The Myth of the Origin
of the name “Blue Sky Riders”

Georgia Middleman:
The Boot asked me for some back story to how Blue Sky Riders came about. They want to know what the name means, but I don’t have an answer. Kenny? Gary? Do you remember how we came up with that?

Gary Burr
Blue Sky Riders is derived from an old family name in the Burr clan. Originally from North Dakota, my great-great aunt was a full-blooded Kintu Indian. Her name was Blue Sky. She met my great-great uncle as he was passing through the territories on his way to stake a claim to a mine that he won in a game of canasta in a Boston whorehouse.

Gary Burr
He had a bad heart so could only play milder forms of cards, but luckily he ran into a gentleman who suffered from asthma and in a medium stakes game he won the deed. Blue Sky tried to sell him some local Mescal and he was smitten (drunk) and proposed.

Gary Burr
They married, he stayed with the tribe and adopted most of the local customs, including the changing of his name from the original “white man’s” name to something more colorful and descriptive. He arrived as Carl Evers Burr but once married he was known as Blue Sky Rider.

Georgia Middleman
I’m living with a knucklehead.

Gary Burr
… I remember, Kenny got a dog. He needed a name for the dog. I remember him mentioning something about Mitch Rider and the Detroit Wheels and wanting it to have something to do with that. After he poo-pooed my suggestion of naming him “Devil With the Blue Dress”

Gary Burr
I said, “How about Ryder? With a Y?” So his dog became Ryder. And I remember thinking, just as the tequila fog rolled into my brain, “That would be a good name for a band.” When we sat down to come up with names I suggested The Ryders. They felt it was too short.

Gary Burr
SO I suggested “The Ryyyyyddddderrrrrs.” At this point they felt I was being deliberately obtuse. Not knowing the definition of the word, I was flattered.

Gary Burr
I believe it was the lovely Georgia who suggested we add words to the beginning, like “Pacific” or “Downtown” or “Iridescent” (Kenny’s suggestion, I believe).

Gary Burr
Dawn was breaking. Tempers were flaring. Like the game where you put your first address with your pet’s name to get your porn star name … we each threw in a word.

Gary Burr
We ended up with “Blue” (Georgia’s favorite color), “Sky” for Kenny’s favorite atmospheric envelope of gasses surrounding a planet … Our work was done. Or was it?

Kenny Loggins
The TRUE story comes from my dad’s time. R. G. Loggins worked for Boeing Aircraft Manufacturing Division in 1940; heading the parts division at the young age of 24, in charge of building the famous B17, Flying Fortress.

Kenny Loggins
Robert’s dream was to some day be a front nose-cone gunner, but ironically, his uncanny ability to memorize this airplane’s parts’ numbers from the parts catalog got him listed as “essential civilian personnel,” and kept him grounded for 2 years.

Kenny Loggins
Finally, through his persistence with the War Dept, he was allowed to enlist in the US Air Force, and his beloved B17 became the only US Aircraft to shoot down 7 dreaded German Focke-Wulf Fw 190’s in one military expedition over Hamburg.

Kenny Loggins
His famous B17 Flying Fortress was dubbed “Blue Sky Rider” by R.G. himself, and holds a prestigious space in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.

Kenny Loggins
OK, Georgia … you’re up!

Georgia Middleman
That’s a lot of freakin’ PRESSURE!!! I thought I was just supposed to be the young, hot one in the band.

Georgia Middleman
Fine.

Georgia Middleman
Word has it that there was once an old Indian chief who went into the woods one morning and saw a flock of geese attacked by a lion. What the geese were doing in the woods is anybody’s guess.

Georgia Middleman
The Chief, worried about his own tribe, confronted the lion in the thicket of the forest and with his bow and arrow, shot the lion in the right leg. The lion buckled back in pain and then with a strength stronger than anything Chief Chipawahwah had seen, bounded head first at the Indian.

Georgia Middleman
With his furry chin skidding the ground, the lion sailed right under the chief, picking him up and sailing right through the woods into the sky and neither were ever seen or heard from again. Chief Chipawahwah had never liked his name so legend had rewritten his story, naming him Blue Sky Rider.

Georgia Middleman
The End.