Chapter 4 part 2 - California Dreaming |
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The album was produced by Graham and although all the songs were written by Terry there is a clear sense of Graham's involvement in the whole project. Apart from anything else he shared the vocal harmonies on some of the songs. With Graham producing and David Lindley on hand there is a strong country feel to half of the album with the remaining tracks encompassing a typical Terry brew of funk, rock, blues and jazz. Terry is often considered to be mainly a vocal stylist, concentrating his songwriting efforts on lyrics and words that when sung can give the correct sound that he was striving for. On this album there is also clear evidence of Terry's wordsmithing abilities. Well illustrated than in the opening line of the title track Seed Of Memory, ‘Brave dreams that are kindled from ashes’. Listen also to the words of Brave Awakening with its reflections on the dangers and inevitable tragedies connected with mining, a theme inspired by firsthand experiences of Terry's family in northern England. |
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| Apart from Graham and David other players on the album were long-time Terry associate Lee Miles on bass and another former Ike and Tina Turner stalwart Soko Richardson on drums. Probably the most polished and coherent of Terry's albums it is definitely a good introduction for a newcomer. The album was released under the ABC label with plenty of airplay and positive reviews, it should have been a hit. Unfortunately ABC, in financial difficulties, was in the process of being taken over by MCA resulting in lacklustre promotion and initial sales that didn’t reflect the commercial appeal of the album. Always popular it has had something of a renaissance recently due to the inclusion of three songs on a recent film soundtrack (more of that later in the biography). Terry now effectively a permanent Californian resident played various gigs with the core of the band that he'd assembled for seed of memory. David by this time was heavily committed to other work particularly with James Taylor and was unable to tour with Terry, they did though manage fairly frequent acoustic gigs in places like McCabe's in Santa Monica. MCCabes is a famous guitar shop with a small concert space, sells all manner of string driven things and no doubt a favourite haunt of David Lindley's. Sadly the mess with ABC meant that Terry could not afford to keep the band going very long and people soon went their separate ways.Resilient as ever, Terry carried on writing, storing up songs playing whenever the opportunity arose. |  |
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