Darrow, Chris

***The history of rock and roll in the 1960s is filled with side trips and familiar names mixed together with more trips involving even more names, sometimes less known. One of those names still owed a piece of your mind is California picker, songwriter and multiinstrumentalist CHRIS DARROW. Already a veteran of several bands and scenes on the L.A. landscape, Chris was a founding member of the west coast KALEIDOSCOPE. He went his own way after the recording of their second album, A Beacon From Mars, to pursue music on his own terms. He was part of the wave that crashed across America throughout the ‘60s, sweeping young people everywhere on a journey away from the world that they’d known, allowing them to take with them only what they could carry to destinations unknown. Chris, like so many of his fellow Americans, was hearing the echo of native sounds in his ears—bluegrass, country music, rhythm and blues and earthy rock and roll. He liked to play lots of music and people liked to play it with him—in the couple years before Artist Proof, Chris had guested with his Kaleidoscope band mates on several sessions for Leonard Cohen’s debut album, joined the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, toured with Linda Ronstadt, John Stewart and Hoyt Axton, played on sessions with Gene Vincent and James Taylor and was produced by the Monkees’ Mike Nesmith as part of a group called THE CORVETTES. Chris’s solo debut is a rich and powerful dose of California country rock, written almost entirely by Chris and played with grit and precision by a cast of great players including Ed Black, Loren Newkirk, Arnie Moore, Mickey McGee and John Ware. Back in print for the first time in 40 years and finally ushered into the digital realm, Artist Proof ’s debossed LP jacket has been carefully reproduced along with photos from Chris Darrow’s archive, bringing back the time of a new feeling in American music in all its melodic, singular glory. (STREET DATE - 1/22/2013)