The Gems- The Gems (self-released): The Listen

It's country all right, but not quite what I expected. At least, not entirely.

There's a wide variety of styles covered here and the songs are, so far as I can tell, all covers (there are no writing credits anywhere, but I recognize I've Never Been To Spain, I'll Fly Away, and Feeling Alright, a quick search shows that everyone has done My Window Faces South, and El Camenchero appears to be this). The record scans less as sidemen and studio pros finally getting a chance to do their own thing than it does as a demo reel for the musicians to get work as sidemen and studio pros by showing that they can play anything you throw at them (spoiler alert: they can, although the drummer is too heavy on his biggest cymbals).

That ability is apparent from the jump; when I dropped the needle on side one I was very surprised to hear a Spanish-tinged instrumental with a beat that resembled The Devil Went Down To Georgia in some places, and featured both distorted electric guitar and delicate fingerpicked acoustic. My first thought was that I'd been dead wrong and, contrary to all appearances, I had found something really unique. But the smorgasbord nature of the record quickly came through.

There are a couple slow trad country weepers- Sweet Dreams and I Can't Help It, the former of which is complete with the pedal steel doing exactly what you’d expect it to do and swelling strings as it goes on. Tammy’s Song is a bluegrass instrumental, Window Faces The South has strings, a bouncy rhythm, and nice acoustic leads, plus, since this is the 1970s, some electric piano at the end. Said instrument also adds a very nice touch to When I Stop Dreaming, where it's played to sound like the raindrops in the lyrics.

All of that is well done, but the most interesting parts (to me at least; country fans are presumably familiar enough with My Window Faces South that The Gems' spin on it is intriguing) are where they deviate from the norm. The aforementioned El Camenchero, in addition to being well out of the country comfort zone just as a piece of music, also features a distortion pedal that I didn't know was allowed into Nashville studios. I'll Fly Away, which I've always heard as some stripe of midtempo bluegrass is here done as slow country gospel, complete with swelling organ. It's really good.

And then there're the pop covers. Never Been To Spain isn't a revelation (although hearing wah-wah electric guitar on a country album was unexpected); it's a good performance but sounds pretty much like the Hoyt Axton/Three Dog Night original. Feelin' Alright, though, is a very clever recasting of the song, trading Traffic's English psych-pop for dark acoustic piano, harmonica, and southern fried vocals, plus a cool clipped rhythm from the drums and twangy leads. Short but sweet electric piano and electric guitar solos too. For me, this and I'll Fly Away are the highlights of the album.

So. It wasn't on YouTube (and it's not on Spotify), but what about the rest of the internet? Someone made an entry on Discogs which confirms that the record wasn't on a label and claims it came out in 1979. There don't appear to be a lot of copies floating around; no one has ever sold one on the site. At present, there is one selling for $30 on eBay, so it probably is rare, but only so sought after. That listing also gives a small clue about who these people are:

Tom Rutledge earns marquee status here. He's got a page on Discogs, but it's sparse even by the standards of sparse. I guess Glass Eye Industries know who he is. Jim Ed Brown's not on the record so I'm guessing he's the guy The Gems usually back up. I will further guess that any country fan reading this identified him right away, as he had a long career and an extensive discography. He spent the latter end of the 1970s recording as half of the Jim Ed & Helen duo, and they recorded an album the same year the Gems record came out, although I don't see any Gems in the list of personnel.

There also aren't any on the records the duo put out in 1976 and 1980; their other two albums don't have any personnel listed.

Hank Corwin's on a Brown solo record from 1972, but no other Gems.

Corwin is also on Bar-Rooms and Pop-A-Tops, from 1973. Again, he's the only Gem.

There's one more solo Brown album from right before the duet records, but it doesn't list the musicians so I don't know where the seller got the idea that Rutledge was the big dog of the Gems and involved with Brown's band. If anyone can back up or rebut Glass Eye, please say so in the comments.

Final note: we're not going to talk about the fact that I felt all clever by inferring the presence of a pedal steel in the Guess post, but if I'd actually looked I'd've just seen the instrument listed on the back cover.