Chuck & Mary Perrin - The Next Of Kin (1970) (2011)

Recorded live the weekend of December 5 & 6, 1969 at Jerry Milam‘s Golden Voice Sound Studio in South Pekin, Illinois. Mary & I played guitar & sang, but this time we incorporated a rhythm section. A few months earlier, I facilitated & produced a recording @ Golden Voice for a Notre Dame band called First Friday. This was an amazingly talented ensemble that featured fleet & talented rock guitarist Norm Zeller, & bassist Andy Wallace (who is now one of the most successful mixing engineers in the music business, having mixed Nirvana’s “Nevermind”, as well as projects for Sheryl Crow, Rage Against the Machine, Jeff Buckley, Smashing Pumpkins, etc). At any rate, Norm & Andy joined us on most of the tracks, as did Peoria Shag drummer Dave Porter.
Bruce Brown handled the cover photographic effects, which included making a Chuck & Mary framed photo appear to be hanging on the wall of an old tintype photo I had found at a garage sale. Remember this was in the days before computers & such things as Photoshop.
This was our second album, & we were determined to get out & share our musical vision. We would drive up to Chicago almost every weekend to perform, mostly at an intimate little spot called the Barbarossa in the Rush Street/Gold Coast area.
And summers we’d take off in my old ’53 International Harverster travelall (with orange plexiglas windows!) to sing at places like the Raven Gallery in Detroit, The Bitter End, Cafe Au Go Go, & the Gaslight in New York’s Village, The Unicorn & the Turk’s Head in Boston. While in NYC, we signed on with the College Coffee house circuit, which sent us on a tour, spending a week @ each college or university where we would perform 3-4 nights in the local coffee house or student center. We toured Ohio, North Carolina, Kentucky, & Tennessee, always gravitating back to Chicago where we were developing a strong support base.