Athens’ Love Tractor to take the stage for this weekend’s Georgia Jam

The Buckhead-born Cline attended St. Pius X Catholic High School with several like-minded musicians who later joined influential Georgia-based bands, including the Swimming Pool Q’s, Pylon and Drivin N Cryin. He moved to Athens to study graphic design at the University of Georgia and quickly bonded with fellow artists.

“In the early days,” Cline said, “clubs were on the fringes of town and downtown was pretty much dead. We’d have these parties because we were the ‘odd people.’ The university was all about sororities and fraternities, so the art building was like the hangout club for people like us.”

Often those outsider parties happened in the old Victorian houses of Barber Street, where rent was cheap and space was available for band practice. “There were maybe five houses like this, all up and down Barber Street and Cobb Street,” Cline said. “I lived in this place called Pylon Park and it was just a rock and roll house. In 1979, (Love Tractor co-founder) Mike Richmond and I would sit around and write songs because we both played guitar. There was literally nothing else going on. You had to make your own fun.”

Love Tractor played their first party in the summer of 1980 with an all-instrumental set of tunes that became the basis for their first album. “Then everything started to really explode a year later,” Cline said. “When we finally went on tour, we’d come home and there’d be a bunch of new bands. It was like, ‘Who are these people?’”

The band rolled on, gradually including vocals, while touring nationally and releasing a series of well-received albums. “Bands have a 10-year period to really do it. You have to change with the times, and we did,” Cline said. By that time, the band was writing the complex songs that became “Themes from Venus,” originally released by Atlanta’s DB Recs in 1988. An expanded version is scheduled for vinyl release this month from Athens-based Propeller Sound Recordings.

“We were trying to go back to all the things that influenced us when we were kids learning how to play music —English rock, Krautrock, a lot of early Roxy Music and David Bowie,” Cline said. “We were sort of digging back into these other art-rock scenes.”

Cline, who now anchors a successful advertising agency in New York, also designed a new cover for the reissue. “It’s what you’d want from a so-called ‘70s record,” he laughed. “It’s all business on the front and a big party in the middle. There’re all kinds of little surprises in there for people who enjoyed the vinyl experience in their youth.”

At press time, Cline said the band hasn’t decided which songs they’ll play during their Georgia Jam set. “We’re thinking of doing an all-instrumental set. We could do our standard rock and roll set, but people are gonna get that from all the other bands, so we’ll see. It’s just a good opportunity to see a number of interesting bands in one night.”

Cline will be in Athens to prep for the show and said the band may end up writing new material as they practice for the Jam. “That’s what we like to do. We know the old stuff and it’s still exciting for us to come up with new things.”

Though Love Tractor, a 2022 Athens Music Walk Of Fame inductee, play infrequently, their performances remain as intense as ever.

“Some bands, the older they get, the more they tend to slow things down and drag the tempo down to a crawl. That’s not us. Every time we even think about slowing it down a little, I always go, ‘No, let’s speed it up! We’re still a rock band.’”

CONCERT PREVIEW

Georgia Jam 2022

1-11 p.m. Aug. 27. $59-$119. Gas South District Arena, 6400 Sugarloaf Parkway, Duluth. 770-626-2464, georgiajam.com.