Trees – Trees (50th Anniversary Edition)
Earth Recordings – 11 November 2020
Not so much a trip down memory lane, or if it is/was, it was soon overtaken by a number of ‘what ifs’ mostly on shaky bicycles. Indulge me for a few minutes: I have often noted how catholic, ergo open-minded, were the musical tastes of the record-buying public in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was as if the union of particular styles had brought forth a number of tribes that in those early generations were all quite closely related. To a wavy-haired teenager (the hair bearing more of a resemblance to the King Charles spaniel than the decapitated monarch according to his father) the musical equivalent of Woolies pick’n’mix was almost too much; where do you start? Which one should I listen to first?
Help, however, was at hand through a marvellous piece of marketing by CBS and their rock compilation albums. Their 1970 Fill Your Head With Rock contained a number of tunes that have stayed with me these past five decades and perhaps most prominent of those was The Garden of Jane Delawney by Trees. It was a stand-out track in this varied collection of jazz/rock, heavy blues and proto dark metal, tucked in, on Side Three, between Amory Kane’s The Inbetween [sic] Man and Al Stewart’s A Small Fruit Song. I subsequently sought out the Trees album and it became a mainstay of listening for a number of years. As the other tracks drifted into memory, Jane Delawney stayed around, popping to the fore every now and again.
Despite Jane always being there, I never really gave Trees any more thought until the early ‘noughties’ when there was some movement in re-releasing their music. And now, their 50th anniversary is celebrated by the release of four CDs-worth of tracks drawn from The Garden of Jane Delawney (1970) and On The Shore (1971), which are the first two albums of this 4-disc set. The other two, titled Fore & After I and II, consist a number of tracks ranging from demos and BBC recordings from 1969 and 1970 to live recordings in 2018 via remixes from 2007.
The story of Trees forming – Bias Boshell, Celia Humphris, Barry Clarke, Unwin Brown and David Costa – is one of like-minds seemingly drawn to each other, serendipity proving that exciting things can happen without initial design. The other thing that is amazing is the speed that the band went from a bunch of ex-students to a recording contract, to an album though it may be said that they were at the right time for that to happen with labels tripping over themselves to sign the next big thing. Trees shunned the approaches of smaller labels and signed with CBS. The Garden is very much a culmination of that intense period with a number of traditional tunes sandwiched between their own work.
In addition to the title track, the other stand-out one for me is She Moved Thro’ The Fair, the Irish tune that despite Pete Seeger having recorded it in some 15 years earlier, really came to prominence in the folk circuit thanks to Anne Briggs and to Davey Graham. Trees’ version here starts with a very deft and speedy 20 second or so finger-style guitar that slows over the last couple of bars to the more recognised time signature as the soft tom toms enforce the beat. The 1969 demo on disk 4 does not have the sprightly intro and the balance of the drums and the organ almost subsume the voice of Celia Humphris. It is quite good to know that the version on the album is better as the band always had a lot of trouble getting the levels right, balancing acoustic and electric, both in studio and live performances.
Lady Margaret, another traditional tune becomes a journey into the guitar improvisations so much the vogue of the period. David Costa notes that having done their ‘first job’ of giving ‘due reverence’ to the song ‘the lovely Celia her voice’ the instrumental break was ‘a leap into the unknown’:
“We’d all charge… at roughly the same time, Barry, Bias, Unwin and myself, and then hurtle over the cliff edge and see who hit the bottom first.”
This first album suffered the fate of so many good albums at the time: critically acclaimed yet poor sales. However, the machinery of the American giant that was CBS, ground on and a second album was not long about. Even though the band had found their feet and were clearly much more a whole than a collection of parts, the production-line process behind the exterior glamour did not allow them the opportunity to fully crystallise their ideas and their aspired-for quality in the studio. Having said that, Sally Free And Easy is a joy even now, and the Streets of Derry provide another example of how they could all charge for the cliff edge but this time in a much more cohesive manner. It is also Streets of Derry that illustrate the strength of this release. The remix version on disk 3 is much crisper without losing that early 70’s compression and the echoes of strings add something so minimal but so textural to change the overall soundscape of the piece.
Murdoch was also remixed in 2007 and the intro sets a different tone on the later version, though the overall effect may not be as good as on the original album. But here that is not a problem and is equally not the reason either. You listen, you gauge, you compare and you enjoy. (Re)interest by the band was sparked by Gnarls Barkley sampling Geordie on the 2006 hit St Elsewhere and this prompted David Costa to see if they should revisit their work. Later still, and the impetus remains, despite the loss of Unwin Brown in 2008.
A cynic’s view might be that here is an efficient review of all of a band’s work as you could wish for. And in many ways, so it is. But as I said it is a chance to consider what might have been as well as appreciate what there was. What might have been is an impossible question though. Sometimes you just have to accept what occurred and when. These particular five people came together in an orbit around the planet Trees and then went off on their own trajectories: Bias to work with Kiki Dee, then Barclay James Harvest, then The Moody Blues; Barry to Vigrass and Osborne and then to rejoin with David on Casablanca; Celia became a voice-over artist as well as stepping into other musical projects; and David became art director and designer for performers such as Elton John, The Beatles, and the Rolling Stones.
What there was is easier to define. There was an excellent fusion of styles that grew out of those proto tribes of the period, a style that at times might be referred to as acid folk, or psych folk, or whatever. It was, to the King Charles lookalike, new, exciting, different, folkie with a rock thing going on, and other things as well.
Which brings me back to Jane Delawney. Interestingly she is the one track that is not offered in remix or out-take or post release form, and for that I am personally thankful. Jane Delawney is the song that cannot be changed, the tune that cannot be improved upon. It has to be as it was. Selfish, yes, but it is also the one track that identifies Trees to me and to others. It is not a traditional song, in fact written in 1965 by Bias Boshell before he joined the band, while still a student at Bedales. And as a good omen from those dark distant days you were not supposed to remember if you were there, he cannot explain it, not knowing who Jane is or anything about her: “It just appeared as if from nowhere” he said.
A bit like Trees then. Excellent.
Pre-order Trees (50th Anniversary Edition) out on 13 November: https://earthrecordings.lnk.to/treestrees