Meet Mike and Rick, shadow men of California pop rock

For guys who didn't really leave much of a mark in terms of their own name value, Richard and Michael Curtis sure left a mark. Who had the only non-member song on Fleetwood Mac's eponymous 1975 smash? These guys did. Who wrote the framework of the song that gave Crosby, Stills & Nash a Top Twenty hit in 1982? These guys did. Who was part of a legendary group that - like the aforementioned 'Mac - was a rhythm section looking for creators up front? These guys were. And yet, despite propping up Crazy Horse after all the big guns left, despite getting a leg up from old pal Lindsey Buckinham when he recorded their "Blue Letter", and despite being positioned to make some sort of dent in the California soft rock scene, the Curtis Brothers never really did. But their music is here, and its is well worth hearing, so here at One Buck Records, we want to celebrate the contributions of these two men,  constantly lurking in the shadows of California rock and pop, but never really attracting the spotlight themselves.  

Like so many other musicians closely associated with the West Coast music scene, the Curtis brothers weren't from anywhere near California. They came out of Goshen, Indiana, and music was part of the family business. These Vizitors, the band they started as teenagers included fellow brother Tom and sister Patty, their dad was a local DJ. These Vizitors recorded two singles for Capitol which both charted, but no albums or follow-ups were coming. The band had relocated to Palm Beach, Florida but when it became clear that These Vizitors had run their course, Michael and Rick moved to Southern California. 

They were hired by Billy Talbot & Ralph Molina, a rhythm section who had the right to a classic band name - Crazy Horse, obviously - but not much else. Being neither singers nor songwriters, Talbot & Molina split singing and songwriting duties between the Curtis brothers and Greg Leroy. The resulting album At Crooked Lake has its moments, but is otherwise relatively unremarkable country-influenced rock, though Rick especially brought an interesting psychedelic undercurrent to his songs. Crazy Horse became dormant after the failure of At Crooked Lake, so Michael lent his talents for one album to jazz-inspired Canadian band Truck (previously featured on All Pearls No Swine Vol. 8). 

The Curtises then reconvened in L.A. to plot their next move. Finally securing a record deal with Polydor, they became friends with a duo of musicians - a pair both professionally and in private - who had just recently recorded and released their debut album. Their names? Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. Both played and sang on a handful of demos, including a song the brothers had written, "Seven League Boots" (previously featured on All Pearls, No Swine Vol. 3). The song wasn't great, with the Curtises still getting the hang of writing (hint: it's not a rhyme if the words are the same! "If I had to go around the world / just to find your world" is a pretty awful chorus. Who are these guys, Kid Rock's ghostwriters?). But hook and melody of the song was solid, so Stephen Stills rewrote it almost a decade later, turning it into the much more coherent "Southern Cross" for Crosby, Stills & Nash's Daylight Again album.

But the Curtises were still waiting for something big to happen, and finally in 1975 things got moving. They got a record deal with Polydor and went into the studio to record their first album as The Curtis Bros. (or The Curtis Brothers Band). And who was in an adjacent recording booth, purely by accident? Old pal Lindsey Buckingham, recording with Fleetwood Mac. Liddy Buck heard the Curtises' "Blue Letter" and spontaneously decided to record it for and with the Mac. This should've given an additional boost to The Curtis Bros. , but when their album (with their own version of "Blue Letter") came out in 1976? Crickets. If the album isn't a work of genius, it's a very fine record straddling the line between pop and rock, sometimes verging on soft rock,. It probably deserved better than the absolute non-reaction it got. 

The band went back into the studio two years later for International Artists to record a follow-up, including a couple of tracks - sign of the times - that start to have a bit of a disco flavor but that album was then unceremoniously shelved, and so was for all intents and purposes the career of Mike & Rick. In Rick's case, literally, as he seemingly quit the music business after the failure of The Curtis Brothers Band. Michel went the opposite direction, hustling for jobs, becoming a touring musician with Hoyt Axton, then later Gene Clark and others. Rick Curtis dies suddenly and unexpectedly, not to mention too young, from a seizure in 1995. 

Family Affair: A Curtis Brothers Anthology compiles pretty much everything I could find from and featuring Rick & Michael Curtis, including four tracks from These Vizitors, four tracks from Crazy Horse (with the respective lead singer mentioned first in the tracks ' credits) and every tracks from The Curti Brothers Band, both their eponymous album and the shelved follow-up. I thought that Michael's work with Truck didn't jibe well with the rest, so some of that will feature on future volumes of All Pearls, No Swine but the anthology also features a handful of Michael Curtis solo tracks, including his cover of Gene Clark's "Gypsy Rider", recorded after spending years with Clark on the road, first as part of the infamous Byrds tribute that later morphed into the Django Band (as they were credited for the live rendering of "Southern Cross" featured here). Both discs (yup, I'm still compiling these as ready-to-be-burned to disc! Sue me!) end with Michael on acoustic guitar, from only a couple of years ago. At the end of disc one he laments "Man's Inhumanity To Man", while disc two ends bittersweetly with the only solo track from Rick I could find, a mid-60s recording of him doing an acoustic folk version of "Wendigo", followed by Michael's "It's Hard To Say Goodbye", his moving eulogy for his fallen brother. 

They might have mainly operated in the shadows of bigger, more important bands and artists, but Rick & Mike deserve their hour (or two) in the spotlight, which is exactly what Family Affair - A Curtis Brothers Anthology will provide you. So, towards the light and the sweet sounds of the Seventies, folks...