Rockabilly's Collins Kids: Still Young at Heart

As for their long "break," "Lorrie and I were basically hiding out for a number of years," Larry says, though he hates anybody suggesting that the Collins Kids were "recovering child stars."

"Lorrie and I had the luckiest childhood of anybody that you can imagine. We grew up with Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Carl Perkins. Everybody that came to California when they first started did 'Town Hall Party.' All those acts, Lorrie and I got to meet them, know them, travel with them, work with them.

"Back then we drove everywhere -- there was a fleet of Cadillacs going down the road with Cash in one, Lorrie and I in one, maybe Lefty Frizzell in one, all through Canada and just about every part of the United States. We did it for years and then started working Vegas and Reno and Tahoe for six months of the year. We really worked."

Adds Lorrie, "There was always a pact between Larry and I: If we weren't having a good time on stage, then that was it . . . "

" . . . and we reached that point in Lake Tahoe," Larry admits. "We had just burned ourselves out."

Until fans relighted the flames.

When the Collins Kids decided to reunite, it was noticed. Larry was, as he is wont to do, playing golf one day in late 1992, and "I had just finished the 18th hole and this big tall gentleman with a beard and gray hair who looked like some aged rock star walked onto the green carrying a double-neck guitar. It was Semie Moseley, the guy who made my first double-neck guitar in 1954 and Joe Maphis's -- the first two he ever made -- and this was the last one he made before he passed away.

"And he handed it to me and said, 'Go back to work.' I cried like a baby."

Larry has three of about 15 custom-built Mosrites, including that first one for which Moseley "built the necks to fit the palm of my hand as a 9-year-old, and another when I got in my teens and my hands got bigger."

"I still have my beautiful old guitar," Lorrie says of her Mosrite. "It's got a hole in it, but it's still good-looking to me."

"You beat the absolute hell out of it," Larry says, "but let me tell you, Lorrie, it's got a lot of soul."

Since the 1993 festival reunion, the Collins Kids have continued to perform select dates. They recently returned from a three-week tour of England, Spain, France and Italy, where a crowd of 12,000 seemed as familiar with their songs as if they were 5 months old, not 50 years.

Listen to an audio clip of the Collins Kids

Apearing Friday at the Birchmere with Deke Dickerson, Link Wray's Ray Men, Eddie Angel & the Neanderthals, the Flea Bops and more

Sounds like: Primal rock-and-roll.