Poco - Cantamos & Seven - Hybrid SACD

2 albums on one Hybrid SACD

from AMG

One of the first and longest-lasting country-rock groups, Poco had their roots in the dying embers of Buffalo Springfield. After Neil Young and Stephen Stills, the co-founders of that group, exited in the spring of 1968, only guitarist/singer Richie Furay and bassist Jim Messina remained to complete the group's swan song, Last Time Around. The final Springfield track, "Kind Woman," included only Furay and Messina, with a guest appearance on steel guitar by Rusty Young -- at the time, he was something of a rarity as a talented lap steel guitarist who was comfortable working in a rock idiom, and had previously belonged to a folk-rock-turned-psychedelic band called Boenzee Cryque. Young stuck with Furay and Messina, in the process skipping a scheduled audition for a new group that ex-Byrds member Gram Parsons was putting together. Auditions followed before the fledgling group reached out, at Young's urging, to ex-Boenzee Cryque drummer/vocalist George Grantham, and also to bassist/singer Randy Meisner, who had previously played with a band called the Poor. This lineup rehearsed for four months before making its debut at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, in November of 1968. A month later, they made their first appearance at the Fillmore West on a bill with the Steve Miller Band and Sly & the Family Stone.
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Their next album, Seven, released in the spring of 1974, failed to replicate the success of Crazy Eyes, although it was good enough to keep the fans interested. The group was at a critical point in its history following the release of one more Epic album, Cantamos, which appeared in the fall of 1974 and got no higher than number 76 -- it was the first album on which the bandmembers produced themselves, however, and offered a brace of beautiful songs and gorgeous harmonizing, as well as virtuoso-level playing and beautiful textures, embodied in harder-rocking tracks such as "High and Dry," which seemed to live up to all of the promise the band had shown in 1968 -- and it included unusually strong songwriting contributions by both Rusty Young and Timothy B. Schmit.