Only Road Home is an album by the American musical artist Ronnie Penque

Ronnie Penque

Ronnie Penque is a bassist, singer and songwriter who has been working in the music industry for over 30 years. Penque is most notably recognized for his work with the current New Riders of the Purple Sage. The New Riders emerged from the psychedelic rock scene in San Francisco, California in 1969...

. Penque is best known as the bassist

Bass guitar

The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

 and singer for the New Riders of the Purple Sage

New Riders of the Purple Sage

New Riders of the Purple Sage is an American country rock band. The group emerged from the psychedelic rock scene in San Francisco, California in 1969, and its original lineup included several members of the Grateful Dead. Their best known song is "Panama Red"...

. Only Road Home is Penque's first solo album. It was released on November 2, 2010 on the Bayland Records label. The album features 11 songs written and produced by Penque.

In early 2011 Only Road Home made it to the top of the college radio charts in the Jam Band

Jam band

-Ambiguity:By the late 1990s use of the term jam band also became ambiguous. An editorial at jamband.com suggested that any band of which a primary band such as Phish has done a cover of be included as jam band. The example was including New York post-punk band Talking Heads after Phish performed...

 category. It climbed to number one in February 2011.

Only Road Home contains a version of the song "Olivia Rose", which was originally recorded by the New Riders of the Purple Sage on their 2009 album Where I Come From

Where I Come From (album)

Where I Come From is an album by the American country rock band the New Riders of the Purple Sage. It was recorded in 2008, and released on June 2, 2009. Following Wanted: Live at Turkey Trot, it was the second album of new material released after the New Riders re-formed in 2005, and the band's...

.

Critical reception

On jambands.com, Brian Robbins wrote, "Here we find Penque using his time between New Riders gigs to try on many hats — bassist, vocalist, bandleader, songwriter, and producer — and he wears them all well.... His songs on Only Road Home range from entertaining and cryptic tales to feeling like disarmingly open journal entries. Penque is definitely a believer in the songs-come-first-and-the-jams-will-follow school... All in all, Only Road Home is a great effort from a band that doesn’t try to deny their influences, but instead treats them as lessons well learned. The Ronnie Penque Band has managed to create that rarest of beasts: both fresh and familiar; both well-crafted and adventurous."

On Sleeping Hedgehog, Deborah Grabien wrote, "With Only Road Home, Ronnie Penque — a killer bassist who happens to play for the New Riders of the Purple Sage — has managed to pull something out of the air, out of the studio, out of time. It's there in the heartfelt lyrics, the clean easy production values, the echoes of pedal steel and the 'hey put your boots up' twang of the lead guitar. It's there in Penque's lead vocals, which somehow evoke touches of Delaney Bramlett and Van Morrison and, yes, Jerry Garcia and John Dawson, while still magically remaining entirely distinct and his own: cheerful, occasionally plaintive, always accessible."

Track listing

All songs written by Ronnie Penque.

1. "Thunder & Lightning" – 4:03
2. "Circles" – 4:40
3. "Olivia Rose" – 5:49
4. "Gonna Roll" – 4:20
5. "One More for Me" – 3:30
6. "Santa Ana Wind" – 4:04
7. "Mallory" – 5:27
8. "Cool November" – 5:39
9. "Little Soul" – 7:00
10. "Only Road Home" – 5:02
11. "American Junkie" – 10:46

Ronnie Penque Band

• Ronnie Penque – bass
  Bass guitar
  The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
  
  , vocals
  Singing
  Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
  
  
• Andy Trister – lead guitar
  Lead guitar
  Lead guitar is a guitar part which plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs within a song structure...
  
  , acoustic guitar
  Acoustic guitar
  An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...
  
  
• Chris Penque – rhythm guitar
  Rhythm guitar
  Rhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...
  
  , acoustic guitar
• Jeff Pearlman – piano
  Piano
  The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
  
  , organ
  Organ (music)
  The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
  
  , vocals
• Katie Pearlman – drums
  Drum kit
  A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
  
  , percussion
  Percussion instrument
  A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...
  
  , vocals

Additional musicians

• Jimmy Fleming – fiddle
  Fiddle
  The term fiddle may refer to any bowed string musical instrument, most often the violin. It is also a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including classical music...
  
  , mandolin
  Mandolin
  A mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family . It descends from the mandore, a soprano member of the lute family. The mandolin soundboard comes in many shapes—but generally round or teardrop-shaped, sometimes with scrolls or other projections. A mandolin may have f-holes, or a single...
  
  
• Ivan Funk – pedal steel guitar
  Pedal steel guitar
  The pedal steel guitar is a type of electric guitar that uses a metal bar to "fret" or shorten the length of the strings, rather than fingers on strings as with a conventional guitar. Unlike other types of steel guitar, it also uses pedals and knee levers to affect the pitch, hence the name "pedal"...
  
  

Production

• Produced by: Ronnie Penque
• Co-producer: Larry Levin
• Engineers: Larry Levin, Brad Kotzmoyer
• Mix by: Mark McNutt, Larry Levin
• Mastered by: Ed Littman
• Album design: Ronnie Penque, Gina Guarnieri Hanf
• Photography and graphics: Gina Guarnieri Hanf