Black Orchids - AWOL (1972)

Black Orchids - AWOL (1972)

Personnel:
ROBIN TROWBRIDGE drms A B
JOHN WHERLE gtr A B C
ROB HAMER bs B C
PAUL BENNINGTON drms C
JOE STEVENS bs

ALBUM:
1(B/C) THE BLACK ORCHIDS (Private Pressing) c1972 R2

A limited private pressing issued in a plain white sleeve, made for fans and friends of the band. The music is reputedly psych with long guitar solos. The band were formed by John Wherle and Robin Trowbridge in Charleston, West Virginia in 1970, and recorded the album in John Wherle's basement studio.

Robb Trowbridge: "A friend, Jack Griffith told me that John Wherle was looking for a drummer for a two man band. I took my drums over to his house and after months of practice, and I mean months, we had Black Orchids. We had to perfect a type of sound because we were just a two man band. Guitar and drums. John developed a style he called subharmonics, which used a type of dreamy open string chords. Joe Stevens came along when we played the Earth Day Festival in 1970, at Kanawha State Forest with many other bands. John and I felt we could get a bigger sound with the added bass. All our songs were written by ourselves except a cover of Yellow Cab Man by Gun and they were all instrumentals".
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Black Orchids hailed from Charleston, West Virginia and consisted of John Wehde, Rob Hamer and Paul Bennington. In 1972 they pressed “AWOL”, their sole output, on their own Black Orchids Records label in a tiny edition of 200 copies. The album came in a plain white sleeve, shrinkwrapped with the title and band info written on the outside of the shrink with a marker pen. You can imagine how many of these survived intact! The album consists of one track “AWOL” which was recorded live and being 29 minutes long was spread over the two sides of the LP. This CD version has the track rejoined as one continuous piece.

Tracklist:

1. AWOL