Jack Tempchin
Album: Learning To Dance
Label: Blue Elan
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.jacktempchin.com

If you're a fan of 70s Laurel Canyon then Tempchin's name should be very familiar. Perhaps his biggest claim to fame is as the writer of Eagles classic Peaceful, Easy Feeling but his songbook also includes co-writes on their Already Gone and Glenn Frey's Smuggler's Blues as well as Someone You Used To Know for George Jones and White Shoes for Emmylou Harris. He was also a member of short-lived trio The Funky Kings (which also included Jules Shear in the line-up) whose 1976 eponymous debut includes the song Slow Dancing' which, as Swayin' To The Music, would give Johnny Rivers a Top 10 hit the following year.

When the band split after Arista boss Clive Davis passed on an option for a second album, Tempchin released a solo album in 1978, which would be his last for 16 years. Since returning to the recording scene, he's released four studio albums, this, his first in eight years, being his fifth. Given his background, it's pretty much what you might assume, with strong shades of California country-rock, Tempchin's tenor sounding more varied and especially deep and rich on the title track, a strings and sax-enhanced, starry-sky ballad on which Tempchin's tenor is deep and rich, reminding me slightly of fellow Californian John Stewart's Gold era.

Produced by Joel Piper (who also plays piano), there's a big sound to the likes of Love's First Lesson (co-penned with Joel Rafael and featured on his own Baladista album), the reflective Room To Run and, as you might expect from the title, Big Sky Country, but, embracing themes of love and romance, the album finds quieter tones too on piano ballad Living This Love, The End of the Affair, You Can Go Home (a co-write with Chris Hillman) and the gentle acoustic Finally Found Me. While it wouldn't have sounded out of place back in those heady 70s days, it has a timeless sound and quality to it that ensures it's equally at home on today's speakers for those with a taste for well-crafted, sincerely sung and classic American peaceful easy listening.

There's also a four track EP available titled Room To Run on which the father-and son title track is accompanied by the wittily acerbic divorce song The High Cost of Hate (I'm a cheating bastard, and you're a selfish bitch, let's call it quits, and make some lawyers rich"), Jesus and Mohammed's meditation on the blindness of religious divide and the lazy, slacker roll of Summertime Bum that has a similar vibe to The Lovin Spoonful's Daydream.

Mike Davies