Rank and File (band)

Rank and File
Genres	Alternative country, cowpunk, post-punk, new wave
Years active	1981–1987
Associated acts	The Dils The Nuns True Believers
Past members	Chip Kinman Tony Kinman Alejandro Escovedo Slim Evans Bobby Kahr

Rank and File was an American punk rock band established in 1981 in Austin, Texas by Chip Kinman and Tony Kinman, a pair of brothers who had been members of the seminal California band The Dils. The band were forerunners in combining the musical rawness and Do It Yourself punk aesthetic with the style and ambience of country and western music, helping to create a subgenre known as cowpunk. After releasing three albums, the band terminated in 1987.

In 1981 brothers Chip and Tony Kinman split up their influential political punk band The Dils, based in Carlsbad, California, and departed for the East. After a brief time in New York City, the brothers landed in the musical mecca of Austin, Texas, to start a new band. There they joined forces with guitarist Alejandro Escovedo of The Nuns to form Rank and File.

Rank and File released three albums—two on prominent Los Angeles label Slash Records and a third on the offbeat, retro-oriented Rhino Records.

The band's debut album, Sundown, was released in June 1982 on Slash Records.

A second Slash album, 1984's Long Gone Dead, included a cover version of a tune by Lefty Frizzell and made use of traditional country instrumentation such as a steel guitar and fiddle.Chicago Tribune music critic Tom Popson emphasized the band's employment of "a lot of Johnny Cash-style rockabilly guitar lines" as part of that particular project.

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