Chris Darrow: A Gift Unheralded

The better the music is the harder you have to put it through the machine and force it out into the public eye. Chris was just never really altogether interested in that and I applaud him for that. It never owned him. He's a true rebel for that.

-Ben Harper

Photo of Chris Darrow at Stonehenge 1972

"With Chris, the songwriting is just so strong, the simple structure, the words and the melody," Olinsky says. "You can play a reggae version, you can play a punk rock version - you can take it any which way. You get all these colors of the same song."

Chris Darrow

Darrow's solo albums are exercises in packing as many of those colors as possible onto a single sonic canvas. He recorded his self-titled album and half of Disguise at Trident Studios in London, where he arrived with a horde of instruments. He recorded with members of Fairport Convention, the Jeff Beck Group and Elton John's band, among others. He multi-tracked vocals, guitar, slide guitar, Dobro, fiddle, mandolin, piano, hammered dulcimer, banjo and bass. Celtic harpist Alan Stivell plays on "Faded Love" and harpsichordist Dolly Collins adds a medieval vibe to "That's What It's Like to Be Alone," while "Take Good Care of Yourself" features Darrow wielding some Cajun fiddle over a bouncy rhythm from British reggae act Greyhound.

But, Darrow wasn't simply a "world music" artist decades before that stultifying genre tag existed, he was a songwriter first and foremost, and one that pre-dated the explosion in country rock in the early 1970s by artists like Jackson Browne and the Eagles. Mudhoney's Steve Turner, a lifelong crate digger, first discovered Kaleidoscope at a thrift store and soon tracked down Darrow's solo work.

"I liked his rough vocals right off the bat," Turner says. "For that early '70s time period, so much of that Southern California country rock was getting smoother and smoother, and Chris still had some rough edges and some experimental touches to a lot of the music. It seemed very psychedelic to me, and it seemed more real than a lot of that stuff."

Chris Darrow by Jamie Midgley

"Holy smokes, what a writer," Harper adds. "And while I always knew that Chris was one of the great California songwriters, I didn't appreciate the production enough until I realized that I had taken on a lot of that production subconsciously all along."

Darrow has long since reconciled why his music didn't catch fire like it did for many of his contemporaries. In his estimation, he wasn't linear enough, serving up a bit too much experimentation and eclecticism. "I have followed my nose a little more," he says.

Harper suggests that Darrow, who continues to make music, take photographs and paint at his home studio in Claremont, simply never subjected his art to the machine.

"The better the music is the harder you have to put it through the machine and force it out into the public eye," Harper says. "Chris was just never really altogether interested in that and I applaud him for that. It never owned him. He's a true rebel for that."

At the tribute show, Akron/Family took the reins for the all-hands jam at the end of the night, a raucous rendition of Darrow's "Take Good Care of Yourself," with Darrow himself joining in on vocals. Olinsky says the night had a communal feel that reminded him of his hometown of Williamsport, PA.

"There is this spirit of a small town, weird, once-in-a-lifetime thing that just feels special in a very kind of small community way," Olinsky says. "There is something sweet about that."

For a guy that has every right to be jaded and cynical about the music business, Darrow seems genuinely thrilled at the recent attention, and is pondering his next move, which may include more live performances and even a new album. He says he has seen the music industry swing back and forth between what he calls "flannel" and "polyester" periods over the years, and reckons that the recent five-Grammy stampede by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss' Raising Sand is a good omen for roots music.

"We're in a period of flannels," Darrow says. "The ears must be tuned to the stuff that I do, and since I am at a time in my life when the cycle may not come around again, I'll try to take advantage of it. People have been saying things that I always wanted people to say about my music. This has certainly put a new twist on my career and my life."