For the first time in over fifty years, Dave Evans’ 1972 folk opus Elephantasia will be reissued on Earth Recordings in collaboration with his estate and original Village Thing producer Ian A. Anderson.
Sadly, Dave passed away in 2021, although he did witness Earth’s reissue of his debut album, The Words In Between, also released on The Village Thing label. According to the notes, it was recorded straight to tape on a shiny new Revox in Ian’s home. The Village Thing had a well-respected following at the time, as attested to by Folk Radio’s Richard Hollingham, who commented, in his review, that the release clearly reached the suburbs of Manchester in good time and highlighted how the recording of the guitar is ‘bright and has a surprising amount of depth’. He also painted a picture of those early listening rituals:
It is 1971. In the front room of a house in Greater Manchester, a group of school friends with long hair, loon trousers, tie-dye tee-shirts are doing that heavy hippy thing, sitting, heads bowed, their hair shutting them off from anything visually stimulating. There are seats, but it is important that they all sit on the same level, in some sort of a circle, on the floor. Smoke fills the room and cider bottles stand like sentinels in front of each member of the circle and a giant ashtray is at the centre. The record on the player comes to an end and is removed with great deliberation and reverence. It is placed back in its paper sleeve, inserted into its cardboard gatefold and passed from hand to hand to its owner.
The notes accompanying this latest reissue tell us that:
Dave Evans’ story is like a Pinter play; he sailed the seas in the merchant navy, was taught guitar in a brief interlude by the “mythical” Morocco John, wound up sharing a room with Steve Tilston in the late 1960s when they attended Loughborough Art College and ran the local folk club while learning to make stringed instruments, the art of winemaking and ceramics.
Steve headed for Bristol to record his debut for Village Thing and sent for Dave to play on it. So enamoured with the local scene was the young Evans that he hung around and wound up recording his debut in label boss Ian A. Anderson’s flat. The Words In Between was released in 1971.
Over the next year, Dave got a domestic 2-track reel-to-reel tape recorder and experimented with its two speeds to produce the tracks Elephantasia and Lady Portia. He pulled in members of local prog band Squidd, including latter-day Hawkwind member Steve Swindells on keyboards, John Merritt on bass and Rodney Matthews on drums, who also designed the Elephantasia album cover and went on to become a renowned fantasy artist (covers for Michael Moorcock books, etc).
Elephantasia – the album – was originally released in 1972, fully exposing Dave’s finger-picking style, lilting vocals and his dalliance with tape manipulation. It sold around 2000 copies and, over the years, became a talked about rarity, deemed too progressive for folk, too folk for the new prog heads (ring any bells? Some things never change). In the best plot-thickening style, Dave tried two more releases and then disappeared.
Elephantasia’s scant sleeve notes recounted the songs’ creation, featuring tales of experimentation in sound inspired by elephants, old memories recounted with all of the unpleasant bits edited out, storylines for escapists, the residents of St Agnes Park, broken beauty queens and a fat feline. It’s an eclectic but beautifully fluent narrative from a finger-picking maestro with a warm and engaging vocal style that wowed Peel and Whispering Bob back in the day.
Elephantasia releases November 24, 2023, and is available on Black Vinyl & CD: Bandcamp
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