Jerry Raney, singer/guitarist of The Farmers [ tickets ], has been there and back ... literally. More than 25 years after Raney formed the Beat Farmers with former Penetrators drummer Country Dick Montana, he's back playing some of the same San Diego clubs that the Beat Farmers sprung from, and trying to keep the band's legacy alive after a series of highs and lows, and the tragic deaths of two of the band's original members.

Back in 1983, Raney formed the Beat Farmers with Montana, singer/guitarist Buddy Blue and bassist Rolle Love. The band quickly became favorites on the San Diego club scene and landed a contract with Rhino Records. Within a few years, they garnered praise from the U.K. press, and graduated to Curb/MCA Records, but Blue was unhappy with the direction in which the label was pushing the band, so he split. Then things started going from bad to worse. At the beginning of the '90s, Montana was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, which he managed to beat, but was stricken by a fatal heart attack while performing at a 1995 Beat Farmers gig in Windsor, Canada.

Following Montana's death, the Beat Farmers packed it in. The band's surviving members resurfaced in a number of combos that failed to gain much notice until 2005 when Raney, Blue and Love reunited under the Farmers banner with Joel "Bongo" Kmak on drums. The band released "Loaded" and was set to make its Los Angeles debut in 2006, but had to cancel after Blue fell ill. A few days later, Blue was found dead of a heart attack in his La Mesa, CA, home.

Lesser men would have given up the fight, but for Raney--who looks like the missing link between Bob Dylan, Ian Hunter and Young Fresh Fellow/Minus 5's Scott McCaughey--that's not an option. The Farmers recently made their belated Los Angeles live debut at Cozy's, a small club in the suburbs that once served as a haven for blues bands, but these days is filling its calendar with tribute bands. The night after The Farmers play, Lady Zeppelin, an all-female tribute to Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and company will grace the stage. Perhaps Cozy's is the appropriate venue for The Farmers because, in a sense, the band is a tribute band to the Beat Farmers--albeit one that includes an original member in Raney.

Rounding out the line-up is Kmack, former Penetrators' bassist Chris Sullivan, and Corbin Turner--who looks and sounds like Country Dick's long lost little brother--on vocals and percussion. For Raney, keeping The Farmers banner flying makes sense, because the band still rocks with the spirit of its early incarnation, and all its new recruits have a link to the band's storied past.

"It's like we're a bunch of cousins or something," Raney says. "Bongo was Country Dick's next-door neighbor when he was in high school. They played in bands together and just about every band Dick quit, Joel was the next drummer--the Crawdaddys, the Penetrators. Even when Country Dick had thyroid cancer and was too weak to play, Joel played drums in the Beat Farmers. Corbin, who was too young to get in, used to hang out outside of the Spring Valley Inn and listen to the Beat Farmers play and he went to high school with Buddy Blue's wife. Chris was the bass player in Dick's band, the Penetrators, before we started the Beat Farmers and was the bassist in Buddy's band, The Jacks. It's kind of like everyone was always there and knows what the Beat Farmers were about."

The Farmers are still a top-notch bar band, mixing country-flavored roots rock with twisted humor, as evidenced in new tracks like "East County Woman," the opening cut on "Fulmation," The Farmers' recently released second album. The rave-up about an eye-patch, chaps-wearing lass with a "rack like a set of longhorns on a Texas Cadillac" seems informed by the ghost of Country Dick. "There's so many people that have come up to me and wanted me to continue with the Beat Farmers tradition and I'm proud of that," says Raney. "I was a Beat Farmer from the get-go."