Great Speckled Bird – Self-Titled
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Posted On September 1, 2006
When the roll call of grand achievements in country-rock is sounded off, Great Speckled Bird rarely makes the cut alongside the Byrds’ Sweetheart Of The Rodeo or the Flying Burrito Brothers’ The Gilded Palace Of Sin. The obscurity of this electrified 1970 experiment by Canadian folk icons Ian & Sylvia Tyson (produced by Todd Rundgren) is understandable. Although it has seen limited regional availability on CD, for most of the intervening 36 years since its release, your best chance was tracking it down on vinyl — and even those original LPs on the short-lived Ampex label are tough to find.
Ian & Sylvia, blessed with otherworldly vocal prowess and an ability to give voice to the particular sadness wrought by separation (see “Four Strong Winds”, “You Were On My Mind”, “Someday Soon”, etc.), were already folk-circuit royalty when they joined forces with steel player Buddy Cage (later of New Riders Of The Purple Sage), string-bender nonpareil Amos Garrett (he of the slinky solo on Maria Muldaur’s “Midnight At The Oasis”), and the pummeling rhythm section of drummer N.D. Smart (who went on to play with Gram Parsons) and bassist Ken Kalmusky.
The resulting clash of sensibilities yielded astonishing results. The interplay between Ian and Sylvia’s vocals is shadowed by the quicksilver sparring of Cage and Garrett. And it’s a wonder that crate-digging hip-hop producers haven’t sampled Smart and Kalmusky’s funky rumble (see the cowbell-clanging intro to “Long Long Time To Get Old”).
Then there are the songs. Listen to the state-of-the-world keynote of “Love What You’re Doing Child” and the surging “Bloodshot Beholder”, as well as “Flies In The Bottle”, “Truckers Cafe” and “Calgary”, and you’ll be bewildered this record slipped into oblivion. The GSB album stiffed commercially, the band lineup changed, and the Tysons released one more album under the Great Speckled Bird banner (1972’s You Were On My Mind on Columbia).
The group did serve as the house band on Ian’s Canadian TV variety show, and a tantalizing glimpse at their live prowess can be glimpsed in the documentary film Festival Express, where they hold their own alongside the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and The Band.
