By David Steffen

Remember your first echo? A sound heard when you may have been standing at the edge of a chasm, or at the shore of a quiet lake, or perhaps within the canyons of a large city. Many can recall creating or hearing someone else’s echo of “hello” while visiting a cave or a mountain top. Simply stated, echoes are sounds that, once projected, can bounce off of buildings, cliffs, lakes, or other surfaces and return to your ears. Having worked in the music industry, I can testify that there are echo chambers in recording studios, and that they are an integral part of the recording process. Over the years I visited recording studios in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta and London, and I can confirm to the creation of “manufactured” echoes to enhance almost any recording.

The Canyons: Manhattan (left) and Arizona (right)

Beyond the canyons of Manhattan or Arizona, there are other echoes, including those of an historical nature. When seemingly identical or similar events take place—years or centuries apart—we can suggest that what we are experiencing today is an echo from the past. Echoes, whether introduced mechanically, intellectually, in nature, or connected with some historical reference, familiarity is the key.

I sorely miss record stores. Granted my age has something to do with that, but it isn’t nostalgia. Record stores were not just retailers selling music, but were often social gathering spaces. For example, friends of mine have lamented the passing of Tower Records (as have I.) But whatever I feel, it’s not only about my almost 40-year friendship with Russ Solomon, the man from Sacramento who created Tower Records all those many years ago. I can also separate my friendship with Carl and Larry Rosenbaum who owned Flip Side Records in Chicago, or Terry Courier from Music Millennium in Portland (and so many others). The social nature of music is well documented.

I have pleasant memories and random thoughts about the hundreds (thousands, really) of times I stood in front of racks of records in those and other stores. There were many moments when the store owner or manager would play an album on the store’s sound system and suddenly, I would pause, look up—‘cause that’s where the sound was coming from—and wonder, who is that? And then I might glance around the store to see who else “got it”. Who else in the store was captured by the music coming through the speakers? I know it has an impact, because that’s how I discovered Lucinda Williams on a turntable in Portland. And “Little Latin Lupe Lu” by the Righteous Brothers while standing in Radio Doctors in Milwaukee. That’s what I mean when I tell you that record stores were commerce, of course, but they were also social.

In 1970 I walked into Lake Street Station, an independent record store in Madison, Wisconsin. Ladies and gentlemen, that was a record store. Small enough to be intimate, big enough to have too many records for any music-lover to buy. While there, the owner/manager—whose name, I’m sorry I can’t remember—put an album on the turntable and, decidedly or coincidentally looked over at me, paused for a moment, and waited for a reaction. That’s all it took. Having walked to the counter, our conversation went something like this. “Who is that”, I asked. “Like it?” he asked. Of course I said yes, and picked up the cover laying on the counter. That album is still part of my collection, half a century later. Yes, for 50 years, it has been a well-listened to keepsake. (And I have a CD backup, just in case).

The artist was a young Englishman, well-schooled and yet, perhaps not. He went to an English prep school, and continued on to a college near Cambridge, but, not Cambridge. He attended Fitzwilliam, a school which became a college about the same time that Nick arrived—1966. One biographer wrote, “Fitzwilliam has more in common with the boxy, modern hotels which proliferate on industrial parks close to major motorway exits than with the traditional Cambridge colleges which grace the heart of the city.” Nick was English first, European second, and musically fit the mold of artists who emerged within or adjacent to the Woodstock Generation. The song I heard that day inside Lake Street Station was “River Man”, from an album titled “Five Leaves Left”, released in late 1969 by Island Records. And that is how I found Nick Drake.

Ignoring my immediate affection for the music, the album did not inspire the critics to write raves. Melody Maker’s review of “Five Leaves Left” is a case in point. “All smokers will recognize the meaning of the title—it refers to the five leaves left near the end of a packet of cigarette [rolling] papers. It sounds poetic and so does composer, singer and guitarist Nick Drake. His debut album for Island is interesting.” At the very least, that’s like evading the solicitation of a compliment. You know, like when your girlfriend asks you, “Do you think I’m pretty?” and you reply, “I love your dress.” The British paper the New Music Express wasn’t any more impressed with Drake’s album, closing its review, “. . . there is not nearly enough variety on this debut LP to make it interesting.” Drake was a young man when he died in 1974.

“River Man” is a brilliant, haunting, and unforgettable track. Demonstrating its durable appeal, a couple of dozen (or more) cover versions of “River Man” have been recorded. The list includes Andy Bey, Claire Martin, Chryssie Hynde (Pretenders), and Robyn Hitchcock. Then there’s my favorite cover version. Jazz vocalist Lizz Wright included it on her album “Freedom & Surrender” (Concord, 2015). Drake would be pleased, I’m certain, that more than forty years after his death, his music continues to be discovered, by consumers, certainly, but most importantly by artists who see the beauty, charm and lyrical relevance, inspiring them to create a new interpretation.

There’s a lot here about Nick Drake, and as much as I appreciate his music and lament the fact that he left us so many years ago, I’m really writing about us. Music continues to be commerce, but streaming iTunes, Spotify, and any other service has zero magic when compared to self-discovery, in the company of other music lovers, in the aisles of Tower Records or Lake Street Station. A lot of it is up to us. Let’s pass the word when a song, an album, a musician, a writer touches us. Please. Pass it on. We can all use a bit of great music to lift us out of these remote and often solitary days.