from the first time he brought it to us, we realized, like, oh, this is, this is a charmed song. And we really dug into it, tried to make it have a plumpy edge to it.

Kind of that's fun. Bring the song to 100%. We brought in Paco Ship, who's the legendary, harmonica player. Rick used to play with him with the Jamie Hartford band years ago. Paco is a harmonica virtuoso. And all of us that were musicians in town

would go to see them. They also had Ray Flack on the guitar. It was a super band. Paco, he's just got such intelligent and soulful command of harmonica. We thought, yeah, if we had Paco add to our track, set it to a higher level, again,

as soon as we heard it, we knew it was a charm track. And it's the same live. Everyone just responds to that song. Yeah, that's great. Speaking of live, are you doing many live shows now? We did end up for the new album. We took quite a bit last year. The year before, it's a year of our first album, we didn't really tour much. Frankly, touring was still finding its footing post-COVID. We did a few things. We went playing South by Southwest. We went and played our album release at the Rocks, and L.A for the first album. And then we did a few shows, of course, here in National.

But last year, we were able to kind of finally pick up and do quite a few shows last year at theaters. A lot of the venues of Poco used to play. A lot of East Coast, a lot of Midwest. Of course, we went back to California and played a couple of times, but we actually hit the road and did fairly extensive touring last year. and we're looking forward to just pick it right back up with it this year. We made this album. We started it about a year ago.

We started the new albums recording about a year ago, and once we started on the road, we had the peak mixes on the road, like the old race. I remember those days for sure. So we would listen, and we actually came up with the album mortar, the sequencing of the album on the road.

We had to send notes to our, mastering engineer from the road like three seconds to the end here and you know it was fun we did it all as the gang but instead of being in the studio we were out on the road it was a lot of fun yeah that is

it's a lot of fun that's kind of dialing it in the old-fashioned way yeah it's fun yeah so is it being released just digitally or do you have some vinyl or CDs to go along with it? No we have CDs and digital uh we don't have the vinyl

on the new one yet, but we will. The official release will be February 28th. CD release show or album release show is going to be at the Bluebird Cafe. We chose that because we all have a lot of history with Blueburg Cafe and it's just felt like the right place to do it. Jack Goose Singer-songwriter nights there. Rick and I've played there countless times

for the Christmas parties, the anniversary parties, with the Jay Patton band. My first show ever played in town was at the Bluebird, Chonnell Mosser and Bickford Wooten was on base. So the Bluebird just seemed like the only true place for us to release our album. Yeah, and it's such an intimate room. You get to feel the vibe from the audience, and it's just great for interaction.

You made a wise choice. Yes. The first big act I'm recorded with was a singer-son writer named Mark Germino, and I was part of the band. we were called the Sluggers. And I met them at the Bluebird, they kind of came to see me play with Joan L, actually. And Mark was a classic singer-sumwriter on the Bluebird lineup, one of their favorite sons.

In fact, they have an acoustic guitar and smashed at a rock show hanging as you go to the bathrooms at the Bluebird. I just have so many memories there. And I played there every which way, from in the round, quietly, to, being part of bands, watching people from outside.

It's just the home. It's like my home. The whole band's home. Yeah, yeah, that's a great place. So what's the plans over the next few years? What have you got planned out? Anything big coming up? Our first think for this year,

we're already hitting the road again in March. As soon as we're done with this show, but 10 days after that, we'll be on the road hitting the East Coast again. And we just would pick up where that left off and really already into halfway into April and other gigs coming in within that framework. We don't want to think about recording anymore for a minute,

but we already have another three or four songs that ready to go that we may start sneaking in here or there out on the road to see what works and what does. And we did that with a couple of these. We're kind of lucky that way in that we've always played live. We're not afraid to try something out. live. It's if it works or not. We used to do that

Douglas Corner all the time. Yeah, I miss Douglas Corner. It was an intimate little venue. Yeah. I've done a lot of shows here, but unfortunately, everything changes and unfortunately again, we've lost a lot of venues to play in. Yep. So all we can do is go

with what we have left and just do the best we can with what we have. Yes. It sure is. We still have the Bluebird, and we still have stationing the That's right. We still have a lot of good venues over in East Nashville now. The Five Spot has been around long enough.

It's one of the old ones. Yeah, been there several times. We all do like our walk thing, sir, but we've played the Five Spot twice, actually. Yeah, it's a great place. Sounds like you've got a lot of good things coming up. I love it. One thing I'm willing to bet on is that

where you've been and played so much together, the tightness must be spot on. Because you know each other so well, know what to expect, that gives you a great blend so that even when you have an off night, it's still a great night. That's a good observation. That's true because we stay pretty tight because we're playing at least once or twice a week. If we don't have a gig, we'll at least rehearse.

That's second nature. If you sing as much as we do, you can't really take the second nature of the playing for granted because as soon as you're thinking about what you're playing, it takes your vocals. If I'm playing keyboards or accordion, as soon as I think about what I'm doing, my vocals won't get constricted. You know, we have a lot of instrument changes, and you have enough to think about that we try to maintain as much second nature awareness as possible. We take it very seriously, but we want to have fun with it. We're all so seasoned. We don't have fun if we can't remember what we're supposed to do, being well prepared so that we can have fun.

You mentioned instrument changes. Your promo shot shows three guitar players and a drummer. Right. So do you change to keyboards as well? And how does that work? Generally on the road, I'll have a B3 and an 88 weighted keyboard in an L formation. Then I'll come out front if I'm doing accordion, and then I'll play guitar. on a few rhythm guitar. I don't really, Ronnie does all the leads on guitar. I played rhythm guitar, most of my life in band's suit. So we don't like to keep the sound limited. Okay. One of the things we developed with Poco, accordion when appropriate, don't make a big deal of it. And we've also done a lot of shows with Mandolin. For instance, on Jack's songs, he likes to play

acoustic guitar, so I'll generally go to bass in general. I'll play bass on Jack's songs. Sometimes, if we go back to some of the older polo catalog, and I'm on accordion and Jackson on acoustic guitar, Ronnie will play bass. But we don't try to really make that so much of the gimmick. There for a while, it seemed like

the instrument changes were becoming their own thing. So over the years, we've kind of keep it trying to structure the sit to where it's kind of been chucks, so it's not distracting. So that I'm like, I'm going for people when it's to accordion, and then guitar. We try to

keep it kind of cool. I really enjoy that. I like playing a lot of different instruments. Yeah, that's great. It sounds to me like you're creating dynamics within a set as well as a dynamics within a song. Yes, that's it. We've actually had three or four versions of different songs so that we could do them in the radion, doing full-blown, you know, the theaters, and then kind of clubby versions because you're a keyboard player, correct? Yes, that's right. Sometimes you've got to be ready for to think on your feet and only do everything on one keyboard. It's not ideal, but you've got to be ready in case that happens. And sometimes you have to be ready that it might be an acoustic-based show. So we've been prepared for virtually every contingency. And, you know,

before we were even formed, we kind of first got together down on a radio show run by George Hamilton from the fifth down in Columbia. Yeah, I know him. And these are all old friends of ours, George and Tom Comet, Michael Pell. We couldn't have been in any more comfortable environment. But of course, it's classical radio station. There's no room for digital keyboards,

and there's no room for a drum kit, and there's no room for the accordion to be as loud as everything else. So we would have to adjust, because again, those vocals, we have to all be able to get in there and blend on our vocals. we kind of developed our own little versions of the songs for perhaps instead of piano I play mandolin a lot of them are recording or mandolin based anyway we were able to kind of tweak that on the air we like letting the songs and the harmonies adapt yeah that's great perfect way to do it now how do people find you how can they follow you and get to know you so they can follow your

musical journey. Well, we have a website. Simaron, C-I-M-A-R-O-N-615, the numbers, 615.com. That's our website that has all shows and all the info. Of course, we have an Instagram from that and a Facebook. But then from that, we found that our audience doesn't need any more than that. We don't have TikTok, we don't have Twitter. You know, it's such a social media. world right now. We were being kind of told that we needed to have a TikTok presence and Twitter presence or whatever it's called now. And we quickly found out that our audience, which is the POCO audience, the California country and kind of similarly into younger bluegrass alt country, they don't really care about Instagram and Facebook and our website

to enough of them. They want to see us play live. They like hearing ourselves. So, Nothing again said, but we're not as young as a lot of the bands that, you know, really have a TikTok. It's just really not our thing. That makes perfect sense. You have to do what your fans want. And most of all, you have to do what works for you. And after all, a said and done, that's really all that matters. Yeah.

Our fans are, a lot of them, are friends, actually, you know, from touring with POCO all the time. And they're our biggest supporters. and they've really helped take an active hand and making our touring on the road success. So they don't really, they like to see the pictures of us in the studio or see what we're up to, but they don't go on TikTok and neither do we. So we didn't.

That makes perfect sense. Is there anything else that you'd like to tell the listeners about what you're doing or what's coming up so that way they kind of can keep looking out for you? Well, we're getting ready to, tour. We'll be on the East Coast. We'll be in Virginia. We'll be in New York. We'll be playing Daryl's House. We're going to be playing in Philadelphia. Come out and see us. That's what I'd like to do. And then we're going to be in Louisville, Kentucky, one of my old aunts will be

in Cincinnati. We're excited to get back on the road and we have to see everybody out there. Absolutely. Well, this has been great. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show. Appreciate you having me. It's been my pleasure. Thanks again. Thanks for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed the show. This has been a Tony Mantor production.

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