ZEPHYR Discography

SIDE ONE
‘Sail On’ (Tommy Bolin, Candy Givens) – 7:22
‘Sun’s a Risin’ (Bolin, David Givens) – 4:45
Raindrops’ (Dee Clark) – 2:40
‘Boom-Ba-Boom’ (D. Givens) – 1.20
‘Somebody Listen’ (D. Givens, C. Givens, Bolin, John Faris) – 6:10
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SIDE TWO
‘Cross the River’ (C. Givens, D. Givens) – 4:43
‘St. James Infirmary’ (Joe Primrose) – 5:15
‘Huna Buna’ (C. Givens, Bolin) – 2:26
‘Hard Chargin’ Woman’ (Bolin, Robbie Chamberlin, Faris, C. Givens, D. Givens) – 8:40
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PERSONNEL
Candy Givens – lead vocals, harmonica. Tommy Bolin – guitar, backing vocals. John Faris – organ, piano, flute. David Givens – bass, backing vocals. Robbie Chamberlin – drums, backing vocals
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Bill Halverson – production, engineering
Alden Spillman & William Shepard – cover design

DAVID GIVENS REMEMBERS – 2013

“We were going to drive to LA to make our first album. ABC had signed us to a two album deal, we’d interviewed producers, we had songs, and we were ready to go. Candy and I had a ‘69 Ford Econoline “Super Van” and John Faris had a ‘67 flat front van with the engine beneath the seats.Naturally we left late. There were a lot of moving parts.

We had to go to Denver to pick up Robbie at his parents home on the way out. We headed into the mountains west of Denver a little after noon on a bright September day. Once we hit the road, everything was cool. 1-70 wasn’t completed yet and we wound up over the passes and along the Colorado river all afternoon.

We had decided to stop by the Grand Canyon on the way as most of us had never seen it. We were pushing pretty hard, trying to get there before dark, but it was out of the question and we didn’t get there until way after sunset. It was past tourist season and there was no one around. The moon had already set as we pulled up to an overlook and it took us a while for our eyes to adjust before we could see anything. Gradually, it came into view, lit only by the Milky Way and the stars burning in the black sky. The canyon was grey, not even a little color, but we could see all the way across. We were suitably awestruck for a few minutes and then Robbie produced an M-80 (a very loud and powerful firecracker). He and I lit it and I pitched it over the cliff as far as I could. It went off after a few moments with a huge boom and then to our collective amazement, the echos started coming back from the myriad of rock walls before us. It sounded like what you hear when you hold a seashell to your ear with the volume on 10. It seemed to last for a couple of minutes before it gradually subsided. Probably just a few seconds in reality, but it was such a surprise and so huge that it seemed much longer.

We flipped out for a few minutes and then loaded up and headed for LA. We pulled into the parking lot of the Hollywood Hawaiin Hotel and Apartment Suites on the corner of Yucca and Grace in Hollywood, California, our home for the next month or so in the afternoon of the next day. 1950’s Hollywood, very gracious, very kicked back, lots of tall palm trees. Candy and I had one bedroom apartment near the pool, the others shared two bedroom apartments. We were getting our first taste of the star treatment and we liked it quite a bit.

The first day we were there, we ran into Miles Davis and his incredibly beautiful woman in the parking lot. We waved and said, ‘Hi Miles’. He was looking at this unruly group of long haired youngsters and must have had a laugh, but he was cool and said, ‘What’s happening’ in his gravelly voice before they got into his bright red Ferrari. We were in heaven. The next afternoon, we drove over to Wally Heider Recording. It was one of the top studios in LA at the time, famous for recording numerous hit records starting in the 50’s when they specialized in big bands. In our day, it was used by Cream, CSN, Tom Jones and a lot of others. It was known for its state-of-the-art sound quality. It looked like the inside of an engineering firm – no art, no colored lights, no fuzzy anything, not even any plants. This place was made strictly for work.

We were supposed to work with Bill Halverson, a legendary engineer and producer who has worked with everyone in Hollywood. Bill had come to Colorado to see us play and we had all hit it off. Unfortunately, even the legendary masters of Hollywood don’t always make good choices. Bill was working all day at Heider’s doing his day job, recording whatever came his way, either in the studio or in their studio truck for remote recording. After hours, he was bringing us in to work for another six or seven hours.

We recorded everything we knew in the first two days – we were a live band, hadn’t spent more than a few hours in a studio in our lives. We liked it, our road crew liked it, Bill didn’t like it. We threw it all out and started all over from scratch. He started educating us on how records were made in Hollywood. We’d asked our record company if we could do a live album, but they rejected the idea because we hadn’t ‘earned’ it. So we learned to punch in, learned to sing with headphones on, learned to overdub to a pre-existing track.

Every so often, Bill would cut an ‘acetate’, a lacquer plate with a stereo groove cut on a lathe that we could take home and play on our portable record player in our apartment. We were occasionally kicked out of our scheduled studio time when Steve Stills or Eric Clapton wanted to work and this pissed us off no end, but we shut up and continued to work. We were happy with the results. We were diligent, we worked hard. We recorded basic tracks which Bill edited down to acceptable lengths and then we started overdubbing vocals, guitar solos and B3 solos. Tommy and Candy performed take after take.

We had fun, Tommy, Candy and I sang backup vocals together. And then we mixed it. Bill was falling asleep at the console night after night and the resulting mixes lacked focus, to say the least. We were not happy with the results. And for forty some years, I’ve been angry about it. Then, earlier this year (2013), producer Greg Hampton called me up to discuss his idea that we should fix the album and re-introduce Zephyr. He fixed the mixes and now, for the first time, you can hear what we heard before everything went wrong. I’m happy with the reults”.

David Givens 2013

WHAT THE FANS THOUGHT...

THIS IS WORTH IT FOR THE LIVE STUFF

WOW, with all the deluxe editions of classic rock reissues from the 60s,70s and 80s this sure is one that is not just another HEY LETS RIP THE FANS OFF deal, this is the real deal if you like Tommy Bolin, in fact if you are a Bolin fan this is a must for your collection. First off, the remastering is very well done for the debut album, second, the live discs are awesome and I have never heard any of these live recordings before so these are really great to have all in a nice box with a nice booklet and a couple of goodies, as for the box itself it says limited to 1.000 but I'm not so sure as this box set seems to NOT be available on a lot of web sites so as another person said that reviewed this you may want to grab this fast, anyway the 3 discs here display a young Tommy Bolin and what a great live sensation he was, he really does a lot live on these live recordings and listening to these makes me feel almost like I was actually there over 40 years ago, I'm not a history buff on his first band Zephyr and I have had this debut album with Tommy on it on cd for about 15 years or so but this box set here is the way to go, the remastering is just fantastic here and the discs just crank like the old viynl did so I am very pleased I got a copy of this, I never get tired of anything coming out of the vaults by Bolin I have not heard yet.....

AWESOME – JUST WISH THEY COULD HAVE RECORDED MORE ALBUMS

Zephyr was a great, great band and had huge potential. Unfortunately, their debut album is the apex of their recorded material and it's a shame that their enormous talent wasn't captured in additional releases. That being said, I've listened to this album, first on vinyl and later on CD, hundreds of times over the past 44 years (yikes!) and it's still fascinating and thoroughly entertaining. Candy Givens had an incredible vocal range, and when I 1st heard this album she made a Janis Joplin-like impression on me. Tommy Bolin (Sioux City, IA native) made an indelible impression on guitarists then and to this day...and it started with THIS album. I was fortunate to see them live right after the release of this and they were fantastic! That's why it is especially awesome that this Deluxe Edition is available to provide "live" versions for the first time. Interestingly, this is a limited, numbered edition (mine was labeled 998 of 1000 so I got real lucky) so there aren't many out their. If you can't get this you should for sure get your hands on the studio-only CD and give it a listen. You will definitely be impressed.

A WELCOMED AND REMASTER FOR THIS CLASSIC ALBUM

Purple Pyramid/Cleopatra have reissued the debut album by ZEPHYR, it's claim to fame a young Tommy Bolin on guitar and the paint-peeling vocals of Candy Givens (who also plays a mean harmonica). There are some who criticize her talent and range, usually using the adjectives "screaming" and "screeching." It's ironic that when male vocalists have a similar range and style, say for example Robert Plant or Rob Halford, it become's "wide, powerful and soaring." 'Zephyr' was originally released in 1969 on the ABC/Probe label, also home to the U.S. versions of THE SOFT MACHINE's first two albums. The album was also previously available on CD on One Way Records in 1992, and BGO Records in 1999. This newly remixed and remastered version comes in a mini-LP sleeve within a small box with an informative booklet containing lengthy notes by bassist David Givens, Candy's husband, along with two discs of live material in their own gate-fold cardboard sleeve. Givens discusses the reasons for remixing the album in his notes, so if you want the original mix, hold on to your old CDs, if you're lucky to have them. Normally I'm not a fan of remixing older albums, but in this case I feel the remix has greatly improved it. Givens explains the reasons behind it in the booklet. The Boulder, CO based group also featured John Faris on keyboards and flute and drummer Robbie Chamberlin, who was replaced by Bobby Berge before the recording of their second album Going Back To Colorado in 1971. After this release Bolin left to go solo and was replaced by Jock Bartley (later in Firefall) for 1972's Sunset Ride. In 1973 the band with Bolin reunited for a number of concerts, the recording of which makes up the bulk of the live material. ZEPHYR is a strong debut album that rewards repeated listens. Although Bolin's presence seems to garner most of the attention, the rest of the band are on top of their game as well. Candy Givens is a more nuanced singer than she's given credit for, and blows a mean harp as well, while Faris is no slouch on the keyboards, whether playing tasty piano or growling Hammond organ. The rhythm section is more the adequate throughout, it's easy to hear why they were one of Denver's top groups and a band that impressed the groups they supported, making sure they didn't miss their set...

In 1997 the Tommy Bolin Archives released the Zephyr Live CD recorded at Art's Bar & Grill in Boulder on May 2, 1973. Two cuts from that CD are on the first live disc, "Sail On" and "Hard Charging Women." From a 1971 rehearsal we get "Uptown (To Harlem)" and "Jam Cats." The earliest live recrdings come from a July 3, 1969 show at Reed's Ranch, a version of Procol Harum's "Repent Walpurgis" dedicated to the recently deceased Brian Jones and "Guitar Solo/Cross The River." Next up is the blues staple "Rock Me Baby" with vocals by band friend Otis Taylor, and an instrumental section excerpt from "Cross The River" featuring Tommy's brother John as a second drummer, both recorded at the legendary Ebbets Field club in 1971. Rounding out the disc are a "Jam" recorded in San Bernardino, CA 1971 and "I Can't Find A Way (To Say I Love You) from a mystery venue. The third disc was completely recorded June 19, 1973 at Tulagi's in Denver during the reunion tour. Amazon has the song titles listed above...

Bill Halverson... Producer

David Givens Remembers...

“He thought Jimi Hendrix sucked, that he was just making noise... um... Hello... HENDRIX???”

I learned a lot from Bill Halverson. He was a mainstream Hollywood engineer when we worked with him in late ‘69 and he introduced me to 16 track recording, use of outboard gear, editing, and mixing as well as working as a musician/producer in the studio. He also taught me what happens when you take on a project that you don’t comprehend, what happens when you put your loyalty to your paycheck ahead of your ethical responsibilities, and what happens when you try to apply old methods to new opportunities - no good in any case, I assure you.
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You can trace the loss of both Tommy and Candy to Bill’s failures and here’s how: ZEPHYR had it going on, people loved what we were doing and we were on top of the world when we left Boulder for L.A. in the autumn of ‘69. We ranged in age from 18 to 21 and none of us had spent any time to speak of in a recording studio. We had asked the record company to record us live - the correct idea still, in my opinion, since that’s what we did and what we understood. However, the record company demanded that we make a studio album. Halverson was responsible for the project, he was the adult supervision, for which he was very well paid and he failed. We recorded everything we knew in the first two sessions - the same way we recorded our demo at Summit Studio and according to Bernard Heidtmann, our road manager and long time close friend, it was beautiful and complete.

Halverson wanted to spend more dollars in the studio; he knew the record company had set a budget of $150,000 (1969!) and he wanted Wally Heider’s to get as much of it as they could. So, he tossed all of our recordings and put us to work building up tracks in the classic L.A. studio style - record the rhythm section with a pilot vocal, then go back and add solos, backup vocals, and finally lead vocals. We had no experience doing this and Bill was no teacher. He was so accustomed to working with session cats who understood the process that he assumed we’d just be able to do it. We weren’t. Both Tommy and Candy performed take after take to the point of physical and especially creative exhaustion. We ended up keeping tracks because Candy or Tommy had managed to get through a piece without making irreparable errors after 20 or 30 or 50 takes, when we should have been keeping tracks for what they said to the listener. Bill’s idea of teaching us was to make us listen to recordings he had made of Tom Jones jamming with the L.A. studio cats! Told us he was a PRODUCER, when in truth, he was a trombone playing, old school big band loving, ENGINEER who pretty much despised what we were up to. He told me he thought Jimi Hendrix sucked, that he was just making noise - HENDRIX! Wish he’d said that when we were interviewing producers. His big idea was to get Candy to make an album of standards. That’s very nice, but that’s not what we were there for and as it turned out, Candy suffered the most. If you listen to the Summit Studio demo (all first takes), you hear her doing what she did - some of it was over the top and some was subtle, but she was in control. Remember, she was singing with a very loud band - Tommy played with four hot-rodded Fender Twins with all dials on 10 - and if you mix the music to sound like what she was hearing on stage, what she was doing makes perfect sense. If you mix her way up front, as they did in those days and Halverson did on the record, she sounds like an idiot.
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On top of all that, Halverson was working a full day of sessions at Heider’s before we ever arrived at the studio in the evening and he was usually pretty toasted by the time it was our turn. He actually fell asleep behind the console on a number of occasions. I’ve told the story of me and Tommy and Candy wheeling him around the control room in his big chair laughing our heads off as he lolled back and forth.
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Halverson never created a way to capture the magic we could create and we were the ones who had to come home with our tails between our legs to face the people who had supported us and wanted to know why we hadn’t come through for them. None of us, particularly Tommy, Candy, and I, could ever hold our heads up as we had before we made a record with Bill Halverson. I understand that it was a character builder for me, but for Tommy and Candy, it amounted to taking a very public beat down when they needed all of their pride and strength to pull off the task they had set for themselves. And it was not their fault, they did what was asked of them and Halverson threw it away because he was too stupid to recognize what he had and/or he was too venal to let us get away without spending a hundred grand. When we were finishing up the album and we had come to realize that it wasn’t going to be what we had expected, I asked Bill what he had thought he was getting when he decided to work with us and he told me “Another Cream”. We were what we were and certainly not another anyone or anything else and yet that’s all he saw. Love us or hate us, we had created something unique that should have been nurtured and cultivated.
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Sadly, Bill’s still getting paid from that album, Tommy and Candy are dead, and I’ve never gotten a cent from the record despite the fact that I wrote and arranged the majority of the music and it continues to sell steadily to this day after 40 years.

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PERSONNEL
Candy Givens – lead vocals, harmonica. Tommy Bolin – guitar, backing vocals. John Faris – organ, piano, flute. David Givens – bass, backing vocals. Bobby Berge – drums
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Eddie Kramer – Production

David Givens: TRACK BY TRACK...

GOING BACK TO COLORADO
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When Tommy brought it to the band, it was called "Going Back To Texas". I talked him into changing it to 'Colorado' and then Candy and I changed the lyrics to reflect our real life. For live, Tommy played a little old lap-steel guitar. He was always a good slide player and he had fun with this one. I liked the part where he and Candy traded licks between harp and slide - great stuff.

MISS LIBERTINE

Candy, Tommy, Gerard MacMahon (an old friend of Tommy's from his Denver street-freak days), and I sang this one. The stance is a little bit too earnest for me today, but the words are more true than ever. I wrote the intro in L.A. while we were working on the bathtub album.

NIGHT FADES SOFTLY

Our friends Paul Conly and Kim King from LOTHAR AND THE HAND PEOPLE were early adopters of electronic instruments in a rock context. Originally, I wrote the lyric as a poem for Candy when she had to stay behind in Boulder for a week while the rest of us went to New York. I liked the chaotic beginning with the big synth sounds with the rest of us playing free over the top of it. This was all live. Tommy was digging John McLaughlin quite a bit around this period and it shows in his beautiful intro licks.

THE RADIO SONG

Eddie Kramer brought in studio backup singers for several of the tunes. This was went to be fun ... and it was.

SEE MY PEOPLE COME TOGETHER

We put this one together much like the epic tunes like 'SAIL ON' and 'CROSS THE RIVER' on the bathtub album. Tommy and his writing partner John Tesar had the basic riff and lyrics. I arranged the middle part, and Candy worked over the lyrics and melody. Great power from the whole band hitting it hard on this one.

SHOWBIZZY

We recorded this tune in Studio B after Hendrix' death. We were on our own and I produced this one. I suggested to Tommy that this would be a good spot to use the Leslie speaker we'd had our eye on since day one and he agreed. Great solo. I still dig it.

KEEP ME

Tommy and John Tesar wrote this one, but it's Candy's song. The new remix really lets her emotion shine through. She sang on the overdubs as a member of the background singers. They offered her a job! Good job, Kid.

TAKE MY LOVE

John wanted to be a singer and make his own solo album at some point. This was his first shot at writing and singing on a real recording. We all supported him, Candy included. Bobby and I tried a lot of different approaches to the feel for the tune, but John didn't like any of it, but he couldn't describe what he wanted. Finally, I came up with the bass line and the rest of it fell together. I love the solos. Live, Candy sang it.

I'LL BE RIGHT HERE

I like Tesar's lyric on this one. The images of people enduring drought and famine and then resolving to keep on fighting are well done and the music has power. Tommy shows some of the country style picking he learned growing up in the sticks.

AT THIS VERY MOMENT

I heard this piano part around the house for a couple of years and I was always knocked out by her modal jazz keyboard style. I always dug her lyric using words that sound the same but have different meanings to describe the many things happening at any given moment around the planet. Her voice is warm honey sometimes. This is the last song we recorded prior to Hendrix' death and we were really getting into it - check out the vamp - we were getting out there big time.

‘GOING BACK TO COLORADO’
(Plus Bonus Tracks) – REMASTERED 2016
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‘LEAVING COLORADO’
(Unreleased studio/live tracks)
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CD 1 (Remastered studio album with four bonus tracks)
1. Going Back To Colorado
2. Miss Libertine
3. Night Fades Softly
4. The Radio Song
5. See My People Come Together
6. Showbizzy
7. Keep Me
8. Take My Love
9. I'll Be Right There
10. At This Very Moment
11. Mr. Sandman (Bonus Track)
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CD 2
1. Downtown Left Turn (Zephyr Studio, Pearl Street, Boulder)
2. Hard Chargin' Woman (Reed Ranch 1969)
3. Slap Myself (Zephyr Studio, Pearl Street, Boulder)
4. Cross the River (San Bernardino Live)
5. Bolin Surf Strut (Zephyr Studio, Pearl Street, Boulder)
6. The Creator Has a Master Plan (San Bernadino Live)
12. Green Shoes (Bonus Track)
13. 3 Days On (Bonus Track)
14. New Colors (Bonus Track)

Note: Some of the earlier live recordings feature Robbie Chamberlin on drums.

DAVID GIVENS | SEPTEMBER 2021

While we were preparing the 1972 release of “Sunset Ride’, the buzz we got from our label, Warner Brothers, was that they loved the record, that it was the best thing we’d ever done, and that early feedback from Radio was along those same lines. We played a few live shows in Boulder in the Autumn of 1971 to enthusiastic audiences and we were feeling good about the reinvention we had accomplished over the months following the breakup of the original Zephyr. But there was a dangerous undercurrent that we hadn’t noticed. Our manager, Barry Fey, was nearing the peak of his increasingly substantial career as a major promoter of rock shows. He had contracted with the Rolling Stones to promote almost their entire world tour just as they returned to live performance after an extended absence. That would have been distraction enough for most people in the business, but he had also dramatically increased his participation in rock show promotion around the United States. We were on a back burner so far back that we weren’t even in the kitchen anymore. And we needed a management team ready to exploit the progress we had made. First and foremost, we needed an established booking agency capable of getting us on stages around the country where we could promote our shiny new album in coordination with the record company. When asked, Barry claimed that no one was interested in booking us. He arranged for a local agent to set up a month-long tour through western slope Colorado, Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma with the accent on Texas. We rented a 27-foot Dodge RV, loaded our van with the gear, and set out into the snowy mountains of early winter Colorado. We played small towns, medium towns, nearby towns, far away towns all over Texas to start, and I do mean all over. Texas is enormous and there was no rational pattern to our itinerary – several times, we travelled 8 hours one way only to return the next day to near our starting point. One night, we drove all the way to the panhandle only to find out that the instructions from the booker were wrong and that we were supposed to be in Corpus Christi in a very few hours. I had been driving for hours and was already pretty toasted so Candy got behind the wheel and we headed south as fast as that big Dodge could go. I’m pretty sure Candy kept her foot pushed all the way to the floor for most of the night. It was hot and the windows were open, curtains flying as we rocked and rolled down the highway at 85 or 90 hour after hour. At some point, the exhaust pipe separated from the muffler and the beast started to roar as most everyone tried to get some sleep. Candy was relentless and we made it, but the tour came more and more to resemble a Fellini movie. We played Austin under a crescent moon just next to Venus and the music was superb.

When we got to Louisiana, we had a couple days in Abbeville where we played in an old theatre in a Quonset hut lined in cloth. The people were scarily hospitable – we were the biggest thing to come to town in quite a while and the whole town turned out. The next day, they through a party in our honor – boat rides, crawfish, sauce picante, and psychedelics. A good time was had by all.
All during this period, we kept after Barry about the record release and sorting out the booking agency and publicist issues. He kept deflecting and we were getting frustrated. After a few more gigs, we headed for home, worn out and demoralized. Candy and I had had it up to here with Barry and our spirits were weary. We broke up the band and headed for Mexico. Fey was angry. The band was angry. We wanted to stop the madness.
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That is the background for the original release of ‘Sunset Ride’. As it turned out, all during the time our management was telling us it was impossible to find a real booking agency for us, a gentleman by the name of David Dowds had been searching for us. Mr. Dowds was an agent for the William Morris Agency, the premier booking agency on the face of the Earth. He had heard our record, loved it, and had tried to locate our management to no avail. By the time he called us upon our return to Boulder, it was too late. The band was gone and the management moved on to other projects. The record languished with no serious effort at promotion. It had found an audience, albeit a small one, of people who made the music part of their personal soundtrack. Word of mouth spread the record slowly but steadily over the next several years. The album was reissued as a CD in the late 80s and has stayed in print ever since but with no input from me. Strange remastering and low-quality transfers degraded the sound. Warner Brothers destroyed their multitrack masters long ago.
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As the Producer of the album, I had the right to ask the engineer to copy the 16 track masters for me as a safety copy. I carried those two rolls of two-inch tape with me everywhere I went during the intervening 40 years. A closet in Boulder for a few years, a cupboard in Honolulu for almost ten years, our basement in Ohio for another decade. Finally, in 2018, I had the masters converted to high resolution digital copies at a studio in Cleveland. Now, I could use my home studio to remix and remaster the album as I had long dreamed to do. Or so I thought. I took another two years to upgrade my studio and learn how to use it properly before I could begin in earnest.After her death in 1984 under suspect circumstances, Candy Givens’ reputation had suffered insult after insult. Her amazing gifts that had propelled Zephyr nearly to the top of the music scene were forgotten or ignored by most people in the business. Her loyal fans and friends never forgot her, but her public image was mocked and discounted from serious consideration. Every reference to her included sordid details of her death and not much more. No mention of her brilliant singing, harmonica playing, piano playing, composition, arranging, or charismatic stage presence. I made it my mission to show once and for all the proof of her mastery. And brings us to this new vision of ‘Sunset’. I didn’t want to simply “clean it up” and send it back out as a piece of nostalgia for the old folks. I decided to start from scratch, using modern mixing techniques, to reimagine the album as if it was brand new.

And this is the result...

Review by Aaron Milenski 1972

Zephyr the band will always be overshadowed by their original guitarist, Tommy Bolin. He found fame in the James Gang and Deep Purple, and Zephyr’s place in the canon, to most rock fans, is as the springboard for his talents. Their first album sold 100,000 copies and still stands as a unique piece of heavy metal history. The combination of Bolin’s robust but tasteful guitar playing (on songs almost all in the 6/8 time signature) and Candy Givens’ histrionic, even more overpowering singing makes ZEPHYR unlike any other metal album of the 60s. The record is spotty, mostly because Candy is uncontrolled and often unhinged. Half the time her voice is stunning, as in the opening “Sail On,” but the other half of the time it’s strident. Her obvious talent is not balanced by “taste.”·
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The second album, GOING BACK TO COLORADO, an attempt to add some complexity to Zephyr’s sound, softens the heavy metal edge, and it sold poorly. It’s even spottier than the debut, but includes some interesting experimentation that foreshadows their future. Bolin left after this album, and many don’t even know that Zephyr continued on as a band. Theoretically, the 1972 release SUNSET RIDE would be nothing but a footnote in the history of a well-known guitarist, an album to be filed with the Doors’ OTHER VOICES and the Velvet Underground’s SQUEEZE. Indeed, SUNSET RIDE’s continued obscurity shows that critics and public alike dismissed it without listening to it. (It is housed in one of the ugliest sleeves ever, possibly another reason the album fell under the radar.) What a surprise, then, to discover the brilliant album it is.
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Obviously the departure of Bolin liberated the band, and with SUNSET RIDE, the husband/wife team of Candy and David Givens truly came into their own as songwriters. Since the songs no longer needed to be structured to accommodate long guitar solos, the songwriting became impeccably tight. The experimentation on this album is entirely structured and intentional, the exact opposite of the kind of improvisation that passes for heavy metal “innovation.” The more refined and intricate song structure also works miracles with Candy’s singing. Gone is the wailing and screeching, most of which took place during and around Bolin’s solos when Candy obviously didn’t know what else to do. Here her voice is 100% under control. It’s a thing of beauty and power, potential completely fulfilled. New guitarist Jock Bartley’s jazzy but unobtrusive style and undistorted sound is a perfect fit for the songs. This is blues-rock, but it lacks the musical cliches of traditional blues. The production, which puts the percussion high in the mix and the guitar and voice low (the exact opposite of the first album) adds an eerie, late night feel; there’s no question that the ‘sound’ of this album is as effective as the songs. The overall vibe is that of Candy struggling to the surface from a not-so-happy hole she’s found herself in. The end result is a positive one: wasted energy being trumped by creativity. The upbeat songs are filled with longing; the downbeat ones filled with hope.

Moments like the raveup at the end of “Moving Too Fast” are intensely powerful, and lyrics like “I’ve been smokin’ hash/talking trash/wishing things weren’t real” have a sense of tragedy. This album has the kind of indefinable magic of a true masterwork.
The album itself is as perfectly structured as the songs within. Side one is relatively straightforward, developing the new style confidently but safely. “I Am Not Surprised” and “Moving Too Fast” brim with understated energy, “Someone To Chew” with sexual passion. “No Time Lonesome,” which has all of the heartbreak of a Hank Williams song, features a lovely, unexpected violin break by Bobby Notkoff, known for his work with Neil Young. On side two, the song cycle goes completely haywire, with each song being more experimental than the previous. Brilliantly, as strange as the songs are, they’re organized in a way that creates a perfect flow. “Sold My Heart” begins the side in understated (but lovely) fashion. Its mild country leanings are absorbed into the warped psychedelic country rock of “Sierra Cowgirl.” The following “Chasing Clouds” dispenses with the country and is pure downer psychedelia. Candy’s voice is almost buried beneath the heavy tremolo of the organ and the overwhelmingly loud cymbals. It feels like a windstorm many levels beyond the gentle breeze of the band’s name. Toward the end, a backwards guitar appears, moving the listener from this storm to one even more mysterious. The effect of floating in the sea, no destination in sight, is even more pronounced on “Sunset Ride.” It’s a wordless tone poem that anticipates the repetition and fade-in/fade-out structure of Brian Eno’s “Here Come The Warm Jets” and “Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy.” The turn towards art-rock completes itself with the free-form introduction to “Winter Always Finds Me,” which could have been pulled from the weirdest parts of Kevin Ayers’ “Shooting at the moon” album. When the song itself kicks in, it merges blues and jazz and brings the album to a breathtaking conclusion.
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SUNSET RIDE combines startling performances, unique production, and amazing precision. While it’s instantly melodic and appealing, it takes many listens for the overall brilliance of this album to fully reveal itself. Sit back and feel it a few times, then really start to listen closely. It may seem absurd to think that a very American band who started out as heavy metal and gravitated to blues and jazz could be legitimately compared to Eno and Ayers, but like all works of genius, SUNSET RIDE defies categorization. If there’s anything here to criticize, it’s the inclusion of the much-covered “High Flying Bird” on side one. Zephyr’s rendition is fantastic, fits nicely in the context of this album, and gives Candy her best chance here to belt it out. Nonetheless, given the strength of Zephyr's own songwriting on this album, a song we’ve heard by dozens of other artists is a mild letdown, probably enough to keep the album from being “perfect.”
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Like Bolin, Candy Givens would die young, about ten years after the release of this album. It’s sad that Zephyr didn’t produce an immediate followup, but it’s hard to imagine that they could have. By the time SUNSET RIDE ends, they seem completely spent. Despite the lack of product, Candy and David Givens stayed musically active for years. They reunited with Bolin for some concerts and even released a mildly inspired new wave-styled album under the Zephyr name in 1980. Nonetheless, SUNSET RIDE is their real swan song. It doesn’t have the same air of doom and foreshadowing as pre-death albums like Joy Division’s CLOSER or Badfinger’s WISH YOU WERE HERE, but it does have the feel of artists who are going through great pain and turning it into beauty. Candy’s ability to express this feeling without words in the title track is almost awe-inspiring. Her legacy lives on with SUNSET RIDE.

ZEPHYR (The Bathtub Album) 1969

THE OLD SUNSET

Review by Aaron Milenski 1972