By Richie Unterberger
When his debut solo LP Kindling came out in 1973, Gene Parsons was known mostly as a drummer after having held that position in the Byrds from September 1968 through mid-1972. In fact, however, he'd been a multi-instrumentalist and singer since the mid-1960s. He'd played some guitar and harmonica, and done some singing, on records that the Byrds cut in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as he had on some early country-rock-leaning recordings he made with other musicians prior to that. Kindling, however, was his first opportunity to take the spotlight as a versatile instrumentalist and singer-songwriter, on a strongly country-flavored set for which he wrote more than half the material.
As Parsons
remembers today, the opportunity to record as a solo artist arose
through Kindling producer
Russ Titelman. "Russ actually tried to get me to join Little Feat,
'cause he was working with Little Feat when they were in the process of
forming," says Gene. "He tried to get me and [guitarist] Clarence White
to be in Little Feat, and we declined because we were in the Byrds at
that point. But Russ became a good friend, and when Roger [McGuinn]
fired me from the Byrds, I put together some tunes and gave 'em to
Russ. He said, 'We should record this stuff. Let's get you a contract
with Warner Brothers.' Eddie Tickner, who had been the manager of the
Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, was my manager at that point. So
he negotiated a deal with Warner Brothers, and we went into Amigo
Studios in Burbank."
While Parsons would sing and play guitar, bass, and
drums on the album, he benefited from a strong support cast that saw
contributions from Vassar Clements, bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley,
Little Feat keyboardist Bill Payne, top session drummer Andy Newmark,
and jazzman Red Callender (also known for writing Jerry Wallace's 1959
hit "Primrose Lane"). Also on hand were some old friends with whom Gene
had closely collaborated in the recent past, those being fellow ex-Byrd
Clarence White (on both guitar and mandolin) and (on violin) Gib
Guilbeau, who'd played in bands and recorded with Parsons not long
before Gene joined the Byrds. Bassist Roger Bush also had close
connections to the extended family of sorts that had innovated
country-rock in Southern California, having recently played on a live
Flying Burrito Brothers LP (and having played bluegrass with White in
the Kentucky Colonels back in the mid-'60s).
"Russ was a very good producer for me," praises
Parsons. "He did a lot of things I would have never even thought of.
Initially when he would say 'I want to do this or that,' I would go,
'Why? I can't hear it.' He said, 'Trust me.' And I'm glad that I did."
Titelman was responsible for getting Payne to do keyboards and
Callender to play tuba. When Russ also suggested having Nick DeCaro add
accordion to "Willin'," a Lowell George song recently recorded by
Little Feat, "I said, 'Aw, you gotta be kidding!' He said, 'No, I got
this guy Nick and you're gonna love what he plays.' Well, boy did I
ever."
"Willin'," incidentally, had been performed by the
Byrds live when Gene was in the band and recorded as part of the
sessions for their 1970 album (Untitled),
though the group didn't release the song at the time. Another tune with
Byrds connections was "Do Not Disturb," written by Skip Battin (who'd
played bass in the Byrds alongside Parsons and White) with Kim Fowley
(who'd penned a few Byrds tunes with Battin). "I Must Be a Tree,"
co-written by Parsons and Guilbeau, went all the way back to the
pre-Byrds days when the pair were playing nightly gigs at the Jack Of
Diamonds club in Palmdale, managing to compose and record an earlier
version of the song in a recording studio they'd built. Guilbeau
himself wrote another of the LP's tracks, "Take a City Bride."
The sole other song on Kindling not to have been written
or co-written by Parsons was "Drunkard's Dream." As Gene explains, "At
one point Russ said, 'There's a song I want you to do. It's a Stanley
Brothers song, and I think we might be able to get Ralph Stanley to
come out and sing tenor.' That was the song that I guess Carter Stanley
[the other half of the Stanley Brothers] had written, which is sort of
ironic, because Carter died of alcoholism. But we got Ralph to come out
and Vassar Clements to come out from Nashville, and recorded that tune,
and of course Clarence played on it and sang the low part." Told to
sing tenor, Ralph Stanley "listened and said, 'That's not tenor. That's
high lead.' The way he described a tenor, second part, is a high lead;
in other words, it doesn't have any lesser importance. He sang so
beautifully that when we were done with the session and everybody was
gone, [engineer] Lee Hirschberg put the tune up, and Russ said, 'Take
everything off except for Ralph's voice.' And we sat and listened to
Ralph sing. What a wonderful voice."
As for White's contributions to the LP, Parsons
elaborates, "In the banjo instrumental 'Banjo Dog,' he played guitar
and then overdubbed mandolin. And when he did the mandolin, he did a
harmony part to the banjo. He said, 'There's a note in here I want you
to listen for that I played on the very end of it. It makes it kind of
poignant and a little sad. I think you'll like it.' And if you listen,
just one note he hangs onto towards the very end really gets you. He
had a choice of notes that was fantastic, wonderful, and unique. The
electric guitar playing that he did on 'I Must Be a Tree' through a
Leslie speaker with the wonderful StringBender stuff—you'll never hear
that anywhere else."
"I Must Be a Tree" was also one of the instances,
adds Gene, where Titelman "tricked me into doing a performance. We
recorded it live, pretty much. I was in a booth with a guitar, and I
wasn't going to sing. Russ said, 'Well, I'm gonna set up a mike for
your vocal. I want you to just sing real soft so it doesn't get in the
guitar. We'll put it on a separate track just for reference, so that it
has a live feel.' Well, what he was doing was, he wanted to get the
vocal live, and he wanted me to sing it soft. I'd started singing, just
sketching the words out—'no no,' he says, 'sing all the words.' So we
got the track, and I said, 'Okay, that's a good track, so I'm ready to
go do the vocal.' He said, 'No, you're done.' He was a very skillful
producer, and brought the best out in everybody.
"The last tune we did was 'On the Spot.' Russ said,
'Okay, what else you got?' I said, 'Well, we're going to have to write
some tunes.' He said, 'Well, we need to finish this project up. If we
had one more, we could call it an album.' I said, 'Would an
instrumental be okay?' He said, 'Sure.' So Gib was there, Clarence was
there, and we just started playing and said, 'Well, record this.' So
they recorded it, and we named it 'On the Spot.'"
After Kindling
got some positive press coverage, continues Parsons, Warner Brothers
"wanted me to go on the road, and I was ready to put a band together
and go on the road. And that was right when Clarence got killed [after
getting hit by a car on July 15, 1973]. That just took the wind out of
my sails, and that basically was the end of my career with Warner
Brothers, because I just couldn't get it together to play music for
years, really, afterwards. I did try to do one little tour; I got Gib
Guilbeau and Eric White, Clarence's brother, to go with me and another
fellow. It wasn't very successful. My heart wasn't in it." Though
Warners wanted Parsons to do another record, they agreed to let him out
of his contract.
Fortunately, Gene did return to music, becoming part
of a reformed Flying Burrito Brothers lineup for a while in the
mid-1970s, and then recording a few more albums under his own name.
He's also renowned as a builder and installer of StringBenders, the
first of which he invented back in 1967 to help Clarence White bend
notes by using a shoulder strap to actuate a string-pulling,
note-bending mechanism. "A lot of people have gotten in contact with me
over the years and said, 'This is still one of my very favorite
records,'" he says of Kindling.
"They've worn out two or three copies, so I think having it come out on
CD now is gonna make quite a few people happy. It's really cool to have
people enjoy something that much that you've done." – Richie Unterberger
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