Sandy Harless - Songs 1973

From a young age, Sandy Harless harbored the tender soul that he’d later put on display with his 1973 LP Songs. At five, he raised an abandoned baby skunk, and later bred exotic fish and sold them to local pet shops. Growing up in Ravenswood, West Virgina, a teenaged Harless turned the sale of one spindly African butterfly fish into a Dan Armstrong Ampeg bass guitar in clear acrylic. As a student at Ohio University in Athens, Harless booked twelve sessions over three weeks of 1973 at Chillicothe’s Appalachia Sound Recording Studio. Set to tape were an assemblage of performances by a group of longtime friends and classmates—identified on the LP jacket as simply Mark, Elise, Phil, and Chauncey—each of whom scheduled overdub sessions around final exams. Pedal steel guitarist, Jon David Call—founding member of Columbus, Ohio country-rock outfit, Pure Prairie League—happened to be in the studio the day Harless dropped by to book his session. On hiatus from the League following their 1972 RCA debut, Call agreed to sit in on the session for Songs.

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