Over the course of two weeks, twenty groups from or connected to Nevada City, California crowded into the Brighton Sound Studio to record their songs live and direct into the microphone. Inspired by releases from such seminal record companies like Sun, Motown, Elektra, and Studio One, Grass Roots Record Co.’s Family Album is filled with songs you will want to hear many times over. They are lasting, infectious melodies— honest music in a world where truth telling is a great revolutionary act.
What these artists have to say exhibits the kind of urgency that makes music both timeless and timely. Whether it’s the heavy-duty Hella riff or intensity of Made In, the pop gems of Golden Shoulders and Lee Bob Watson, the acoustic beauties of Alela Diane, Mariee Sioux, Alina Estelle Hardin, the Moore Brothers, or Jessica Henry, the classic melody of Benjamin Oak Goodman, or the modern hillbilly poetry of the Reckon Family; be it the unclassifiable rockers by Them Hills and Casual Fog, the innovative warmth of RF and Neal Morgan, or the dreamy reverb drenched Kings & Queens and the Snegg Band’s jazz soaked slow-jam, these are songs guaranteed to send a shiver down the spine.
The Family Album is unlike any compilation you’ve heard. This is not a collection of tunes culled from across time and place. This is an album. Though the songs are diverse in style and voice, you will hear an uncanny continuity from track to track and from artist to artist. Each group on the album performedtheir songs live, together in the room, direct to tape. You can feel the energy between the players—the familiarity of these folks who, for almost two decades now, have lived, created, and performed together.
And so, Grass Roots Record Co. is proud and honored to work with these artists to bring you their songs. Expect many more records to come from the talent here. In my experience these are the real deal artists, singers, poets, and rockers, playing for the right reasons—inspiration, art, communication, and FUN. Further, Grass Roots Record Co. is a real record company, committed to facilitating the creation of many years of important, historic music.
But don’t take my word for it; the artists on the Family Album speak for themselves! Get your ears up in the music.
- Marc Snegg,
Founder of Grass Roots Record Co.
Press:
"Nevada City's Grass Roots Records is sincerely trying to shine a light on songsmiths succored by the rocky, roaring shores of the sweet South Yuba River."
- SF Bay Guardian
"Family Album really is all over the map...but most of the disc is a long and far stranger trip, the rambling, unspoiled -yarn kind that evokes such landmark albums of decomposing consciousness as Big Star's Sister Lovers."
- Sacramento News & Review
"Standouts in that realm include...Alela Diane, a gilded-voiced troubadour with a debt to Nick Drake, and Alina Estelle Hardin, who possessed a delivery delicate as dried flowers packed in satin. But as at any family gathering, the personalities here span wide. There are the spastic noiseniks (Hella's staccato instrumental thundering offering, "Friday the 13th)...lo-fi Beatles romp from Lee Bob Watson, "Let the Hate In (I Won't)...and Casual Fog's aptly titled ode to melancholy, "Weighted Day."
- SF Weekly
- 1. Alela Diane - Dry Grass and Shadows
- 2. Made In - I Hope You Came Prepared
- 3. Hella - Friday the 13th
- 4. The Moore Brothers - Birthright
- 5. Reckon Family - Ain’t No Thing
- 6. Mariee Sioux - Two Tongues At One Time
- 7. Casual Fog - Weighted Day
- 8. RF and Neal Morgan - Pool
- 9. Them Hills - These Hills
- 10. Lee Bob Watson - Let the Hate In (I Won’t)
- 11. Golden Shoulders - What You’re Proposing
- 12. Neal Morgan - A Tall Tale
- 13. Snegg Band - Fallen Color
- 14. Kings & Queens - What’s in Mind
- 15. Alina Estelle Hardin - Cotton White
- 16. Benjamin Oak Goodman - Yes My Heart
- 17. Jessica Henry - The Moon Veiled
