Search - Brewer & Shipley :: Shake Off the Demon / Rural Space

Well, I'm waiting to get my hands on a copy, too!

L. Jaffe | Charlottesville, VA | 06/22/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"These two albums, the third and fourth releases of Brewer & Shipley on the Kama Sutra label back in the early 1970's, have been out of print for the last several decades, and Acadia has been threatening to reissue them both as a cd "two-fer" now for most of 2008. So far, nothing. Don't hold your breath.



As far as the music is concerned, this is vintage Brewer & Shipley material that any fan of theirs should have access to. Several of the songs that are found here, "Shake Off The Demon", "Rock Me On The Water" (from the "Shake Off The Demon" album), "Yankee Lady", and "Black Sky" (from the "Rural Space" album) have become staples in the listing of favorites. Even though the previous two albums of theirs, "Weeds" and "Tarkio" were the duo's high-water mark in their career, these two albums' unavailability represent a gap in their musical history that needs to be rectified, along with their first recording, "Down In L.A.", their two albums for Capitol Records ("ST-11261" and "Welcome To Riddle Bridge"), and Michael Brewer's first solo album, produced by the late Dan Fogelberg for Warner Brothers in 1983 ("Beauty Lies"). Here's hoping this reissue label, or any other, has the stones to make all of this music readily available again.



Although, song for song, the material in these recordings, particularly the "Rural Space" set, is not quite as commercially catchy as their previous recordings, these songs represent a time of musical growth and experimentation that Michael Brewer and Tom Shipley were going through at this time, further evidenced by their subsequent releases, ergo, 4 out of 5 stars."