The Bevis Frond: Focus On Nature

One of my favorite underground artists I discovered while in college in the late ’80s is The Bevis Frond. The band was founded by Nick Saloman as a solo recording project. Saloman started his music career in the late ’60s with a band called Bevis Frond Museum, and continued in the ’70s with bands such as Oddsocks and Von Trap Family. He created The Bevis Frond after a motorcycle accident in the early ’80s left him recovering at home from a broken arm. His goal was to make music that sounded like the music which made him want to be a musician in the first place. The early Bevis Frond recordings were made on a home 4-track tape recording system and focused on a combination of psychedelic rock, The Byrds, and Jimi Hendrix. He self-produced a few hundred copies of an album, and was then picked up by Funhouse Records. I first heard him on his albums for Reckless Records in 1988, the first label to pay for him to enter a professional recording studio. Saloman has never stopped recording since those early LPs, and has released over 25 albums during the last 40 years. His new album is called Focus On Nature and sounds very much like the albums I first listened to 40 years ago (The Auntie Winnie Album and Any Gas Faster). The title track is a mid-tempo psych rocker, but there are also upbeat rockers, acoustic ballads, and a variety of ’60s era Brit-psych tunes. This is true for every Bevis Frond album. Discovering this one a few days ago was a wonderful surprise.

To learn more about The Bevis Frond, check out their website or visit their bandcamp page. You can also listen to my favorite song by the band.

To listen to all of the songs of the day, check out the Radio Faux Show Song of the Day playlist.

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