Okolona still honky tonkin' around town

Those old days in East Atlanta! Visits to the ice cream parlor. Hanging out at the soda fountain on Flat Shoals Avenue. Honky-tonker Wayne Drummond knows about those old days, the 1950s and '60s. He also knows that the only music in the place came from car radios.

"Folks were very conservative, very proper and small-townish," he said. "Music was something that happened out on 42 highway near the truck stops."

So when Drummond, neighbor Jim McGee and other teenage pals formed the country band Okolona in 1969, they looked past Flat Shoals to get heard. The closest to home they got was Buckalou Corral, a beery old joint out on Moreland Avenue's tatty edges. It's gone, as are most of Okolona's old haunts — boarded up during white flight from Atlanta's inner suburbs in the '70s and '80s.

Not the band, though. Okolona, its members now scattered from Covington to Buckhead, is still playing, and last August returned to its East Atlanta roots for a performance at The Earl.

The Earl? Fifty-two-year-old Drummond remembers when the building that houses the popular East Atlanta club sold appliances; the only thing that rocked were washing machines. That's a bit of history, freely offered, and why not? The boys have been playing long enough to see bell-bottoms come back in fashion. They may be known more for their perseverance than their music, despite releasing a handful of self- produced CDs. And these days, the group's bassist and newest member is attracting more attention than the group's tunes.

"My name used to be obscure," said the musician, who moved to the United States from Cairo, Egypt, when he was 10. "Now you hear it on CNN every three seconds."

For the record, his name is Kheir ... Osama Kheir.

Okolona plays Smith's Olde Bar Thurs., Jan. 3.??