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180gm vinyl LP pressing including digital download. 2017 release from the veteran singer/songwriter. Jack Tempchin and Glenn Frey were friends for a long time before either became world-famous, Jack as a hit songwriter and Glenn as an Eagle. It's a friendship first sparked back in 1972 when Frey, then a member of the duo Longbranch Pennywhistle with J.D. Souther, spent a San Diego night at Jack's big house and candle factory, a beloved hippie crash pad. Two years later at his friend Jackson Browne's L.A. home, Jack played Glenn a new song he'd written about a waitress in El Centro called "Peaceful Easy Feeling." So enthralled was Frey by the tune that he recorded it on cassette tape, telling Jack that he'd formed a new band eight days earlier, and wanted to play it for them. Jack's reaction: "Whoa, yeah!" That band was the Eagles. The next day Glenn returned with a recording of the Eagles singing this song. Hearing that track with those now-iconic Eagles harmonies blew his mind. "It was," he said, "the best thing I had ever heard." He already knew Frey was a fine solo singer, but had no clue about his greatness as an arranger and harmony singer. The song became one of The Eagles' most beloved hits, a triumph Jack attributed more to the band than the songwriter. "It is not a normal love song," he said. "But The Eagles, with their arrangement, breathed life into it." It's success led him on a lifelong songwriting path from which he's never veered since. As a solo artist, Tempchin has recorded twelve albums over the years. Now comes Peaceful Easy Feeling - The Songs of Jack Tempchin on Blue Elan Records. A poignant tribute to his fabled friendship with his "musical brother, " Frey, it features Jack's own renditions ten of their songs, performed solo and with guest vocalists Rita Coolidge, Janiva Magness, Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen. "This album," wrote Jack in the liner notes, "is dedicated to my great friend of 46 years, Glenn Frey. Glenn and I always had a fabulous time writing songs together. We would talk about our lives and laugh. He was the funniest person I've ever had the pleasure to know. It was my great good fortune that my buddy happened to be one of the best songwriters of all time. Goodbye my friend and musical brother. Thanks for all the wonderful times." Raised in San Diego, Jack became one of America's most prolific and widely-covered songwriters, crafting classics for himself as a solo artist and band member (as part of the legendary Funky Kings) as well as for a host of other artists, including George Jones, Emmylou Harris, Tom Waits, Glen Campbell, Jackson Browne, Dwight Yoakam, Linda Ronstadt, Tanya Tucker, and many more. His most famous non-Eagles hit, first recorded by the Kings, was "Swaying To The Music (Slow Dancing)," a giant hit for Johnny Rivers, and now a modern standard.
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Limited 180gm vinyl LP pressing in gatefold jacket. Includes digital download. 2016 album from the veteran singer/songwriter. Jack Tempchin is known for penning some of the most durable tunes in American music for a variety of artists that includes the Eagles, George Jones, Glenn Frey, Randy Meisner, Glen Campbell, Emmylou Harris, Trisha Yearwood, Chris Hillman, Patty Loveless, Tom Rush, Kate Wolf, and many others. He's also co-written with a who's who of American roots, rock, country, and folk composers that embraces Tom Waits, J.D. Souther, Bobby Whitlock, Jim Lauderdale and Beth Nielsen Chapman. His iconic songs comprise a soundtrack to a fabled era, but Jack Tempchin creates music in the present tense. One More Song reveals the vibrant spirit of an artist moving forward. "My brain is exploding with songs," he enthuses. "It's great to have things that you've already written that people like - and I play them all when I do a show - but the creative flow demands that when I write a song and really love it, I want to get it out right now." One More Song honors Tempchin's coffeehouse roots. "A guy, an audience, and a song," he says. Circle Ties That Bind, from the collection is one of the first songs Jack wrote; and although the great Hoyt Axton performed it in concert, until now it has never been translated on record. In fact, of the 12 songs curated for the latest project, only three have been previously recorded. The title track, covered both by the late Kate Wolf and the Eagles' Randy Meisner, and Singing in the Streets, originally tracked by Jack's band the Funky Kings who were signed to Arista Records by Clive Davis. The band also cut the venerable Slow Dancing (Swayin' to the Music) famously immortalized by Johnny Rivers, now performed by Jack in an evocative solo rendition.
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Vinyl LP pressing. 2015 album from the acclaimed singer/songwriter. Over 40 years into a stellar career that continues to blossom as a songwriter and an artist, Jack is best known for classic hits he wrote for the Eagles, Glenn Frey, and many others (including "Peaceful Easy Feeling," "Already Gone," "Smuggler's Blues," " You Belong To The City," "Slow Dancing," etc. Learning To Dance is his first studio album in eight years and represents some of his best work ever.
"The result is a dozen songs — each performed and recorded with impeccable taste — that subtly unfold with repeated listenings. Matters of the heart predominate."
– San Diego Union Tribune
“The threads that weave through Tempchin’s earlier work and his newer material are the quality of his narrative storytelling and the crystalline musical sound of every one of the songs.”
– No Depression
On new CD & EP: "Both find Tempchin in fine artistic fettle, emboldened by a restless creative spirit and stubborn refusal to rest on his lofty laurels."
- Rock Cellar Magazine
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