Back Behind the Barn Boys: Part 1, The Early Years

Interview by Kendra Jensen, Eagle Intern

Although their glory days happened twenty years before I was a thought, even I had heard the stories of the local legends that are The Back Behind the Barn Boys. They ventured out from our small town area to pursue a dream and helped put little Gatzke, Minnesota, on the map. With the full support of our community behind them, it seemed as if everyone back home was living out their dreams along with them. Their successes became the community’s pride and they were quickly deemed local musical heroes. 

Any time I casually mentioned to people that I was getting the chance to interview these guys, I was taken aback by how excited everyone got by the mere mention of their name! With a sparkle in their eye, everyone would make some sort of remark, “Oh, I saw them live once!” or “I still own their record on vinyl!” It appeared as if everyone had a personal story about this band, and now so do I.  

I recently had the pleasure of putting faces to the names I had been hearing about for so long as I caught up with the current members of The Back Behind the Barn Boys, Gene Lunsetter, Terry Ruud, Tom Bernstein, Randy Larson, Dan Schulz, and Pat Erickson at their annual practice session at the old cafe in Gatzke. Unfortunately, Randy McMillin wasn’t able to join us that day. 

To be completely honest, I had never been to Gatzke before. When I spoke with Gene Lunsetter on the phone, he told me, “You’ll be able to find us once you get here.” At the time, I was a little leery because I had no idea what that meant. I soon understood; I rolled by the Gatzke sign and saw only one building with six cars parked outside of it. As I walked in, the band was jamming away and I instantly got why these guys are such a big deal.

When did you start playing music individually?

Terry: We didn’t really start individually, Randy Larson’s mom was our music teacher at Gatzke Elementary School. She played with a lot of gusto.

Randy: She had us all playing guitar at a young age.

Gene: We just always sang together in Sunday school, high school, things like that.

Who were your musical influences growing up?

They all agreed they were mostly influenced and inspired by local musicians around them.

Tom: Last resort was a local band up here back in the day and we just looked up to them like crazy! 

Terry: As I’m sure you know, we have a lot of talent crammed up here in this area and it’s always been that way.

The guys also say along with local talent, some of their favorite musicians whom they’ve looked up to were, The Beatles, The Statler Brothers, Oak Ridge Boys and Alabama. 

How did The Back Behind the Barn Boys form?

Randy Larson: Kurt Vandermeer was our music teacher in high school. We were all in an octet together. Oddly enough, Terry, Gene, Tom and I all sang different parts. We took the octet and turned it into a quartet.

The Barn Boys started playing together in 1980, they were all fairly young when they formed their band with Dan Schulz, the drummer, being the youngest member at the age of 16.

What was your first gig together?

Tom: Our first gig was for Randy Anderson at the VFW in Roseau, Minnesota. We only knew maybe two hours of music.

Terry: We got asked to play there the day of, so we all went to my parents garage and learned all the music for that night right there and then.

Did any of you have stage fright starting out?

Terry: I don’t think we were ever scared on stage because we were always so focused on not forgetting the words!

Randy: We get a kick out of playing with each other and were more focused on having fun on stage together than what was going on in front of us.

Terry: We escape the nervousness by being this little clan of guys who grew up together. 

Randy: I think we work harder on entertaining each other than we do the crowd!

Dan: It’s a relaxing and fun atmosphere with these guys.

What was it like first playing shows together? 

Tom: Kind of how it is now...funny! We would just always get together and have a good time. 

Gene: The week was long because we were excited for the weekend to play. 

Terry: For the first three years we just played here around home.

Randy: We would go out and try to find ourselves gigs.

Tom: To play in Fargo, that would be a big deal for us. 

How would you deal with screw ups on stage?

Randy: Sometimes the only thing you can do is laugh. 

Tom: You almost have to!

Randy: There was this one time, actually, where we just had to stop a song, laugh, get through that and start up a new song.

Dan: There was this one time in South Dakota where a screw up happened on stage. The guys stopped the song and said, “We’re gonna try that one more time.” I said, “No, I’m not.”

Terry: Yeah! We kept counting down the beats for him, thinking he would start to play but he never did. He just sat there! We played the entire song without him. 

Where did the name Back Behind the Barn Boys come from?

Terry: Well, my older brother, Bob, had this little compact cassette recorder and he used to record these silly cassettes. He would just make stuff up and I would join in. There was this Statler Brothers album called The Complete Lester Moran and the Cadillac Cowboys. My brother heard that on KTRF one day and decided he was going to make a spoof of it called Beanball Barnette and the Back Behind the Barn Boys. Later, when we formed, we used it and shortened it to The Back Behind the Barn Boys. 

How did you develop your sound?

Tom: One thing I really like about our band is even when we learn a cover tune, it only takes a couple of days and it sounds more like The Barn Boys. We have an original sound without even trying. 

Dan: The 4-part harmony really sets us apart I think. Not only that, but we all sing a little so on some songs we even get to a full 7-part harmony.

Tom: That really does make a difference. 

 

Terry: It was 1982. We were just about to break up actually when Dave Ullstad, the owner of KKQ in Thief River Falls, talked us into entering a national contest called Wrangler Country Star Search. Sort of, I suppose, like the equivalent to The Voice now. We said, “Okay, well, we’ll get together for this one last thing.” So we won at the local level, then we won at the regional level, and wouldn’t you know, we won for the whole state of Minnesota. So we won a trip to Nashville and got the opportunity to appear on the Grand Ole Opry stage. After that, we really got bitten by the bug. 

Dan: When we went down there for that competition, we had the biggest following. There were 50 some groups down there and The Barn Boys had the most followers out of all of them. That made us feel pretty special.

What made you pursue music?

Terry: On the plane ride home from Star Search, a guy who was sitting next to us said, “You know, you guys are pretty good. You should take yourselves more seriously and maybe consider this as a living.” All of us being from around here never really thought about making a living out of this. We didn’t even know you could be a musician for a living! Anyway, we talked it over on the plane and by the time we got home we had decided to go to the bank and take out a loan to buy our bus, a PA system and cheesy polyester outfits. 

Gene: That, and there wasn’t a lot to do back in the day in Gatzke.

Tom: I mean how often do you get to do something with all your friends?

Were you nervous to leave Garzke and start touring?

Tom: No, I don’t think we were nervous at all! We were too naive to be nervous. 

Randy: I think the most incredible thing looking back is that we didn’t have any cell phones or GPS. We played 48 out of 52 weeks of the year and Gene was just a wonderful navigator who drove us everywhere. 

Gene: I used to have nightmares about driving that bus.

Were your parents supportive of you leaving?

Tom: Every set of parents were great. They were totally supportive of us 100%.

Randy: A lot of our parents helped redo the bus and helped us get our loan. 

Tom: Basically anything they could do to get us out of here they did. We couldn’t have done it without our parents. 

Dan: They fed us, they clothed us…

Randy:…and even bought us matching outfits!

How did you guys write your own music? 

Terry: We kind of did that individually.

Randy: The songs I would bring to rehearsal needed work so Terry and Gene would make it into something where it probably wasn’t ready otherwise. So it was definitely a collaboration. 

Terry: There’s the age old question: Do you start with music or do you start with lyrics? For me, usually a line will pop into my head and the music comes along later. 

What is your favorite song you’ve ever written?

Tom: I think as a whole we like “Personal” the most.

Why was it so important for you to keep connected to your home town of Gatzke?

Randy: It’s where we’re from. 

Tom: We had a population from anywhere to 8-12 people so that was something to brag about. 

Gene: It was part of our personality I think. 

Dan: It’s just the small town people you grew up with, you know?

So when did you know you were kind of getting to be a big deal? 

Tom: I don’t know if we ever really felt that way. 

Dan: And if we did we never wanted to admit it. 

Tom: We always wanted to be low key and downplay everything when we played around home. We never wanted any attention brought to us. 

Randy: I knew when the band we hired to play for us in Nashville ended up being Sawyer Brown. When we got there, they told us, “Don’t waste your time here, you’ll get nowhere.” 

Pat: Wasn’t too long after that they won star search with Ed McMahon. 

Do you remember your first newspaper interview?

Dan: It was at the Gatzke School right before we went to Nashville. Everyone threw us a sendoff party. 

Terry: We occupied most of the Tri-County Canary!

The coolest city in the world

Terry: We had never been to Canada before and we were playing Devils Lake, North Dakota, in a Blizzard. We had to leave there and drive to Calgary, Canada. We just assumed the weather was going to be worse up north. We piled into the bus, crossed the border, headed up there and jumped out of the bus to 75° weather. So we start setting up and doing sound check. This guy walks in, starts talking to us and shakes our hands and says, “I’m Floyd Sneed from Three Dogs Night.” So we visit with him for a while and soon this beautiful woman walks in with the owners. It was Rae Dawn Chong, actress and daughter of Tommy Chong! I just thought this is the coolest city in the world! Who else is going to show up?!

The devil went down to Dallas

Tom: My favorite time happened down in Dallas. We always did The Devil Went Down to Georgia. One of the things The Barn Boys was famous for was doing skits during our songs. A lot of times we were really bored so we’d act out all these different things on stage. During Devil Went Down to Georgia, Terry was the devil and I was Johnny. They had a railing in front of us probably 3 feet high, but the stage was also raised about 6 feet off the dance floor. So we get to the part of the song where the devil lays his fiddle on the ground at Johnny’s feet. So Terry lays his guitar on the ground at my feet and he was going to go exit off the one end of the stage and run all the way around to the other end and come back on the other side. He goes and does that, but we aren’t ready to play yet, so everyone’s yelling at Terry, “Go around again, go around again!” Well, he knows he doesn’t have time to do that, so Terry decides he’s just going to jump over the top of the railing and get to the stage that way. He makes it’s just about over, except for about an inch of his big toe, and you just hear a KABOOM! So loud it drowns out the whole PA system! All I saw was that big, red Reebok shoe up in the air. So we’re all just dying of laughter…I laughed so hard I fell back into Dan’s drums and knocked over half the set. In the middle of all this Terry comes running up to the stage, grabs his guitar, and starts playing. He’s the only one playing everyone else is just crying with laughter.         

Rubbing elbows

Randy: I mean, it’s just those once-in-a-lifetime interactions you can’t get back. Like, for instance, you’d be at your hotel and in walks Bobby Hicks, the fiddle player for Ricky Skaggs. And then when you go to sleep at night you’d hear a guitar playing next door and it’s the Doobie Brothers. Or, getting into an elevator with Steve Cook and Little Jimmy Dickens. Those are the things you can’t replace.

Terry Conley?

Terry: We opened for John Conley in Thief River Falls one night. After the show, Randy and I were walking with our guitars out to the bus and I just started singing one of John Conley’s songs. Larson looks at me and goes, “You sound exactly like him! We need to start doing that!” So we started imitating him all the time. We ran into Janie Fricke and opened for her a couple times. She sang the original background vocals on Rose-Colored Glasses. So, whenever we opened for her, she would come onstage with us and sing her harmony part of Rose-Colored Glasses. A couple of years later, we opened for John Conley again. He came out onstage with me while I was imitating him and he gave me his rose-colored glasses. 

Pat: But do you remember how that happened? That time him and his band had to go on first, there was a storm coming into Minneapolis so they couldn’t fly out. So they sang before us. When it was time for us to go on, the first song we did was Rose-Colored Glasses. Terry’s out there imitating the guy and here comes John Conley with his rose-colored glasses and puts them on Terry during the song. Terry gets done playing and goes “Who was that guy that put these glasses on me?”

It was a nice gesture….

Randy: I sat down at a bar one time and there next to me sat Vince Gill, so I offered to buy him a shot. He takes it and soon after John McFee from The Doobie Brothers comes up to me and goes, “How did you get him to take a shot?!” I said, “I don’t know, I just asked him.” McFee looks at me and goes, “He’s a recovering alcoholic; he hasn’t drank in 5 years!” I didn’t know... 

Great stories from playing FanFare

Randy: I saw Crystal Gale backstage at fanfare and there must’ve been three or four people just trying to keep her hair out of her face. 

Pat: That was the same time at fanfare where, in the booth next to us, was Patty Loveless and she just won Entertainer of the Year. I just have to tell you, she was such a nice lady.

Terry: Oh yeah! The Nitty-Gritty Dirt Band was at fanfare that year, too, and we gave them all Barn Boys shirts! So they put them on and the next thing you know, the press comes so all the guys in Nitty Gritty Dirt Band are wearing shirts that say Gatzke, Minnesota, on the back in all these pictures. 

Sitting down with these guys, one thing was clear. They are all still the best of friends. Gracious and humble, and so willing to share their stories with me about what it’s like to be a Barn Boy, they still serve as an inspiration on how to go for it and follow your dreams. 

During their career, they released two albums and one CD, had multiple radio and TV interviews, played The Grand Ole Opry, and opened for pretty much anyone big in the 80’s, including Merle Haggard, The Judds and George Strait, to name a few. They once again will be making music this summer as they perform this week, July 20th, at The Marshall County Fair and later this summer at the Grygla Centennial. 

Stay tuned to the Grygla Eagle for the continuation of their story to come later this summer. From deciding to quit the road, to what they are all individually up to now, and some insane stories about the infamous “Whale” (their old tour bus they all claim to be lucky they survived), you’re definitely not going to want to miss the continuation of Back Behind the Barn Boys: Part 2, The Later Years