"Freeborn Man" MP3
beeradvocate.com rating- A-
Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale- Community Beverage, Queens, NY- 24 OZ. bomber into Pub Glass- 6.8% ABV- Yes another Sierra Beer but it is the winter version of their Celebration Ale and it was on sale for $3 and change at my local store so I decided to try it. Poured a hazy orange with reddish highlights. Again like the last Sierra beer this has a nice rich frothy head, cratered with good retention. Very piney aroma, damn, it reminds me of one of those pine tree air fresheners. Wow, I don't think I've ever had a beer so piney, even last beer weeks was not as strong as this. Pretty nice mouth feel, on the lighter side of medium bodied. Moderate carbonation. Taste, is well, piney and bitter and a tad malty. Not as well balanced as the previous week's beer and I don't think this is for me. But I do get a bit more alcohol warmth from this which is nice on a cold night like tonight. I would have preferred some more spices in this to round out the pine qualities.
On the turntable is Games People Play/ These Are Not My People- Freddy Weller- Recorded in 1969 for Columbia presumably in California but the jacket does not indicate. This record is a lesson in digging in the crates. When you go out record shopping any respectable record store there should be crates of cheap records on the floor, at least that is my opinion. Problem is I don't always feel like getting down on my knees and going through the effort of digging through the dregs in the hopes of finding at least one gem. Sometimes though you just suck it up and do it. Recently I was crouched underneath some large shelves of records digging through hundreds of records when I came across the above record. I recognized the name Freddy Weller and had a faint suspicion Clarence White had played with him at some point but wasn't sure when or on which record. I turned over the back and this is what I saw:
Jackpot!!! Clarence White (of the Byrds) on guitar, Red Rhodes on steel guitar and Glen D. Hardin on Piano. I was psyched and for $2 I was even more happy. This is what digging is all about and keeps me going because you really never know what you will find and when you find something like this in an unexpected place it definitely gets your blood pumping. The fact that Clarence White was on this record was good enough. The realization one of my favorite steel guitar players was on here and one of my new favorite musicians Glen Hardin from Elvis Presley's TCB band was really cool. I got hip to Glen Hardin after watching That's The Way It Is the concert film made about Elvis' first shows in Las Vegas and subsequently hunting down bootlegs of shows from that period. He's a great piano player and in addition to Elvis has played on classic albums with Merle haggard, Emmylou Harris and others. Where did these guys find the time. Red Rhodes was a West Coast based steel guitar player. Additionally he developed a guitar pickup called the Velvet Hammer used by Clarence White, James Burton and even Joan Jett. He was a country player no doubt but hooked with the country rock crowd which was brewing up in Los Angeles in the late sixties through the mid seventies. Some excellent examples of his playing can be found on former Monkee Mike Nesmith's First National Band records, Bert Jansch's L.A. Turnaround LP recently reissued on CD as well as dozens of others. I really like his style of steel playing which is versatile in its elegance, percussive attack and phrasing. It has elements shared with Hawaiian steel guitar where the instrument developed but also has ethereal qualities, reminiscent of Sneaky Pete Kleinow. These ethereal qualities are not always found in country players but are really evident in the First National Band recordings and with Bert Jansch and probably helped Rhodes crossover to less traditional artists.
As for Freddy Weller, the subject of the post to begin with, he was a one time member of Paul Revere and the Raiders a slightly ill conceived mid sixties "garage rock" group who actually dressed as Revolutionary War era soldiers. The music however was popular and in the vein of the British invasion groups popular at the time. From videos I have seen on youtube Mr. Weller was an accomplished guitar player and a fine singer as evidenced on this album. This album has some excellent guitar and steel guitar breaks on it. The song Birmingham has some particularly fleet fingered runs which compliment one other in a wiry haze. A smoking version of Freeborn Man was included, a song written by Keith Allison and Mark Lindsay from Paul Revere and the Raiders, and could have been a perfect song for Elvis Presley circa 1970-1972 with the TCB Band.
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