Customer Reviews

Family Tree

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If you're seeking this out, I don't have to tell you what a special & rare talent Nick Drake is. Suffice it to say, this one is for die-hard fans. Those seeking proper introduction should proceed directly to Way To Blue or Pink Moon.

One of the most prized recordings in my collection has long been the Nick Drake bootleg, Tamworth-In-Arden 1967/68. I usually avoid buying boots, but couldn't resist the plethora of completely unheard/unreleased songs. Now, most of that material has been lovingly compiled (with a few surprises, as well as omissions) & cleaned up considerably in terms of the sound quality. Half of the songs are written by Drake & half are rather obscure covers, including 3 songs by the legendary Jackson C. Frank. Fans of Drake will hardly be disappointed.

Among the self-penned selections, the real highlights are the haunting "Leaving Me Behind" and "Come Into The Garden". "Rain" and "Bird Flew By" reveal a talent that is nearly fully formed. "Strange Meeting II" & "Been Smoking Too Long" were included on the Fruit Tree box set appendix, Time Of No Reply. Both are welcome here. (According to the liner notes that collection is soon to be re-released).

More than likely, fans will not be as thrilled with the two songs, written & sung by Nick's mother, Molly. But to be frank, I like them both even if they are a bit jarring amidst the rest of the set. Its nice to hear where Nick got some of his talent from.

Lovingly compiled & with copious liner notes (Nick's sister, Gabrielle's are quite moving) this is certainly worth the price of admission for longtime & new found fans of this brilliant and truely unique artist.

And boy , am I glad they did. VERY primitive recordings that do not detract one iota from the performances. If you looked up this undiscovered gem , you know what you'll get from Nick Drake recordings. Thanks to the powers that be that put this out.

This album has been a pleasant surprise. I knew it was a Lo-Fi recording when I purchased it, but the sound and general quality is much better than what I thought. For Nick Drake's fans, this is a must have. The traditional tunes included in this album blend so well with Drake's own music that it seems they were written by him. The song "My Baby's So Sweet" is probably my favorite of those. Drake's "Blossom" is a great tune that should have been included in his three released albums. In summary, although for some Drake's music sounds a bit depressing, this albums is a relax pill. I put it on, and just want to chill out and transport myself to peace.

If this is going to be your first Nick Drake album I recomend you buy insted Pink Moon.

This is a recopilation of Drake's first recordings in his home and a friend house, the quality is no the best but I guaranty that you forget about that becuse of his powerfull and full of soul voice, there are some tracks of his mother singing that gives you an idea to where he got his musical liking and also a duet of him and his sister

The packages is a soft one with a large booklet with writings of his sister and friends, it's rather moving and it also has some pictures of the family.

So if you want to know more about Nick Drake I recomend this album becuse it has, even then when he was starting, a lot of fealing and something that good voices of today fail to have and that's heart.

I am not an old person talking, I have 24 and I recomend this to you hopping that Drake's magic remains live for a long time, this is ageless.

This CD is quite a treat for the fans of Nick Drake. I can't help but echo another reviewer here at amazon who wrote that it feels as if your sitting right there in the Drake family living room. Between the very informative & intreagingly personal booklet that comes along with the CD & the recordings themselves you really do feel a little closer to the untold story of such a unique & ghostly folk singer. As a musician/music fan with a real sweet tooth for raw lo/fi recorded music from such artists as Patrick Fitzgerald and Danial Johnston to find a treat like this is just what the doctor ordered for this Nick Drake fan. Now if only someone could come out of the woodwork with a Nick Drake live album!

Since Nick Drake only released three albums/cds, followers have eagerly sought alternative Drake recordings that filled the gap. Think of this cd as the best of the bootlegs. This recording is 28 songs long, and recorded in the 60's in Drake's home. A few of the songs are by members of his highly talented family. Instantly, after hearing this cd, I started thinking of the `Basement Tapes' by Dylan and some of the Beatles Blue Room Bootlegs that were just the band plucking and singing without the usual posturing necessary for a recording.

Drake plays with traditional folk songs, Dylan compositions, and American-folk blues and traditional songs. The result is surprisingly satisfying. Even though it's informal, his breath control and flawless guitar chords are at peak performance. And this is EARLY Nick Drake. If you thought `Pink Moon' was lo-fi, then you haven't heard this cd! There's a small degree of audible tape hiss (again, this was made in the 60's), but it has an amazingly clean sound.

This is a piece of British history that does much to explain the influences on Drake. While he is a subdued singer, he doesn't show the angst normally portrayed in his other albums. What you do hear is a true love for music being sang by someone who `gets it.' Included with the cd is a great booklet with subsections in prose written by his friends and family about Nick. Their personal takes on Drake read almost like a diary introspection. Not every artist could release an album like this. I would say only enigmas could get away with the intimate setting. When it does work, like this cd: "Family Tree", becomes a stepping stone in a short path to greatness.

Jeff Feezle of Macafeez

If you consider investing in this Nick Drake release, you should probably realize that it mainly contains lo-fi homerecordings done before Drake's first album.

Much of the songs are folk-blues numbers, partly traditional and partly contemporary songs written by songwriters such as Jackson C. Frank, Bert Jansch or Bob Dylan. You can clearly hear that Drake is an excellent guitarist, but not especially interesting when it comes to blues-folk.

Most Interesting, of course, are the Nick Drake originals, of which several have not been released before in any form. The stand out among these is "Blossom", a great song that absolutely matches Drake's very best. "Rain" is also a very nice song.

Among the coverversions the Jackson C. Frank song "Blues Run the Game" is another highlight; could have been a Drake original.

There are excellent notes written by Nick's sister Gabrielle and his old friend Robin Frederick.

If you would like to get an overview of where the songs come from and who wrote them, the booklet is not very helpful. It's a shame that it is faster to go wikipedia to find out who actually wrote "Blossom" perhaps the most interesting addition to the Nick Drake catalogue - not surprisingly, it was Drake himself.

"Family Tree" compiles a bunch of Nick Drake's home recordings -- many of which have been circulating as bootlegs, but a few originals as well.

The tracks on "Family Tree" are more bluesy than his studio releases -- most of them are traditional tunes or works of fellow folk artists like Dave Van Ronk / Jackson C Frank / Bob Dylan. The cool thing is that Nick's renditions seem, at times, more appropriate than their original versions!

Nick's guitar is exceptionally clean, and this can be deceptive, as it can be easy to underestimate the difficulty and complexity of his fingerpicking if you're not paying attention. As always, his distinctive voice does the tunes justice without seeming at all "British" or fakely "folky".

As a fan of Drakes work and a collector of as much of his music as possible, I'll say that "Family Tree" is essential for anyone who loves Nick's music, or anyone who enjoys traditional blues / folk music. For fans, this album represents a collection of refreshingly different, and possibly unheard, tracks -- for lovers of blues / folk, this album is a treasury of classic tunes rejuvenated by a gifted guitarist / singer / songwriter.

Give it a shot!

In the 34 years since the death of this coffeehouse (though he may have never played at one) folk legend, many of Nick Drake's most rabid fans shoved off to the English countryside on a hedgerow leaping pilgrimage to Tanwerth-in-Arden, where Drake hung out with his family to be carefree, lucid and eager to create fascinatingly original music, and hone his blues folk leanings to meld with his increasing melancholic and original laments in the headiest of pop music periods in the sixties. It was also where he holed up from the pressures of life away from the family nook, and to combat his debilitating, to the point of catatonic, depression that eventually led to the much debated and murky accidental death in 1974.

It is here where the loving sister Gabrielle presided over the estate, allowing some of the diehard fans to lodge in Nick's room, after which, their gracious hostess would allow them to walk out with some cherished home recordings of her brothers music before he recorded Five Leaves Left. These recordings were decidedly cloudy in sound quality but heavily bootlegged never the less. The estate at FarLeys along with some original recordings from Aix En Provence, France provided by Nick's friends Robin Frederick and Robert Kirby has finally saw through to clean up the sound and give the recordings a much deserved official release.

This Cd comes with insightful liner notes from friends and family, and a detailed list of the recordings and their origin. It can be seen as a Holy Grail for Drake enthusiasts and a muddy but intriguing home recording for the uninitiated. Most of those unfamiliar with Drake would assume he was simply a morose folkie, but it is in these bits, more than anywhere, when his blues base is exposed. His uniqueness came about by being the hopeless romantic lost in the blues, and meandering his tunings to blues of his record collection no doubt including Rev Gary Davis, Robert Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, to the sad fluttering folk sounds found in family gathering tunes played by his mother in these recordings. While seen as odd by some who wonder what they're doing here, it is quite easy to see the resonating sadness in his mother's voice that Nick would later have in his own timbre.

The songs are quite listenable enough to appreciate this collection as music and not just a historical document. They're Leaving Me Behind finds him already predicting his lingering depression and perhaps cluing the listeners in to what caused it all. Elsewhere, he plunges into the Jackson C Frank songbook for a lot of his 1967 blues workouts, and hones his Bert Jansch meets the acoustic rockabilly busker guitar playing that has so many listeners pining to pin down, on tunes by Jansch and David Van Ronk. He often liked to tackle traditional ballads and it's quite fascinating and rewarding to see how clearly they influenced the embryotic versions of his originals in a low-fi stripped down setting. Perhaps some of his best world weary leanings come from the duet he does with his sister in All My Trials. One can imagine what it would have been like had he saw through enough to record with eager fan Francois Hardy before his mental collapse prevented him.

While the quality is understandably shaky, it has been cleaned up enough to grab hold of those just discovering him or retracing his history. It is certain to keep his followers interested. In the world of sensitive melancholy folksingers, Nick was the genuine article and still has not been matched. This recording not only shows he was more than a folksinger; he had the blues and loads of it. It is probably the recording that best captures his true spirit. No need to get a passport and fly to England. His gracious family and friends will bring him to you.

I've been consumed by Nick Drake lately, particularly the releases "Pink Moon" and "Time of No Reply". I know that I'd be just as entranced by his other albums, but I'm just not done being obsessed with these two yet! And then I bought this beautifully packaged album after listening to some songs online. Let me tell you- nothing could've really prepared me for an experience like this. This is INCREDIBLE. Two songs taken from here appear on "Time of No Reply" in a less remastered form ("Been Smoking Too Long" and "Strange Meeting II"). Those are the kind of songs I've been playing early in the morning, long before the sun and much earlier than anyone else, to just absorb the solitude of the atmosphere. The entire album possesses that ethereal charm and in fact has a beautiful charm of its own. Nick Drake's music is absolutely some of the most genuine. I can't write really how I feel about this. I don't think I'll even try. This album is haunting and engulfing with a feel of timelessness and shaky perfection. An absolute must for Drake fans or anyone for that matter. I know the songs look short, but they blend together so flawlessly that it feels like one streaming and morphing song. Truly one of the better music experiences I've had lately.