Week of April 16, 2000
Personnel:
Miller Anderson - guitar, vocals
Eric Dillon - drums
Peter Dines - keyboards, guitar, vocals
Jim Leverton - bass, vocals
Chris Mercer - sax
Mick Weaver - keyboards, percussion
Pete Willsher - steel guitar
Album:
Hemlock (Deram SML 1102) 1973
(CD: Walhalla WH 90346, 2004)
45:
Mr. Horizontal/Beggar Man (Deram DM 379) 1973
The band's best-known member was Miller Anderson who, apart from recording a solo album back in 1971, was also in The Voice, At Last The 1958 Rock'n'Roll Show, Keef Hartley Band (all pre-Hemlock) and Dog Soldier* (1975). He now lives in Shoreham-By-Sea and has been performing regularly with Spencer Davis Group as well as recently guesting on a Jon Lord solo album, "Pictured Within".
More or less a vehicle for Anderson's songwriting output (he wrote all
of the album's material), Hemlock sounds by no means artificial or put-together. Rather, they were a typical British blues act, without the requisite posing. Naturally, the atmosphere is very serious and dominated by Mick
Weaver's** passionate organ-playing.
"Mr. Horizontal" has been included on the "Progressive Pop Inside The 70s" CD.
Taken from The Tapestry of Delights - The
Comprehensive Guide to British Music of the Beat, R&B, Psychedelic and
Progressive Eras 1963-1976, Vernon Joynson
ISBN 1 899855 04 1
Edited by Alex Gitlin
*Dog Soldier (CD: Mason Records MR90330, 2004) was really a new line-up of Keef Hartley Band
put together by Keef and Miller after a three-year hiatus, therefore, I have included it in my
PICK on Keef Hartley Band, week of February 22, 1997.
**Mick Weaver had also played with Keef Hartley Band.
The only album ever released by this outfit (Hemlock) is truly one of the
70s British rock's hidden jewels - now available on CD! Soulful, melodic and unpretentious, this was the next career step for
Miller Anderson who'd left Keef Hartley Band
a year earlier, and could easily be construed as his second solo album (you wouldn't be too far off the mark thinking that it was, anyway).
It had all the right ingredients for success, however, it failed due to miserable promotion and the general lack of effort on behalf of Deram, which caused this short-lived formation to dissolve, while
Miller's next step was to join (again, for a short while) Kim Simmonds'
Savoy Brown, together with Chicken
Shack's main man Stan Webb, which resulted in a lone album in 1974, entitled,
"Boogie Brothers".
Alex Gitlin, 2004