For all the other Nick Drake fans (or fanatics like myself) out there:
Family Tree (Tsunami LG/Fontana, in the US and Island Records in Europe) will feature previously unreleased tracks from the vaults of the Estate of Nick Drake. The album tells the story of Nick’s musical development in the years prior to recording his official debut album Five Leaves Left.
Recorded in the late 1960’s, the 28 tracks feature 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, “Poor Mum” and “Try to Remember”, written and performed by Molly Drake bears testament to her musical influence on her son, conscious or otherwise.
After Nick’s death in 1974, his parents Rodney and Molly Drake began to receive visits from fans compelled to understand more about the source of his music by traveling to the place where he lived and died. For Rodney and Molly, this was no invasion of privacy. On the contrary, aware that this might be the beginning of the recognition that their son had longed for in his lifetime, they invited those fans in and quite often shared the music a young Nick had recorded on an early reel-to-reel recorder. Often fans left with their own cassette tapes of those songs.
Some poor versions of these tapes circulated among collectors for decades. The overwhelming fan demand for unreleased material or stronger versions of these bootlegged songs has thrown up a challenge to the Estate to release something worthy of his legacy.
"The Family Tree release will include a recent letter written by Gabrielle Drake to her brother in which she reminisces about their growing up, their family life, and explains how she has tried to preserve his legacy as she thinks he would approve. “I hope that, in the circumstances, you could have given “Family Tree” your blessing. Or if not, that you could have at least looked on with that wry smile of yours.”
Family Tree, unlike Nick’s albums which contained only his own material, features the young artist mastering the compositions made famous by Bob Dylan, Blind Boy Fuller, and Jackson C Frank. It also showcases his early songwriting skills on tracks like “They’re Leaving Me Behind”, “Blossom” and “Come Into The Garden”. In segues between tracks, the listener hears Nick speaking to himself, even laughing in between takes. The album also includes two versions of songs that ended up on Nick’s first album “Five Leaves Left” which were recorded by his arranger Robert Kirby whilst they were both studying at Cambridge University in 1968.
You need only hear Nick and Gabrielle’s exquisite blood harmonies on “All My Trials”