VIA PRESS RELEASE | Electric Cowbell Records announces the launch of Richmond Relics, a new archival imprint dedicated to preserving the city’s musical history. Its inaugural release is a newly remastered reissue of FS3574, the sole album from Richmond, Virginia’s legendary supergroup Famous Actors From Out of Town. Remastered from original source files and reissued for vinyl and digital distribution worldwide 1/30/26 by Revolver/ Midheaven, Discord Direct, and Virtual Label.
Formed in Richmond, Virginia in the mid-1980s, Famous Actors From Out of Town created ambitiously composed instrumental music rooted in the city’s fertile underground scene. Built around the uncommon power of two drummers working intricately in tandem, the quartet blended jazz, rock, improvisation, and experimental music into a sound that was both cerebral and physical.
The group featured composer and keyboardist Marty McCavitt, percussionists Johnny Hott and Pippin Barnett, and multi-instrumentalist Paul Watson on trumpet, guitar, and bass. All four were veterans of Richmond’s jazz, rock, and new-music communities, with deep connections to bands such as the Ululating Mummies, Orthotonics, Gongs Violence, House of Freaks, Idio Savant, the Tom and Marty Band, and the Snakehandlers. Their creative pedigree extended well beyond the city, with members later contributing to influential projects including Sparklehorse, Cracker, Curlew, and Gutterball.
Though the band played infrequently, their live appearances became legendary local events, drawing multigenerational audiences of punks, metalheads, jazz fans, students, and artists. In many ways, Famous Actors From Out of Town embodied what made Richmond’s mid-’80s cultural ecosystem unique: a dense, supportive network of musicians, venues, and listeners open to experimentation.
In 1986, the band self-released Fs3574, a limited-edition, cassette-only album recorded at Floodzone, a repurposed tobacco warehouse studio in Richmond. Produced by the band alongside engineer Bruce Olsen, the tape featured ten original instrumentals—mostly composed by McCavitt, with contributions from all members—and captured the group’s kinetic chemistry and distinctly off-kilter blend of late-’70s/early-’80s art rock, jazz, noise, and improvisation. Forty years later, the recording remains strikingly vibrant. Now remastered and reissued by Electric Cowbell’s Richmond Relics imprint on vinyl and digital platforms, Fs3574 is finally accessible worldwide.
Much of the band’s sound came from its unconventional instrumentation. Watson played pocket trumpet, short-scale bass, and occasionally prepared electric guitar. Barnett built and performed on homemade percussion, while Hott famously struck “found” objects—50-gallon oil drums flywheels, tin sheets—sometimes using sawed-off broom handles as drumsticks. McCavitt conceived the dual-percussion approach to create “a richness that was unusual,” allowing two improvising drummers to split parts and create space through simplicity. This philosophy of “less becomes more” shaped the band’s primitive yet deeply textured musical language.
The band’s name was a tongue-in-cheek response to Richmond’s growing role as a low-cost film location in the early 1980s. As Hollywood productions arrived, McCavitt noted the irony that the “famous actors” were always from out of town—a joke the band leaned into onstage and in composition titles like “Merle Oberon,” “William Holden,” and “Jack Nicholson.”
Famous Actors From Out of Town never officially disbanded, instead entering a long hiatus as members pursued other projects and family life. Trumpeter and guitarist Paul Watson passed away in 2025, leaving behind a lasting musical legacy. This reissue is dedicated in his loving memory. The remaining members have recently reconvened as a trio, focusing on improvisation, with plans for a renewed version of the group to perform around the 2026 reissue of FS3574.
