Chris Hillman - BIDIN' MY TIME
It's over a decade that Chris Hillman released a solo outing, "pressured" by often collaborator and occasional duet partner Herb Pederson who got Tom Petty as a producer on board, Chris decided to show us one more time, why he is one of the most influential folk- or country-rock Illuminati. Originally hailing from the Bluegrass scene, he sang with VernChris Hillman - BIDIN' MY TIME
It's over a decade that Chris Hillman released a solo outing, "pressured" by often collaborator and occasional duet partner Herb Pederson who got Tom Petty as a producer on board, Chris decided to show us one more time, why he is one of the most influential folk- or country-rock Illuminati. Originally hailing from the Bluegrass scene, he sang with Vern and Rex Gosdin in the Golden State Boys, was a co-founder of the Byrds, later the Flying Burrito Brothers, a member of Manassas, other incarnation including even other progenitors and the leader of the Desert Rose Band, besides having a solo career as well.
“BIDIN' MY TIME” is a cornucopia of all of Hillman's musical stages in life, there is bluegrass, three revisions on Byrds songs, country-rock and it closes with Hillman’s version of producer Tom Petty’s song “Wildflowers.” Petty brought keyboardist Benmont Tench, drummer Steve Ferrone and guitarist Mike Campbell (on "Restless") from the Heartbreakers. Roger McGuinn and David Crosby join Hillman for a mini Byrds reunion; Pederson, John Jorgenson, and Jay Dee Maness are old friends from the Desert Rose Band.
The album opens jingly-jangly with a re-edition of the Pete Seeger and Welsh poet Idris Davies classic "Bells Of Rhymney" which appeared on the Byrds' first album "MR. TAMBOURINE MAN" with Crosby joining in on harmony vocals. The second Byrds retake, "She Don't Care About Time" (Gene Clark) hails from the "TURN! TURN! TURN!" sessions, even though never included on the original album, it was the B-side of the of the title track's single version; Jorgenson's 12-string electric guitar adds a lovely touch to it. "Old John Robertson" from "THE NOTORIOUS BYRD BROTHERS" (Hillman/McGuinn) got a lyrical re-write into "New Old John Robertson" and became a bluegrass-country story song with Pederson on banjo and Punch Brothers' Gabe Witcher adding fiddle. "Here She Comes Again," another McGuinn/Hillman composition from their McGuinn-Hillman-Clark days, and up to now only available on the Australian Live album "Backstage Pass," got a reworking and now sounds like it was featured 15 years earlier as an original Byrds song, with McGuinn delivering his signature 12-string electric guitar picking and Hillman playing bass, as he did in the Byrds.
Playing around in the studio on Sonny Curtis' "Walk Right Back" (a Top-Ten-Hit for the Everly Brothers), Petty told them to record it, according to Jeff Slate's excellent "Rockcellar Magazine's article. With a great acoustic guitar lead by Jorgenson, they stuck to the Everly Brothers' one-verse-only version of the song, instead of the two verse version, Sonny, Perry Como, Andy Williams and others recorded.
Besides all these crate-digger songs above, the new material Hillman co-wrote with longtime collaborator Steve Hill and family friend Nathan C. Barrow's composition "When I Get A Little Money" need to be mentioned as well. Writing and singing from the perspective of a now 73-year-old, he reflects on all of the ills in this world and the finality, the limited time we spend here, but all these songs have that shimmer of hope that keeps us going. "Restless," the title track "Bidin' My Time," and "Such Is The World That We Live In" with its lines
No darkness will hold us down
No empty words will make a sound
We will be together again
Such is the world that we live in
are great examples and make this album a gem of 2017.… Expand
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