British psych vets the Bevis Frond return to San Francisco
The Bevis Frond, a celebrated UK psychedelic rock project led by guitarist/songwriter Nick Saloman for nearly four decades, comes to San Francisco for the first time in 25 years when the band headlines the Great American Music Hall Tuesday night.
Enamored with the psychedelic sounds of Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles and Cream, Saloman got his first band experience as a teen in the late 1960s playing covers the Bevis Frond Museum in the late 1960s. During college, he played with his roommate's folk-rock group Oddsocks and contributed bass guitar and keyboards to the group's sole release Men of the Moment in 1975. The guitarist would not have a proper outlet for his songwriting until late in the decade when he formed the Von Trapp Family and released the band's first single -- a three-song EP of chugging, punk-tinged psychedelia that nodded to Hawkwind -- on his own Woronzow Records label.
Saloman would start a second band called Room 13 after the Von Trapp Family dissolved that put out only one 12-inch single before a serious motorcycle accident would change the musician's career trajectory. His injuries impacted his guitar playing ability for a time (he reportedly had his left arm set so he could still play), but more importantly, a settlement from the collision provided the money that allowed Saloman to purchase his first four-track recorder.
Mixing his penchant for fiery guitar pyrotechnics with a variety of '60s rock influences (the pop craft of the Beatles, the jangling explorations of LA pioneers the Byrds as well as the darker tributaries of the Doors and Love) and the tuneful progressive punk of Northwestern band the Wipers, the musician crafted his remarkable first album under the moniker the Bevis Frond entirely by himself. Running the gamut from blazing six-string meltdowns and hook-laden garage rock to more introspective folk musings, the lo-fi collection Miasma showcased a songwriter with a broad range of talent. Saloman pressed up 250 copies of the brilliant effort and was surprised when shops that specialized in psychedelia began contacting him to order more records.
Saloman would make a cottage industry out of his interest in psych, recording and releasing early classics like Inner Marshland and Triptych that led to a deal with Reckless Records in the late '80s in addition to co-founding the independent zine Ptolemaic Terrascope that covered modern and vintage psychedelia. In addition to producing a voluminous body of work as the Bevis Frond, Saloman would also embark on a variety of collaborative projects, recording a 1990 album with British acid-rock great Twink (who had played with the Pretty Things, the Pink Fairies and Tomorrow) and later working with Bay Area '60s icon Country Joe McDonald and songwriters Mary Lou Lord and Anton Barbeau. He also released a greatest hits retrospective with the Bevis Frond concert document recorded in 1998 at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco backed by longtime bassist Ade Shaw and former Camel drummer Andy Ward.
While the musician would take a break from recording new music during the 2000s, he returned to his prolific ways following the release of The Leaving of London in 2011, issuing a new album and touring almost every years. More recently, Saloman has partnered with British imprint Fire Records to not only release the band's back catalog but to also put out new Bevis Frond music with no less than three double-albums including last year's acclaimed opus, Focus On Nature.
Saloman will lead the current live quartet version of the Bevis Frond with Shaw, guitar foil Paul Simmons and drummer Dave Pearce through a career-spanning selection of songs when the band's first U.S. tour in a quarter century comes to the Great American Music Hall Tuesday night. The band is joined by fellow Fire Records acts the Reds, Pinks & Purples, a San Francisco psych-pop band led by songwriter Glenn Donaldson, and Atlanta-based group Immaterial Possession.
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