Sailcat @ BBR&R

Sailcat was a one hit wonder band. They had one album and only one hit, both titled "Motorcycle Mama". The song, of course, is better-remembered than the album. . Many of the tunes have a trippy, psychedelic flavour to them. The songs were composed by John Wyker.

Sailcat, was from the Muscle Shoals, Alabama, USA area. The band consisted of the duo of Court Pickett and John Wyker, two guitarists-vocalists, along with local session musicians Chuck Leavell (keyboards, later of the Allman Brothers Band), Clayton Ivey (bass) and Pete Carr (guitar).They put together the debut Sailcat album on Elektra Records in 1972. Wyker's song "Motorcycle Mama" was included on that credible album and became a US number 12 single. With that success, the musicians converged to record songs for follow-up singles, but none reached the charts and the project was abandoned.

The album was a concept album with a biker theme, about a motorcycle riding drifter in the Easy Rider vein who tires of life on the road and falls in love with a young woman. The cover art featured a series of motorcycle related drawings for each song on the album. The songs loosely tell the story of a motorcycle vagrant, who apparently steals for a living, meeting a woman and settling down to start a family. However, he apparently keeps some of his selfish behaviours as the last drawing shows him reclining on his porch while his wife hangs the laundry and his child hoes the garden.

The success of "Motorcycle Mama" led to appearances on American Bandstand and at Carnegie Hall. Sailcat released a self-titled album in 1972 for Elektra. Soon after releasing the album, Sailcat broke up, citing burnout from touring. Sailcat leader Johnny Wyker, who had been a member of the Rubber Band who recorded the original version of "Let Love Come Between Us," later a hit for James and Bobby Purify, went on to play with many of the great Southern rock musicians like Eddie Hinton, Dan Penn, Delany Bramlett, among others

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