Center Stage: Frog Hollow’s New Voice

WAITSBURG - As the newest and youngest member of a country rock band, Shane Ugalde may not know all the rock classics. When asked at a recent practice if he had ever heard of Aerosmith's Sweet Emotion, he drew a blank.

But when it comes to the "country" in country rock, Ugalde is the genuine article, so genuine you might imagine a hint of burning leather around him.

"He's a real cowboy," band manager Wendy Richards said. "And he feels like he's always been part of the group."

Together with the other five members of Frog Hollow Band, Ugalde will perform around 8:30 pm Saturday night, May 18, at the Don Thomas Building during the Waitsburg Celebration of the DRS Centennial. The Blue Mountain Barn Stormers and the Kuykendall Kids will open for the band.

With an estimated fairgrounds crowd of about 350, it will be the biggest concert yet for the humble country boy who has yet to bud into a true performer. But even though he has fewer than a dozen shows with the band under his belt so far, he's ready.

"I don't have stage fright, but I'm still working into it all," he said in a recent telephone interview. "I just go out and do it."

Ugalde, who became the new lead singer of the Frog Hollow Band last fall after Nick Berg parted with the other musicians earlier in the year, was born in Bend, Ore., not a quarter century ago.

The soft-spoken somewhat introverted young farmhand grew up on his grandfather's 700-head ranch near the southeast Oregon town of Frenchglen, where he rounded up cattle on horseback, branded them, cared for them and did just about everything else you might imagine a real cowboy doing under the watchful eye of the Steens Mountain in Malheur County.

The 24-year-old's ancestors were Basque immigrants going back four generations and coming into the Pacific Northwest via the Basque settlement of King's River, Nevada. As a youth, he listened to his grandfather's and his own parents' favorite country stars, such as Johnnie Horton, Roger Miller and Marty Robbins.

"I always really liked country," said Ugalde, who may be a man of few spoken words but knows how to release his tenor voice into the band's charged stream of music as well as Berg did, though perhaps without the southern twang.

A guitar player as well as a vocalist, Ugalde began to experiment with music in a small band at Crane Union High, where he "played a bit of everything," from 1960s rock to old country, getting up in front of high school sports banquets and similar hometown events.

But even then he wasn't an attention getter and he never dreamed of playing in front of halls as big as the Don Thomas Building.

"I've never been a crowd type," said Ugalde, who was introduced to the other band members by long-time family friends rhythm guitarist Kit Lane and his son, singer/song writer/lead guitarist Ty Lane. "It's a big eye opener."

Yet such modesty is refreshing to local audiences, especially to those of the female persuasion, said Richards. She has watched the band's first 10 performances with Ugalde, from the Elks Lodge in Walla Walla to the Tuxedo in Prescott, where the new singer lives and works for a wheat grower.

"He's the opposite of cocky," she said. "But girls swoon over him because he's such a cutie pie. He will probably never be as outgoing as Nick, but he is just as good for the band. The band hasn't suffered from the transition at all. They're just as popular and successful as ever."

Richards' husband Brian, who is Frog Hollow's drummer, agreed.

"You're not going to see the roundhouse kicks or the mike stand go 30 feet in the air," he said about the cowboy singer, who still seeks the comfort of his instrument to ground himself on stage. "His presence is static. Right now he's still focusing on getting the technique (and lyrics) right. His performance is understated because he's still trying to find himself as a vocalist."

The band, which began recording some its original compositions last year, had to put the CD project on hold when Berg left the band. It's now rerecording most of the same tracks and new ones with Ugalde as the lead singer. Ten compositions, most of them Ty Lane's, have made it into the lineup and the CD's release is only a matter of time, Ugalde said. The band's website predicts the album will be out this summer.

One of the things the other band members - Richards, the Lanes, instrumentalist Jerry Yokel and bass players Jim Pearson - appreciate about the singer/guitarist, is his work ethic, the drummer said.

"This is something he wants to do," Brian Richards said about the youthful passion Ugalde puts into the band's practices. "He makes a real commitment to getting better."

And that attitude will be his biggest ally as his stage persona evolves, Wendy Richards said. "With time, his confidence will grow and he'll become more of a showman."