Al Anderson – Al Anderson (1972)

Artist: Al Anderson
Title: Al Anderson
Year: 1972
Format: LP
Label: Vanguard

Over the years Anderson’s recorded a handful of solo albums; his debut coming with 1972′s cleverly-titled Al Anderson released by Vanguard Records, the album was actually recorded as a contractual obligation package, Anderson having been left to make good on The Wildweed’s contract which required a second LP (see June 29, 2010 post). Produced by Maynard Soloman, the collection featured nine Anderson originals and a Hank Williams cover (“Honky Tonkin’”).

Perhaps not a big surprise, but with backing from a healthy part of the NRBQ line up – horn player Donn Adams, keyboardist Terry Adams, and drummer Tom Staley the album bore more than a passing resemblance to NRBQ’s recording catalog.  (For trivia buffs Al Lepak, Jeff Potter and Stanley had also played with Anderson in The Wildweeds.)

Anyone familiar with Anderson’s NRBQ contributions was liable to find the eclectic mix of humor, pop, rock and soul influences familiar territory.  Anderson’s always struck me as being NRBQ’s best singer and he sounded in fine voice throughout these sessions.

Highlights included the blazing rocker “Ain’t No Woman Finer” (check out Anderson’s meltdown guitar solo), the reflective soul ballad “You’re Just Laughing Inside”(Dobie Gray or Bill Withers could have enjoyed a massive hit with the track) and the should’ve-been-a-hit, slide-propelled “I Haven’t Got The Strength To Carry On”.

Not to imply the set was perfect – recalling his work with The Wildweeds, tracks like ”I Don’t Believe I’ll Stay Here Anymore” and “Honky Tonkin’” featured a distinctive country influence which simply didn’t do much for me.  Still, a solo debut that’s worth lookin’ for.  Any NRBQ fan should have it in their collection. (Bad Cat)

Track Listing

1. Be My Woman Tonight
2. We’ll Make Love
3. Ain’t No Woman Finer
4. You’re Just Laughing Inside
5. I Don’t Believe I’ll Stay Here Anymore
6. Honky Tonkin’
7. Goin’ Back To Indiana
8. Don’t Hold The Line
9. I Just Want To Have You Back Again
10. I Haven’t Got The Strength To Carry On
11. C’mon If You’re Comin’

Uncle Willard – Just One More Good Time! (1971)

Artist: Uncle Willard
Title: Just One More Good Time!
Year: 1971
Format: LP
Label: Toya

Uncle Willard were a rural Chicago group comprised of Mick McInerney (vocal), Tony Warren (vocal), Gary Loizzo (lead vocal-guitar-bass), Gary Wisner (rythm guitar-vocal), John Turner (electric piano) and Sam Valeo (drums).

“Just One More Good Time!” was the project of musician Gary Loizzo who produced and engineered this album at Pumkin Studios in Chicago in late 1970. Old Mill Bay suggests connections to the American Breed, but i’m not too sure about that.

The record has been compared to the “jingly-jangly” sound of the Byrds, but the influence here is more Poco or Neil Young, featuring well-crafted original songs with an emphasis on harmony vocals. If your a fan of early seventies rural rock your bound to enjoy this. A great listen from start to finish.  (J.J. Hildreth)

Track Listing

1. All It Takes
2. Welcome To The Army
3. Let’s Sit Down
4. Cowboy In The Sand
5. All I Needed Was A Song
6. Where Am I Going
7. Dark Cloud
8. Joe From Tennessee
9. As Long As It’s Not You
10. I Don’t Know What To Do With You
11. Everybody Needs A Song
12. Gone Is The Sunshine

Timber – Bring America Home (1971)

Artist: Timber
Title: Bring America Home
Year: 1971
Format: LP
Label: Elektra

Following a personnel change which saw the addition of female vocalist Judy Elliott and a switch to Jac Holzman’s Elektra Records, the group returned with 1971′s Bring American Home.  Produced by Don Gallucci (of Don and the Good Times fame), the album showcased singers/songwriters Wayne Berry and George Clinton (no, not the Funkadelic/Parliament guy); the two responsible (separately) for penning all ten tracks.

To be honest, the first couple of times I played this one it made absolutely no impression on me.  In fact after playing it one afternoon I found myself unable to remember a single one of the ten selections.  So this one ended up spending a year in my ‘check it out later’ pile.  When I finally got around to giving it another shot it didn’t exactly overwhelm me.  Nothing particularly bad, though nothing that really jumped out at you.

Exemplified by tracks like “Canada” (which featured a pretty melody and a subtle anti-war lyric), the anti-drug “Pipe Dream”, and “Don’t Underestimate Your Friends” (sporting a Seals and Crofts-vibe), about half the album had a modest country-rock vibe.

Elsewhere the title track sounded a little bit like The Mamas and the Papas doing a car commercial. It was an even odder song given the activist lyric. Vocalists Berry, Clinton and Elliott were all competent (Berry was probably the best of the three), though again none were overwhelming.  Certainly competent, but not an essential addition to anyone’s collection. (Bad Cat)

Track Listing

1. Bring America Home
2. Canada
3. Pipe Dream
4. Remember
5. Don’t Underestimate Your Friends
6. Witch Hunt
7. The Spirit Song
8. Caught In The Middle
9. Same Ole Story
10. From The Time I Rise

Randy – Lady Luck (1975)

Artist: Randy
Title: Lady Luck
Year: 1975
Format: LP
Label: Transatlantic

Contributed by Beau G.

Yuck a do-day dandy….what a title and what a gross album cover…..would I have picked this off of a rack….hmmmm?

Transatlantic….now there was a label to treasure….Fugs to Eddie and Finbar etc….ahhh the DAZE…..
The caboodle kicks in with the title track, “Lady Luck”which is effortless, quality countrified rock; your head will soon be nodding to the pedal steel and when the banjo cuts in….you will have to suppress your “Yeehas!!” So no probs with the title track……4.04 of sweeties,

Hmmm 1975…..over here on this side of the pond….the Brinsley Schwarz and Nick Lowe’s sweeties were under attack from the punkers….and sweet Nick had to slip to Stiff to keep an audience………however Brits did welcome and take to our heart Captain Cody and his ‘ozone players’…..

“Call Her Any Name”… hmmm will I last its length? If you like Burritos this will slide along fine…….though many will be making their way to the bar, knowing that the groove will still be there when they come back and pick up from where they left off…..

“City Life”…these boys like to hang around?……the drummer has an easy job here…..tap tap, boom boom, but he does get a go at some neat little timpani tricks, when a serious little groove gets going after  2minutes…..WoW! and after 3….we get back into the tap tap, boom boom…..yike!!! what a stormer of a fright over the last 30 secs….when some mad cap Beach Boys Smile outtake kicks in….one weird little track….2 sections little related to the main groove….turning this into a fine comic number…..

“Break Your Heart” cuts in with some Stonesy, Nicky Hopkins type groove….and the music chuntles along fine….this singer though doesn’t quite cut it?? and the lyrical content is pretty weak??….but good folks there is some seriously good playing on show….what the heck…another snatch of a  BB outtake???

“Take Me Back”has a Byrdism feel and nice little harp player on show….our faithful drumming is trained in Mike Clarke school…..yup and the pedal steel is more than fine…..WoW! and in comes another section of madness as we go out on a Beach Boys outtake from Smile….heh heh, these boys love whoopee cushions…what’s going on here, surreal or what?

“Crazy Love” we are taken to outer space land underwater…..I’m really warming to this Randy, I know nothing about the band….then they stream out onto their little bit of psyche n psuch….and we are taken into the yellow-mellow of a sweet guitar break with breathy ooohs, ooohs….lovely….and then a bit of phasing….before pedal steel reinstates order….”Crazy Love” does have sweet playing on show…..boysy boy….I’m into Steely Dan Land…..surely Beau G is guilty of these splices showing up at the tail ends of tracks?

“Got a Feeling” is pretty standard fare….a bit of a filler, not that it’s bad…its just filler?? but the sort of filler needed if the girl you are dancing with is requiring of you and your blue suede shoes……these blips at the end are getting tiresome….

“Honky Tonk Downstairs”… gives the crooner of the band a chance to give his voice an airing…..and this would fit in well with any Gram Parson/Barritos platter….some nifty pedal steel and tinkling of the ivories on show…..be sure and press advance and move to the next track to remove Mr Sabotage and BB’s at work…..

“Alright”….. another voice on show?….with a TRexy feel? playing behind Southern Fried Funk….at 2 minutes we get treated to the band in full flow…..they are a fine boogie on down stew of a band…..cut the 30sec splice on…..

“On The Road” 45 secs of blissful playing before we hear the best singer on show……the band don’t bust a gut but do know their way round country-rock…..

So all in all good start which led into a pretty ‘safe listen’…..soft and melodic flourishes adorn this pretty interesting but hardly ground breaking album…..it will reward a listen, but will not take you anywhere you have not been before….AND DO CUT OUT THE ANNOYING LAST 30SECS FROM TRACK 3 through to TRACK 10. (hey Beau, how the heck did the “Smile” sessions end up on these cuts? RT)   (REVIEWED BY AYE AFLOAT)

Track Listing

1. Lady Luck
2. Call Her Any Name
3. City Life
4. Break Your Heart
5. Take Me Back
6. Crazy Love
7. Got A Feeling
8. Honky Tonk Downstairs
9. Alright
10. On The Road

Spirit In Flesh – II (1979)

Artist: Spirit In Flesh
Title: II
Year: 1979
Format: LP
Label: Private Pressing

Here’s the second recording by the Massachusetts communal band Spirit In Flesh released as a Private Pressing at the end of the seventies. On this album the group progressed into a matured Country Rock outfit, which is a bit of a departure from the more rock oriented sounding debut of eight years earlier.

Among the album’s twelve tracks are three remakes from the that first LP, “Fine Line“, The Jack Baker Song and “Flesh & Gut” here titled “Flesh & Guts” and has been transformed into a beautiful Country/Gospel track which closes the album. For more info, see the first album’s post of June 18, 2010. (Max Collodie)

Spirit in Flesh…1971…took some finding on the phone….having been first posted in one of its earliest incarnations on June 16, 2009….ahhhh…now where is that old red phone logo…..

In my search for SIFlesh, I got sidetracked by giving Spirits And Worms another spin…now there’s a record…goat on the grave and all…and before realising that S&Worms ain’t SIFlesh….Worms took me back into an olive grove on the island of Crete listening to Grace Slick type licks…hmmm finding the correct wave-length….a play of SIFlesh, 1971 will take you into the heart of “communal hippie psych” being played at blistering pace and full of power riffs, and well worth seeking out……a mammoth album from that pivotal year. The album never gives up, never runs out of steam and there ain’t a ballad to be had. A good place is to compare the two S’sIFlesh are the three tracks that double up from 71-79.

1971’s ……“Fine Line” is rocking C/W with blasting electric guitars and head-shaking organ work……“Jack Baker Song” is full of punching power, searing guitar with heavenly girlie chorus and our gruff singer veering from macho-posing into falsetto…. “Flesh and Gut”….is pyche n psuch in spades of swirling singers and stone swamp rock all a bit like having Meatloaf round for afternoon worship…..wow….how any of these guys and guys got through 71-79…oh of course they were part of a “Hippy Commune”….thank God for tomatoes and butter-nut squash….and crystal clear water from a mountain stream….

1979’s……. “Fine Line” is in another place….our noble singer is upfront and accompanied by banjo, a strolling bass and neat stick work by the drummer….oh yes the girls are still with us and their heavenliness is wholesome…..we get a “ye hah” and our banjo gives us a Hobart Smith workout……I may say that the lyric here is in your face not a bit like the rock n roll from 71 blasters…… “Jack Baker Song”….aha…this too is all about the singing….the band are in fine form….but they are more Xian C/W than psyche n psuch….

I missed the Bible quotes first time around….now they are upfront and that is not a bad place for them to be…… “God in me, God in you”…… “Flesh & Guts”…completes the trio of cross-over tracks…..confirming the transformation from rock group, into two ton solid country rockers…..and brings home the spirituality of the band….they may have veered towards the Xian side of the road….but enter with no fear, this band are not on a recruitment drive rather they have had to go Private Pressing to enable others to hear of their joyful existence, down on the farm, and “Flesh and Guts” clocks in at 5.17, double the time spent on the 1971 rockers……

Spirit In Flesh II contains songs of testimony…..they may be finger pointing, but firmly at the band pointing at themselves, thereby somehow, making them Universal.   Spirit in Flesh, clothing all on show, in strikingly good Country Rock comes over not just as Gospel/Xian…rather the band truly live up to their name…..Spirit in Flesh. The songs are not about personal salvation, they are about placing a focus on Our time ‘here and now’…rather than the ‘Hereafter’….

The two openers “Greater Than Man”, “I Have Walked”, are straight in your face Country rock with the guitars and pedal steel to the fore….. “Cold Winds” is a song Johnny Cash should have recorded?“Riverside Song”….dwells on ‘animism’, certainly not Xian…… “Bury My Body” does veer off into the ‘hereafter’ and the more cynical may find this a giggle….be assured these boys mean business, and Marty Robbins or Hank Snow could have had a real good go at this….. “Heaven Don’t Allow”….continues the theme of spend your time here wisely….be wholesome as you rock and roll and stay away from the cess-pit…..again many may find the theme/songs simply a gas….however, it takes one to know one…

So if you prefer the blasting 1971 Spirit in Flesh ‘power-house’ then stick with it…however, if you want to see what clean living does to your ability to communicate straight to the heart (as against the head-banging or foot-stomping) then grab yourself a sack and head off to Spirit and Flesh’s farm someway downs the road….. “Yellow Wings”…..is a gentle acoustic folk rock ballad….and we are on Steve Cash Land’s front porch with just the empty sky and far away mountains within reach….gorgeous…..and it all swirls up into the lands beyond flight….

“One Little Thought”…is a gentle strolling ballad delivered in world-weary tones…this is the most finger-pointer on show…… “Reason for Living” finds the boys picking up their electric guitars again but this is simply to add bounce and tone to the message…..

What you have is what you find and I recommend this to all those who have grown tired of ‘downer-folk’ like Dave Bixby etal…..this will get you up dancing to a whole new outlook? (REVIEWED BY AYE-AFLOAT)

Track Listing

1. Greater Than Man
2. I Have Walked
3. Cold Winds
4. Fine Line
5. Riverside Song
6. Bury My Body
7. Heaven Don’t Allow
8. Yellow Wings
9. One Little Thought
10. Reason For Living
11. Jack Baker Song
12. Flesh & Guts

The Hindu Kush Mountain Boys Plus One – The Hindu Kush Mountain Boys Plus One (1979)

Artist: The Hindu Kush Mountain Boys Plus One
Title: The Hindu Kush Mountain Boys Plus One
Year: 1979
Format: LP
Label: Cliff Hanger

The Hindu Kush Mountain Boys Plus One were a spiritual bluegrass group consisting of Larry Siegel (vocals-guitar-mandolin), Jim Queen (vocals-violin-fiddle), Rich Miller (vocals-guitar-piano) and Rhonda Mattern (vocals-banjo).

The album is always described by record dealers as psych, but it is standard bluegrass with philosophical spiritual lyrics based in Eckankar, the religion of Light and Sound. Its teachings emphasize the value of personal experiences as the most natural way back to God.

According to the album’s liner notes, the LP “contains some of the liveliest, happiest music this side of Tibet” adding… “This group managed to kick up a new breed of spiritual music that doesn’t belong to the world of time-weary tradition and religious ritual. Instead, their songs have grown out of a joyous realization that death is a myth, and that during this lifetime each person can consciously experience worlds which lie beyond the range of the physical senses. ”

Larry Siegel has performed for over thirty years on guitar, banjo, mandolin, ukulele, harmonica and as a singer/composer/producer. He has been a featured instrumentalist with Dolly Parton, Lester Lanin, and others. His national television appearances include Rosie O’Donnell and Breakfast Time with Tom Bergeron.

Jim Queen had a 30-year career in the U. S. Air Force Band, the first 20 of which were spent in its Strolling Strings. In 1993, he founded Silver Wings, the U. S. Air Force’s country band. Since retiring from the band in 2004, he has freelanced extensively as a violinist/fiddler/guitarist/banjoist, and recently completed a run in the Ford Theater’s production of Shenandoah.

Rich Miller has performed around the world, playing bass, guitar, piano, and saxophone, and has been a featured performer with Jack Jones, nationally acclaimed guitarist Al Bruno, and others. He is best known for his clear, deep voice that brings out the full harmony that the Hindu Kush Mountain Boys Plus One use so well.

Rhonda Mattern Stapleton, a former editor of Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine, is the “One” female in the group. Her songs on the joys and struggles of spiritual awakening have won numerous awards in national songwriting competitions, including the prestigious Billboard song contest.

The group recently reunited and are currently in the studio recording a new collection of songs that are due for release this year. For more info please check the Cliff Hanger Records website at http://mca3.com/ls/index.cgi  (Howard Hales Broom)

Track Listing

1. HU MAHANTA
2. Give The Master The Nod
3. If You Wanna Be Happy
4. The Eye
5. Little Willie Gee
6. Ain’t It Amazing?
7. The Sound Of The ECK
8. Is It True, Necessary, Kind?
9. Peddar Zaskq
10. Life Is Only A Dream

David Patton – David Patton (1971)

Artist: David Patton
Title: David Patton
Year: 1971
Format: LP
Label: Wooden Nickel

Contributed By Eliot W.

David Patton made two countrified albums for Chicago-based Wooden Nickel, the successor to Bill Traut’s Dunwich label of the 1966-67 era. Distributed by RCA, Wooden Nickel was owned by Traut and Jim Golden and Jerry Weintraub and it lasted from 1971 to 1977.

But for all intents and purposes, it stopped real operations when their star group, Styx, left for A&M in 1975. Patton’s first self-titled album was produced by James Lee Golden and had such players as Larry Carlton, Larry Brown, Tom Hensley, Bill Perry, and Buddy Emmons. (Eliot W.)

Listening to David Patton…. makes me hungry to hear Alex Harvey and his “Delta Dawn” from the same era…. oh what a rich vein David taps into…. that side-saddle position that took such singers out of the rhine-stone shine into a slightly risqué outlaw stance…. yet holding on, hanging on actually, to all the trappings that Nashville had to offer? (most clearly demonstrated by the likes of “I’d Rather Be At The Grand Old Opry”), a track that takes us out to Nam where our trooper is dodging bullets and raindrops yearning to back home in the home of ‘Country’……a great track.

For starters David has one fine set of singing chops…. and secondly he is ably backed throughout, by players who can really sweetly play over the tortured songs on offer here and the torture is fully placed where it belongs….. woman trouble presaged by the passage of Time. So piano, guitar, banjo, drumming first rate and a world-weary voice years removed from Jim Reeves, (though both celebrate the same lonliness) …. aha…. one way question the occasional use of saccharine strings…. obligatory of course…. just ask Jesse Winchester.

One of the niggles, which may be one of the albums strengths, is David has not found his own style…. veering as he does from Glen Campbell sound-alike to Doug Kershaw sound-alikes’ and all stopping off points in-between.
Many a fine singer has been swallowed by the Nashville machine…. was David Patton? ……. just not sure how Nashville, Wooden Nickel or Dunwich were….. but RCA as distributor….. hmmm…just what is David doing these days?

The album is a sweet mixture of rumpity bumpity shoogling slightly upbeat tunes and wandering, meandering melancholy ballads……listening to it makes me think of “Paint Your Wagon”…. now go light up your pipe to that one.

The album closes off with a couple of tunes that sum up this album: one a reflective pointer to a future, where our intrepid David will be a fit and able match for HER……and a yucka chucka boom beat rear-view glance to “That Girl”…aha…just about time for David to tightened his belt, button up his denim shirt and git on that horse and head off to anywhere else?

Recommended to lovers of soft country Americana with one hand firmly hanging onto Nashville? (REVIEWED BY AYE AFLOAT)

Track Listing

1. You Are Gone
2. The T. V.A.
3. The Devil In Me
4. Lincoln Freed Me Today
5. I’d Rather Be At The Grand Ole Opry
6. Bourgeoise Woman
7. Winter’s Comin’ On
8. Only Yesterday
9. Back To Atlanta
10. Sweet Little Baby I Care
11. That Girl

David Patton – Buckeye (1972)

Artist: David Patton
Title: Buckeye
Year: 1972
Format: LP
Label: Wooden Nickel

Contributed by Eliot W.

David Patton’s second album, “Buckeye,” featured many of the same session musicians as the first album, continuing in the same mellow but funky vein, a sound that’s not so far off from Joe South or a rootsier David Gates.  (Eliot W.)

David kicks off with a slightly higher range on show on “Her”…. now just how tight did he hitch that belt? ……before launching into a brillo-pad breeze of a Ralph Stanley hip hip hooray race home on a train, with his horse firmly locked in the goods wagon? on “Hear That Whistle Blow”….. what a wheeze of a start to Buckey, the second David Patton album on show here in the redtelephone.

The strings wrap their golden syrup round “Lookin’ Good” while “Goodbye to Goodbye” is a throwaway, worth hearing…. some pretty chirpy guitar picking on show kick the strings into the stands, and David takes us out with a pretty standard outro.

In “Swamp River Queen” David shows he’s not left Doug Kershaw etal with his discarded socks at the last Motel Room……makes me want to seek out some serious Redbone music? The track has some real good harmonica…shook a shaking going on…. and David is joined by some distant vocal accompaniment….

“Dakota” boasts some electric guitar licks…. and David is in danger of being outdone by his musical buddies choogling along on this little tune.

However, don’t worry, David is back on top….. voice sounding at his expressive best on “Like Tonight” and they double whammy together on “Los Angeles Leavin’”….a pretty radio friendly tune and the strings grab the tune and give it extra texture and depth.

“Fool’s Hall of Fame”…is snuck in two from the end…. perhaps that’s the best place for it? and “People in Dallas Got Hair” closes off David’s second platter…another attempt by David and band to try gain a heavier edge.

What next for David?

Buckeye, like David’s other offering will not disappoint those seeking out easy on the ear country tunes, however such tunes that will not bend one’s mind or take us to pastures new? (REVIEWED BY AYE AFLOAT)

Track Listing

1. Her
2. Hear That Whistle Blow
3. Lookin’ Good
4. Goodbye To Goodbye
5. Swamp River Queen
6. Dakota
7. Like Tonight
8. Los Angeles Leavin’
9. Fool’s Hall Of Fame
10. People In Dallas Got Hair

The Oxpetals – The Oxpetals (1970)

Artist: The Oxpetals
Title: The Oxpetals
Year: 1970
Format: LP
Label: Mercury

The Oxpetals consisted of Benjamin Herndon (vocals-guitar), Steven Pague (guitar-vocals), Guy Phillips (bass), Robert Webber (keyboards) and Daniel “Ace” Allison (drums).

Laid-back with pleasing harmonies, this is uplifting soft rock that incorporates boogie, folk and country influences. Likely to be labeled “hippie-rock” but that’s not to denigrate it, (Shyney)

Track Listing

1. Don’t Cry Mother
2. I Still Remember
3. Doin’ It
4. What Can You Say
5. The Lazy Station
6. March 22
7. Declaration Of Oneness
8. Down From The Mountain
9. Silent Partner
10. Stephanie
11. You Can’t Hide From The Rude Owl
12. Glory To The Skies
    

The Deadly Nightshade – The Deadly Nightshade (1975)

Artist: The Deadly Nightshade
Title: The Deadly Nightshade
Year: 1975
Format: LP
Label: Phantom

On our first album, The Deadly Nightshade, released in 1975, the producer was Felix Cavaliere, who had been the keyboard player and creative leader of The Rascals. They’d been one of our favorite groups from the days of their energetic, passionate first album (before the mellow later hits), when they were still called The Young Rascals, and Felix’s trademark was dramatic slides up and down his Hammond B3 organ, with his elbow.

We were thrilled at the prospect of having Felix’s elbow on our album. And we also felt that as a producer, he’d understand our own live energy, and be able to translate that into an exciting recording.

Felix did play on the album. But he was past his elbow days and Hammond B3 melodrama, into more tasteful Fender Rhodes jazzy/Latinesque stylings. (Think “Groovin’” rather than “Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore”.)

The Deadly Nightshade had not, very deliberately, progressed beyond melodrama. Still, we felt that Felix could capture our kamikaze live sound and spirit in the studio. Unfortunately, however, between Phantom/RCA and us– pulling in opposite directions and with very different concepts of what The Deadly Nightshade’s recordings should be– he was in an impossible position.

We did try to compromise on the issues. It was clearly a given, for instance, that there would be many studio musicians playing on our album, and some—drums replacing my tap boots stomping on the backbeat or downbeat; real horns supplementing or replacing our kazoos; keyboards added in places—seemed reasonable ideas.

But since a big part of what The Deadly Nightshade was about was inspiring other women to play in bands, and proving women could cut it, we wanted as many of the studio musicians as possible, preferably all of them, to be female.
It was a simple concept that no one got, and it caused constant conflict. With the hottest studio guys in town eager to work with

Felix, and RCA happy to pay for them, it seemed incomprehensible to them that we wanted to hire lesser known women.
Since the players we found were both excellent and appropriate for our musical style, we found it equally incomprehensible that they persisted in acting like we were prioritizing gender over musicianship.

As it worked out, we used everybody on some song or other. But the grrrls were generally relegated to the songs that the powers that be considered lightweight. The boyz seemed mainly interested in impressing each other. Nobody was happy.
The most astonishing war story came out of a weekend when we went up to Massachusetts to do a couple of gigs. In the cats’ absence, the mice came out to play. On one country song we’d recorded earlier, the jazz drummer Susan Evans had played. We loved the tracks.

Susan had gotten a hard-hitting, rowdy bar band feel that few jazz drummers can manage. But our production team decided that one of the album’s engineers, a guy who had drummed for the Blues Magoos six or seven years before (but hadn’t played since), could do better. So he played over Susan’s tracks, erasing them.

His drumming was out of sync in roughly a zillion places, naturally; laying rhythm tracks after the fact is difficult even for players who aren’t rusty. So imagine our delight when we got back from our road trip. We ended up using the single scratch track onto which the guys had mixed all of Susan’s tracks. Actually, even with the customary individual EQing of each drum rendered impossible, she sounds damned good.

All in all The Deadly Nightshade finished up the album feeling like The Dead Nightshade. The songs are our originals/our choices. The vocals are all ours. And we are playing on all the cuts, buried under there somewhere. [PRB]

Track Listing

1. High Flying Woman
2. Nose Job
3. Something Blue
4. Losin’ At Love
5. Dance, Mr. Big, Dance
6. Keep On The Sunnyside
7. Sweet, Sweet Music Shuffle
8. I Sent My Soul To The Laundromat
9. Someone Down In Nashville
10. Blue Mountain Hornpipe
11. Onions