River Of Hope - Music

This Group Of Young Californian Musicians Was Discovered By Delaney Bramlett From Delaney And Bonnie Who Arranged For A Recording Deal With Prophesy And For His DelBon Company To Produce An Album. With Jim Gordon The Keyboard/sax Player Not The Drummer Of Derek And The Dominos At The Controls The Result Was A Powerful Mix Of Heavy/prog Rock With Lots Of Guitar/organ Interplay And Great Vocals. Jim Gordon Ben Benay Ex-Goldenrod And The Sax-Player Jerry Jumonville Provided Some Support. All Their Material Was Penned By The Group Members With The Help Of J. Loppnow On Two Tracks And R. Lawson On One. From The Desk Of Joe Gutierrez Singer Of The Band "We All Grew Up In The Culver City Mar Vista Area Of Los Angeles. The Band Was Originally A 5 Piece Surf Instrumental Band Called The Twilighters. I Joined Them About 1967 When They Wanted A Little More Singing. I Would Eventually Be The Mick Jagger Model Front Man. The Band Then Was Renamed The Ash And We Got Pretty Popular On The West Side In My High School Years Making Pretty Good Money On The Weekends And Becoming More Of A Progressive Rock Cover Band. We Even Managed To Play At The Galaxy On The Sunset Strip Where The Doors Had Been Regulars. We Also Did A Month At Gazzari's Up The Street. Things Got A Little Serious About 1969 When The Drummer Suggested We Start Composing Our Own Music. We Had Been Doing A Semi Residency At A Local Teen Club And We Actually Stopped Playing There About A Year Later For About 3 Months To Write Songs. We Came Back And Got A Positive Reaction To Our Own Music And Decided To Pursue 'the Dream' Of A Recording Contract. My Girlfriend's Father Got Us Hooked Up To Rick Jarrad Who Produced Jefferson Airplane To Record A Single On ABC Probe That Went No Where. Our Bass Player Decided To Leave Soon After And Suggested If We Were Serious To Also Replace The Drummer. We Did. We Auditioned A Few Bass Players And Then Our Rhythm Guitarist Offered To Play Bass. We Stuck With Him. One Night We Met A Guy Named Jim Loppnow Who Was Managing Another Band. He Eventually Became Our Manager And He Got Us About A Year Later The Open Door To Prophesy Records A Label Started By Mickey Shapiro Future Lawyer For Fleetwood Mac. Shapiro Decided Stronger Management Was Needed So We Got Hooked Up With Alan Pariser Who Was Handling Delaney & Bonnie And Dave Mason At The Time. Loppnow Was Still In The Fold Helping Out At Gigs And Representing Us Dealing With The Label And Such. Delaney Bramlett Listened To Us Showcase One Night And Decided To Have His Keyboardist Jim 'Jaime' Gordon Produce Our Album. We Recorded It At The Sound Factory Where Many Famous Recordings Were Made In Hollywood. Dave Hassinger Engineered. I Think We Did The Album In About 3 Months Time In 1970 But Things Started Going Sour With The Label Not Long After. With Pariser Having Trouble With His Artists It Took Until The Next Year To Finally Release The Album. By Then We Were Already Writing Better We Felt Songs. We Had Decided To Fire Loppnow Due To Him Taking Liberties Without Consulting Us And Looking Back That Was Probably A Bad Decision On Our Part. Prophesy Decided Not To Record A Second Album And With No Real Management Left We Lasted Another Year And That Was That. read less