All Pearls, No Swine Vol. 8 - Take Me Home, Country Roads...

So, time for another one of these. If I chose that John Denver-inspired subtitle, it's because listening back to it while preparing this post I realized I must've been in quite the country rock mood because there's a bunch of that on here. We say hello to a couple of APNS alumni like Jake and Ward 6, while simultaneously welcoming a ton of newcomers, including the beautiful and enigmatic Barbara Keith, and there's a rare spotlight performance of Danny "Kootch" Kortchmar, session guitar player in the L.A. music scene (and part of The Section) who played on tons of records from the usual suspects, here with a number that has a decidedly New Orleans feel to it. And we got Del Shannon, a relic from another era, now toiling away - like fellow ex-teen idol Dion -  as a folk/country rock act. And these are the more known names in our illustrous line-up. 

As usual some words on the more unknown participants, as usual self-published acts or acts on mini-labels. This time around we even got some international participants: Rainman is the alias of Frank Nuyens, a singer-songwriter from the Netherlands, while Yves & Serge & Victor are, as one can surmise from their names, Frenchmen, who issued a self-published record in 1975 heavily influenced by American country rock, with some mild psych influences. Truck was a Canadian rock band with Jazz influences, led by Michael Curtis, in between playing with Crazy Horse and the band he led with his brother Rick, The Curtis Brothers Band. Salt Creek, built around the duo of Dan Tripp and Bernie Nelson provide one of this set's highlights, the beautiful "Comfort in the Wind". The Hans Staymer Band from Canada played some mean horns-driven Soul Rock, "Dig A Hole" is another highlight here, a real ass-kicker to liven up proceedings. 

Kingfish was a Bay area country rock band led by Dave Torbert, formerly of The New Riders Of The Purple Sage. The Bronco featured on the opening track isn't the more well-known Jess Roden-led U.K. outfit, but a folk/bluegrass band from Franklin, Indiana (though they recorded and released their one self-published record in the Denver area), centered around the husband-and-wife team of Mike and Sally Yates. The Hilltones were a loose collective of students from Princeton University, kind of a house band who existed for almost a decade with ever changing line-ups of new students. 

Well, and that's it for now. As usual, a bunch of goodness, here where the string of pearls never ends...