There's no more cliched declaration of vaguely anti-mainstream, middlebrow tastes than someone saying that they listen to "everything but country." But the relationship between counterculture and country music used to be quite cozy. Thanks to his influence on the Rolling Stones, Gram Parsons helped turn psychedelic rock fans on to the contemporary country sounds of the time, and country musicians returned the favor by introducing a stoner-friendly grooviness to their sound and image. (Check out Light in the Attic's fantastic compilation, Country Funk 1969-1975, to see how groovy things got.)
Chris Darrow is a product of that union. He was a fixture of the L.A. music scene for years, best known as the co-founder of the psych rock outfit Kaleidoscope, and as an in-demand sideman who played alongside Leonard Cohen, Linda Ronstadt, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and James Taylor. His 1972 solo debut, Artist Proof, is close to the platonic ideal of the California country rock that was being produced at the time.
One of the reasons why is that over its dozen songs (and five bonus demo versions) you can hear pretty much every one of the sound's major touchstones at some point. Gram Parsons' influence looms large, as it did over every commingling of rock and country at the time. Darrow has the same laid back demeanor and enthusiasm for the kind of unabashedly twangy Bakersville country that was more often associated with shitkicking rednecks than longhairs. There's also some of Neil Young's effortlessly beautiful way with a melody, Townes Van Zandt's moodiness, and a funky hippy streak that seems equally indebted to to the Grateful Dead and the Band.
Artist Proof has all of the distinguishing characteristics of a low-key release by a veteran working musician who's outgrown his own dreams of stardom: a backing band made up of other players from the session circuit, efficient and unflashy production, and a tiny initial pressing that seemed to guarantee its future obscurity. But like many such records, the few copies that were pressed were enough to grow a small but devoted cult around them. Luckily the cult has some influence at Drag City, which has earned itself a decent reputation for rescuing private press albums from absolute obscurity.
The difference between Darrow and past acts reissued by the label is that the others have mostly been obscure for justifiable reasons. The world was obviously not ready for a black protopunk band like Death, or an eccentric New Wave performance artist like J.T. IV, and for the most part it still isn't yet. But Artist Proof sounds like it could have been huge. Part of that is the fact that the Eagles used an eerily similar combination of country twang, soft rock, urban counterculture cred, and peaceful, easy feelings to produce one of the highest-selling albums in the history of recorded music. (Their first record came out the same year as Artist Proof.) It also just feels somehow classic.
Darrow's voice was maybe not cut out to sell tens of millions of albums, but his songwriting talents should have elevated him much higher in the music business than he ended up. Listening through Artist Proof, it's hard not to play matchmaker between the songs and the more established and ambitious country artists from the 70s who could (and maybe should) have recorded them. "Shawnee Moon", with its juxtaposition of mellow midtempo funkiness and bittersweet melody and lyrics, would have fit in nicely on Emmylou Harris's Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town, next to the contributions of era-defining songwriters like Rodney Crowell and Guy and Susanna Clark. The fact that Linda Ronstadt never recorded the gorgeously sad "Move on Down the Line" is in itself heartbreaking.
But if the consolation prize is just finally having Darrow's album to listen to, that's perfectly fine. The phrase "lost classic" gets attached to inessential reissues with such regularity that it hardly means anything anymore, but Artist Proof genuinely deserves the title. It's deeply satisfying, constantly rewarding, and I'm not entirely sure what I was doing before it came into my life.
