Swinging Steaks

All Music Guide:

Paul Kochanski (vocals, bass) and Jamie Walker (vocals, guitar) first played together in the early '80s for a Boston-based band named the Drive. Local acclaim and a first-place finish on MTV's The Basement Tapes didn't prevent the band from breaking up in 1989. The Swinging Steaks were formed soon after, when Kochanski and Walker recruited Tim Giovanniello (vocals, guitar) and Jim Gambino (vocals, piano, organ); they later picked up the Del Fuegos' drummer, Joe Donnelly, when that band folded. The group pursued a roots rock style, using soul, honky tonk, gospel, and pop in addition to straight-ahead rock & roll. After an album was released on the band's own Thrust label, 1992's Suicide at the Wishing Well, Capricorn signed the band and released Southside of the Sky (1993).

Wikipedia:

A five-man band out of Boston, MA, Swinging Steaks are among the originators of the current roots rock/ alt.country movement. Band members are:

The Swinging Steaks was formed in the late 1980s by former members of The Drive and friends. In 1991 they participated in the WBCN Rock & Roll Rumble. The Swinging Steaks' second album, Southside of the Sky (1993, Capricorn Records) introduced the band to a national audience with two top ten AAA radio singles and appearances on NBC-TV's Late Night with Conan O'Brien and NPR's Mountain Stage. Their four self-released albums, Suicide at the Wishing Well, Shiner, the live, acoustic Bare, and KickSnareHat have continued to expose the group to new audiences and garner them appearances at SXSW, CMJ Music Marathon and Nashville Extravaganza.

Creem magazine called them: "the best country-rock out of Boston since Harvard student Gram Parsons put together his International Submarine Band"

In 2005 the band released "Sunday Best" on First National Records in the U.S. and Blue Rose in Europe.

The band's name apparently comes from a restaurant in Mexican Hat, UT, called The Mexican Hat Lodge that bills itself as the "Home Of The Swinging Steak".