A Long Way from L.A. to LA

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The short version goes like this: the songwriters, the singers and their songs.

New Orleans songwriter/musicians living in Los Angeles, Carlo Nuccio and Ray Ganucheau, start

a group with talented friends Mark Walton, Danny McGough and Gary Eaton and perform

Tuesdays night at Raji’s, a dive bar on Hollywood Boulevard. They begin drawing a regular

crowd that includes Susan Cowsill, Vicki Peterson, Peter Holsapple and Robert Maché, who

often join in onstage. Holsapple replaces McGough in the lineup, they open an LA show for Bob

Dylan, and then make a fateful trip to New Orleans, after which they relocate.

In the Crescent City, exeunt Ganucheau and Eaton; Maché joins, and Continental Drifters move

their residency to the Howlin’ Wolf. They tour Germany where Blue Rose Records releases their

self-titled album in 1994. Nuccio, too, leaves the fold, and Russ Broussard joins on drums and

frottoir. The band records at Dockside Studio in 1997 and creates Vermilion, their award-

winning album that showcases the best of the band’s songs. There’s more touring, and guests

like Jackson Browne, Adam Duritz and Iain Matthews sit in. Another album is released in 2001,

Better Day. After 9/11 when touring Europe looked problematic, Cowsill and Broussard depart,

and the remaining members decide to call it a day.

Nineteen Ninety-Three, the band’s unreleased debut album comes out in 2003, and the lineup

for that album (Nuccio, Holsapple, Ganucheau, Eaton and Walton) performs a show in New

Orleans.

In 2009, Vermilion mainstays Walton, Cowsill, Broussard, Holsapple, Peterson and Maché

reunite during the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival week. Walton and Pat Thomas

assemble the career-spanning Drifted: In the Beginning & Beyond; all ten musicians who played

with the band in its career perform sold-out shows in New Orleans and Santa Monica CA in

2015. 

Founder Carlo Nuccio, whose swagger and soul pulled the band together originally, dies in New

Orleans on August 24, 2022.

Shows at SXSW and New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in 2023 reignite interest: in

September 2024, Omnivore Recordings releases White Noise & Lightning: The Best of

Continental Drifters, a collection of tracks from the four albums. And Cool Dog Sounds publishes

White Noise & Lightning: The Story of the Continental Drifters by Sean Kelly along with a two-CD

tribute, We Are All Drifters.

If you want to know the whole story, be sure and order the biography and the music. But the

story’s not over, either.