Great Divide to reunite for College Days show in Stillwater
The Great Divide in 1997 (Photo by Paul B. Southerland, The Oklahoman Archives)
Influential red dirt band The Great Divide will reunite for a show in August at Stillwater’s College Days.
Mike McClure, the band’s frontman, announced the news today on Facebook:
“The great divide was invited to headline college days. We all agreed it would be fun to play a show together after 9 years. so yes, we are going to do it.”
College Days is set for Aug. 25-27 at Tumbleweed Dance Hall, Lakeview and Country Club roads in Stillwater. The annual event (which has been called College Fest in the years since the Great Divide became, well, divided) takes place in August as a sort of musical welcome back for the Oklahoma State University student body.
During last month’s Red Bull Gypsy Cafe in Stillwater, McClure told me he had recently talked to his former bandmates for the first time in nine years. McClure, Kelley Green and brothers Scotte Lester and J.J. Lester spent 10 years recording and touring together as The Great Divide.
Mike McClure
“I kept in contact with Scotte, and I was just driving home from Kansas City and thought, ‘You know what, I’m just gonna call everybody.’ ‘Cause a band breaks up and it’s like a divorce and it’s hard and then there’s bitter feelings on both sides,’” McClure said.
“Every time I’d hear the name come up, I’d have like negative feelings about it, I mean, even that long later.”
For red dirt fans like myself, the reunion show is most welcome news. The Great Divide was one of the first bands to really gain traction in their efforts to spread the red dirt sound beyond its origins in Stillwater. Artists like the recently departed Cross Canadian Ragweed, Jason Boland & the Stragglers, Stoney LaRue and many more continued the hard-touring mission to popularize the red dirt sound, which was recently chronicled for a mini-documentary by Red Bull at the two-day Gypsy Cafe event.
The Great Divide started in 1992 and self-produced two albums – “Goin’ for Broke” and “Break in the Storm” – that sold well at all their shows, according to The Oklahoman Archives.
Their albums were so popular with their fans that Rick Blackburn of Atlantic Records in Nashville stumbled onto the fact that The Great Divide’s records were outselling much bigger acts and signed the band without even seeing them live.
The group inked a contract with Atlantic and released a repackaged “Break in the Storm,” and they experienced moderate success with their Caribbean-flavored single “Pour Me a Vacation.”
After the release of “Revolutions,” the band’s momentum stalled even after a stage show at 1998′s Fan Fair (precursor of the CMA Music Festival) in Nashville. Atlantic dropped them, and The Great Divide were independent again.
In 2000, the band signed with Broken Bow Records -the indie label now best known as the home of hitmaker Jason Aldean – which released the well-liked “Afterglow: The Will Rogers Sessions.” But their next album, “Dirt and Spirit,” didn’t sell as they hoped, so the band left that label in 2001 and went back to marketing their own music. The quartet released the CD “Remain” in 2002.
McClure left The Great Divide in 2003 to start a solo career and formed The Mike McClure Band, which has continued to tour actively and has released eight albums since.
Micah Aills joined The Great Divide as the band’s new lead singer, and the group released the 2005 album “Under Your Own Sun” before eventually calling it quits.
Just a few days after I spoke with McClure in Stillwater, he wrote on his blog in his all-lowercase sort of free-verse-poetry style about sitting down for a face-to-face with his former bandmates:
time flies
and we all know it
and we’ve all seen it
and we’ve all shaken our
heads at it
but I sat down with
the great divide fellas
over a cup of coffee last week
and cut through the years
and the b.s. with one gut laugh
He wrote that it felt good to hug his friends and sincerely apologize for any hurt feelings over the choices he made and still stands by. He continued:
and I’m proud to be able to hear the name
The Great Divide again and be proud
of what we accomplished as a group
and not let the pettiness and weakness
steal an ounce of enjoyment
that everyone in that band deserves
I’m glad we can still call each other friends
And fans of the group are glad to have a reunion show they can mark on their calendars.
-BAM
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Comments
Scotte, JJ and Kelley,
This is the geatest news in forever. I cannot wait to see you guys again. I’m not at Country Fever in Pryor, Ok any longer but would travel the world over to see my guys! Still have alot of my old contacts in place to book shows and willing to take care of you anytime. I treasure our good times like Cronies in Tulsa that was a blast, Grand lake Pelican fest. Get back to music where you belong and go to the top where you deserve to be this time.
Call me and let me get ya some more dates booked around here for your loyal fans. We miss ya!!!!
Love ya guys forever,
Tammy
oh yeah college days with the great divide again!!!!!!! this is one for the record books boys and girls! glad to see everyone get along cant wait
This is going to be so sweet, I cannot wait for the show. I am breaking out my old Great Divide t-shirts for this . The week of the concert all I am wearing at Great Divide t-shirts. Should be fun.
I am so happy and excited to be there