Track Listing

1. Come In To The Garden
2. They're Leaving Me Behind
3. Time Piece
4. Poor Mum
5. Winter Is Gone
6. All My Trials
7. Kegelstatt Trio
8. Strolling Down The Highway
9. Padding In The Rushes
10. Cocaine Blues
11. Blossom
12. Been Smokin' Too Long
13. Black Mountain Blues
14. Tomorrow Is A Long Time
15. If You Leave Me
16. Here Come The Blues
17. Sketch 1
18. Blues Run The Game
19. My Baby's So Sweet
20. Milk And Honey
21. Kimbie
22. Bird Flew By
23. Rain
24. Strange Meeting II
25. Day Is Done
26. Come Into The Garden
27. Way To Blue
28. Try To Remember

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7674 in Music
• Released on: 2007-07-10
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
2007 rarities collection from one of the most influential UK Folk artists of all time. Family Tree tells the story of Nick Drake's musical development in the years prior to his debut album Five Leaves Left in 1969. It features lo-fi recordings made on a reel-to-reel tape recorder at his home, Far Leys in Tanworth In Arden, as well as eight songs recorded on cassette during his sojourn in Aix En Provence. The inclusion of two songs by his mother Molly Drake bears testament to her influence on her son. His final performances on Family Tree, 'Day Is Done' and 'Way To Blue', recorded by his Cambridge friend and arranger Robert Kirby are the end of one story and the beginning of another. Family Tree comprises mostly other people's compositions: the Folk and Blues tunes used by many a young guitarist in the '60s, attempting to master the fretboard. Nick played Jackson C. Frank, Bert Jansch, Dave Van Ronk and, of course, Bob Dylan. Booklet printed on 'bible ' paper for initial pressings only! 28 tracks. Island.

Amazon.com
You'd think there wouldn't be much more to present by a songwriter who recorded three albums in his lifetime and has been dead since 1974. However, interest in Nick Drake's riveting music has grown enormously in the new millennium. Rarities were added to a number of posthumous collections, but with Family Tree his estate has brought forth an hour of music that predates his first album, Five Leaves Left. This set illuminates Drake's musical background, with his mother and sister appearing, and even Drake himself on clarinet for a Mozart trio. He covers traditional numbers as well as songs by Dylan, Blind Boy Fuller, and Jackson C. Frank. There are clear links to his own early compositions, including a couple early versions that appeared on his debut. Some of this has circulated on bootlegs over the years, but here assembled and sonically polished, it radiates with warmth. Recorded in casual circumstances, there are bits of chatter and laughter between songs, painting a picture of a happy, loving home scene. --David Greenberger

Customer Reviews

Going Back in Time
Nick Drake's material has been packaged and repackaged extensively, but this is one posthumous release that truly provides fresh insight into his development as an artist. Comprised mostly of home demos and mixing in a generous helping of recordings of his mother, as well, this collection feels almost like a time portal, as though we've been given passage back into Nick's early life. I love the imperfections that go along with it; a flubbed lyric or dropped note here or there, his little commentaries at the end of some pieces, the sound of someone clanking a bottle in the kitchen behind him on one track. You feel like you're in the Drake's living room, and yet it doesn't just seem like the cannibalization of material from before Nick had fully emerged as an artist. There are some amazing and beautiful tracks here, including "They're Leaving Me Behind," "Winter is Gone," and even the brief "Sketch I." All the talent as a singer and player is there, just in a raw, early form. And the liner notes from his sister are a touching addition to the package.

Maybe not the best option for introducing yourself to Nick Drake's music (I might pick "Pink Moon" for that), but definitely a must-own for anyone who already calls themselves a fan.

Nick's Blues
In the 34 years since the death of this coffeehouse (though he may have never played at one) folk legend, many of Nick Drake's most rabid fans shoved off to the English countryside on a hedgerow leaping pilgrimage to Tanwerth-in-Arden, where Drake hung out with his family to be carefree, lucid and eager to create fascinatingly original music, and hone his blues folk leanings to meld with his increasing melancholic and original laments in the headiest of pop music periods in the sixties. It was also where he holed up from the pressures of life away from the family nook, and to combat his debilitating, to the point of catatonic, depression that eventually led to the much debated and murky accidental death in 1974.

It is here where the loving sister Gabrielle presided over the estate, allowing some of the diehard fans to lodge in Nick's room, after which, their gracious hostess would allow them to walk out with some cherished home recordings of her brothers music before he recorded Five Leaves Left. These recordings were decidedly cloudy in sound quality but heavily bootlegged never the less. The estate at FarLeys along with some original recordings from Aix En Provence, France provided by Nick's friends Robin Frederick and Robert Kirby has finally saw through to clean up the sound and give the recordings a much deserved official release.

This Cd comes with insightful liner notes from friends and family, and a detailed list of the recordings and their origin. It can be seen as a Holy Grail for Drake enthusiasts and a muddy but intriguing home recording for the uninitiated. Most of those unfamiliar with Drake would assume he was simply a morose folkie, but it is in these bits, more than anywhere, when his blues base is exposed. His uniqueness came about by being the hopeless romantic lost in the blues, and meandering his tunings to blues of his record collection no doubt including Rev Gary Davis, Robert Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, to the sad fluttering folk sounds found in family gathering tunes played by his mother in these recordings. While seen as odd by some who wonder what they're doing here, it is quite easy to see the resonating sadness in his mother's voice that Nick would later have in his own timbre.

The songs are quite listenable enough to appreciate this collection as music and not just a historical document. They're Leaving Me Behind finds him already predicting his lingering depression and perhaps cluing the listeners in to what caused it all. Elsewhere, he plunges into the Jackson C Frank songbook for a lot of his 1967 blues workouts, and hones his Bert Jansch meets the acoustic rockabilly busker guitar playing that has so many listeners pining to pin down, on tunes by Jansch and David Van Ronk. He often liked to tackle traditional ballads and it's quite fascinating and rewarding to see how clearly they influenced the embryotic versions of his originals in a low-fi stripped down setting. Perhaps some of his best world weary leanings come from the duet he does with his sister in All My Trials. One can imagine what it would have been like had he saw through enough to record with eager fan Francois Hardy before his mental collapse prevented him.

While the quality is understandably shaky, it has been cleaned up enough to grab hold of those just discovering him or retracing his history. It is certain to keep his followers interested. In the world of sensitive melancholy folksingers, Nick was the genuine article and still has not been matched. This recording not only shows he was more than a folksinger; he had the blues and loads of it. It is probably the recording that best captures his true spirit. No need to get a passport and fly to England. His gracious family and friends will bring him to you.

Some of Nick's best!
Having been a Nick Drake fan since the mid-70s, I can say that this fascinating, heartbreaking release is a must-have for any serious fan of Nick's. The songs all pre-date Nick's first album, the sound quality is of a home recording-- but it's all great. As another reviewer said, it's like having Nick in your living room just performing some songs one after the other--just him and a guitar. (In some cases his mother performs, or he does a duet with his sister.) This is a truly beautiful CD, and kudos go to Nick's sister Gabrielle for releasing it. Thank you, Gabrielle!