Sneak of the Week: Eggs Over Easy – “Funky but Clean”

Underground Americana trailblazers with a hard-grooving side

Strange as it may seem, a line can be drawn from the earthy, all-American roots rock of Eggs Over Easy to the first flowering of UK punk. Perhaps equally unlikely is the fact that the country-rocking trio could get down with some fiercely funky jams when the spirit moved them.

Singer/songwriters Austin de Lone, Jack O’Hara, and Brien Hopkins plied their trade together in their home turf of New York for a bit before they went to London in 1970 to cut an album on the cheap and ultimately wound up sort of stranded. To keep body and soul together, they approached a local pub, the sort of place that had mostly been the domain of jazz bands before, to set up a weekly gig. Things took off, and the residency helped turn them into cult heroes.

Many credit Eggs Over Easy with kicking off the entire British pub-rock scene, which in turn laid the groundwork for punk via bands like Dr. Feelgood and The Count Bishops. Some have labeled this view reductionist, but at the very least, the Eggs popularized and invigorated pub rock, with their mix of country, folk, and R&B influences directly inspiring the likes of the Nick Lowe-fronted Brinsley Schwarz, Bees Make Honey, Chilli Willi & The Red Hot Chili Peppers, et al.

The band, which hightailed it back to the States by the end of ‘71, lasted long enough to release two studio records. But the tune we’re queuing up here hails from a London recording released posthumously as part of an Eggs anthology and doesn’t appear on either of their “official” albums.

Written by de Lone and O’Hara, with the latter on lead vocal, “Funky but Clean” finds Eggs Over Easy putting the twang aside in favor of a grinding R&B groove and a funkified feeling that immediately removes immobility from your list of possible reactions. O’Hara’s husky, smoldering vocal hits just the right balance of authoritative and laid-back, and the rhythm follows suit. It feels like the kind of track that could have come off of an Allen Toussaint-produced Lee Dorsey album about five years earlier, with a little bit of stoner shenanigans thrown in for good measure.

Eggs Over Easy’s lack of commercial traction eventually led to their split, but an underground Eggs current has always kept on flowing. And in 2016, Yep Roc Records released the comprehensive collection Good ‘N’ Cheap: The Eggs Over Easy Story, containing the band’s complete recordings (including “Funky but Clean”).

O’Hara and de Lone reunited to perform for the occasion, with Liz Hopkins sitting in for her late dad, who passed in 2007. De lone left us in ‘25, and on May 30, we lost the last man standing, Jack O’Hara. As a singer, songwriter, guitarist, and sound man, Jack had been a fixture on the New York music scene for decades. But this burst of joy shared by him and his cohorts more than half a century ago can still put the goodhearted vibes of Eggs Over Easy out there into the air for all to breathe.

-Jim Allen

Fair use image from Eggs Over Easy, London 71