Sacramento, California, wasn’t a hotbed of country music: it was over 200 miles distant from Bakersfield and over 2,000 miles away from Nashville. Nevertheless, it was home to Redwing, a country-rock band that evolved out of Glad after Timothy B. Schmit left to join Poco. This debut included 10 originals plus covers of country pioneer Jimmie Rodgers and Nashville “hippie-cowboy” Mickey Newbury. After this debut, Redwing recorded four more albums between 1972 and 1975, never breaking through.
What We Said Then: “[The] finest hard rock/country band in the business today, the finest since Moby Grape first commandeered the Fillmore stage back in ’67… Licks that won’t quit. Long lazy ones. Short hard ones. All perfect in both taste and execution, and vocals that will wrench out all the tightness in your throat after too much of shock rock… Redwing… seems to both understand and contain the mellowness of the country living with the overriding sound of the hard urbanity that now intrudes upon the farmer and his fields.”
— J. R. Young, Rolling Stone #85 (June 24th, 1971)