Tim Dawe appeared on the scene in 1969 with an album on Frank Zappa's Straight label. Penrod was a superb debut, full of psychedelic folk rock with lots of organ, harpsichord and brilliant acid guitar. Four masterpieces are included:- Nite Train Home, Junkie John, Sometimes Alone (with strong percussion) and Didn't We Love. The result stands comparison to another more well known Straight artist, Tim Buckley. Quite surprisingly, however, the backing group doesn't seem to have played on other albums (unless they were using pseudonyms).
Dawe then wrote songs for Rod Taylor and It's A Beautiful Day (Places Of Dreams and Bitter Wine, on Choice Quality Stuff/Anytime).
In 1976 he returned with an interesting west-coast album produced by the ex- It's A Beautiful Day member Mitchell Holman, who also played bass on it. Another ex-It's A Beautiful Day, member Hal Wagenet, also played guitar, whilst Patricia Pickens, was an excellent vocalist. On this album Dawe included versions of Bitter Wine and Junkie John together with nine new songs. It was recorded in Coos Bay, Oregon.
In 1978, he produced A Night On The Wine Cellar (Cabernet GWC 101), a live folk/ blues album on which he sang three new songs, along with Billy Roberts and other Californian local artists.
Zappa was my mentor. My first album, PENROD, was released on Straight Records in late 1969. Those were heady times. We were going to change the world. Herb Cohen managed my band, Zappa executive produced. Read Zappa's last interview in Playboy. Straight Records was going to be the first of many great independant labels that would change the music business forever. As we know, that didn't happen. But Zappa tried. Visions of Nirvana. His vision was smothered by the mega record companies and a paranoid government. One song from my album, Junkie John was getting nationwide airplay until the FCC sent around its infamous notice to radio stations essentially banning all songs dealing with drugs. But I had a great fifteen minutes while it lasted. Thanks to Frank. Later I did other things, musical and otherwise.(It's A Beautiful Day et. al., theoretical nuclear physics). Help keep Frank alive; Tim Dawe
I'm currently working on a (book, article, memoir, monograph...?) tentatively titled "An unauthorized autobiography of an unknown superstar".About a year ago a Japanese disc jockey walked into a club I was playing with a copy of PENROD under his arm. He had apparently been looking for it for some time and he asked me to autograph it for him. He was a Zappa fan but also a "It's A Beautiful Day" fan with whom I worked with and wrote songs for in the early 70's. He said he paid 50 bucks for the album so I guess it's a collector's item. Subsequently, he sent me a tape of a show he did on his radio station in Kobe, Japan called "an evening with Tim Dawe." What a grin! Talk later.
Tim
