I
T ALL STARTED WELL ENOUGH for Goose Creek Symphony. But their record label, Capitol, really didn’t know what to do with a band that played a
mixture of rock ’n’ roll, folk, jazz, a little psychedelia and country, all with a reckless sense of instrumental daring. But it didn’t stop GCS giving it their best shot.
anyone else. We were just going to do whatever came out. It became our music. We recorded the albums, mastered them, did the artwork and sold the masters to Capitol. We did our own recordings, album covers, our own mixing, mastering, everything. And we decided to keep it that way. It was just us. It was just what we came up with. I’d write songs and we always wanted to get somewhere musically, not just a singer and lyrics, but also have some music in it. I always told the guys that if we have fun doing it then people would enjoy it. That is kind of how we went about it. We’d say that sounds good, but let’s take a left here.”
Despite being recorded on a four-track machine with as Gearheart recalled, “lots of pinging from one channel to the next to do the overdubs,” the first album is a gem. It opens with the unassuming ‘I’ll Fly Away’ which is followed by the autobiographical ‘Charlie’s Tune’, a delightful upbeat ditty with
dual Allman-esque guitar leads. In many ways GCS symphony had a kind of groove more in line with the rural side of The Grateful Dead or The Band, with splashes of The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Other standouts on the first album are the alluring ‘Confusion’, a great harmony laden piece, the hillbilly grooves of ‘No News Is Good News’, and the exploratory eight and a half-minute ‘Talk About Goose Creek And Other Important Places’ which starts as a country cut and evolves through some almost psychedelic guitar work before getting back to the country mode with Jews’ harp. The lyrics are just as offbeat. “This little song may sound a little strange but it’s got more soul than home on the range,” they sing as it fades out with some sound effects and backwards guitar parts.
The second and third albums were essentially more of the same with Words Of Earnest being the strongest and perhaps most
Goose Creek Symphony in 1970 (below and opposite) and Charles Gearhart (left).
Charles Gearheart had grown up in Goose Creek Hollow in Kentucky where he picked up lots of hillbilly and country influences. Tired of fronting rock ’n’ roll group Ricky Hart & The Heartbeats he formed the eclectic Goose Creek Symphony in late ‘68 with a bunch of fellow studio musicians that included Paul Spradlin on guitar, as well as a host of other players in what became a revolving assembly of musicians. Over the years players included Doug Hayward (Jackson Browne Band), steel guitarist Ed McGee, drummers Mickey McGee, Matt McClure, bassist Pat Moore and many more.
Being an odd cross between hippies and rednecks in that burgeoning era of country rock they fit loosely in the mode even if they were more esoteric and versatile than many of their contemporaries. They used fiddles and horns prominently giving them an edge of inventiveness, but essentially they excelled at being a good time band. Ironically, they were a couple of decades ahead of their time as they loved to jam and stretch out.
During the first phase of their career they recorded three consistently fine albums for Capitol; Est 1970 (’70), Welcome To Goose Creek (’71) and Words Of Earnest (’72). All were moderately successful with the last boasting a hit single cover of Janis Joplin’s ‘Mercedes Benz’. In ’74 the band moved over to Columbia and recorded Do Your Thing But Don’t Touch Mine, which was perhaps the weakest –although it’s still a solid, if misguided set.
Gearheart recalled in a recent interview, “It would have been the fall of ’68. We started in the studio and decided we weren’t going to play bars anymore or try and sound like
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