Family Band Vol. 1 & 2

God, I love summer. 

This heat, the unremitting shimmering heat, the great equalizer that makes everyone a sweaty, grimy, stinky mess, no matter how hard they try to evade it. The beautiful look like crap, the downtrodden look like crap, and everyone smells the same since they took coconut out of sunblock because the upcoming generations swell up and explode when coming into contact with any nut substance...

Ever been to Saskatchewan? It's hot out there. In summer. I've been to the Great Rectangle (more of a Great Rhomboid) many, many times... two, in fact - once driving there in a van, the next time a fly-in, and it was scorching. And as flat as my current bank account.

The "Family Band" - or "The Heitt Orchestra featuring Donna Boser," we're not sure which - hails from a small town in Sask called Revenue, while Donna Boser comes from Reward. It's true - Reward and Revenue. The back of the Vol.1 LP tells me so. Both towns - separated by Ear Lake - are edging towards the Alberta border right between Edmonton & Calgary.

There's not a hell of a lot to do in small-town Saskatchewan, trust me. I have relatives in a place called Anaheim that has a gross pop. of around 200 and no Disneyland. But who needs Mickey Mouse when you've got dilapidated farm-houses to explore? While there we (I'll be flipping back 'n forth here for awhile so hold on) found my mom's old house where she was raised for a couple years until they shifted to Vancouver. Lots of furniture and things still lying around, general decay, holes in the walls and ceiling, etc., diamond-sharp sunlight fading everything in sight to a dismal pastel. My various escapades while there included learning exactly how NOT to ride a dirt-bike, exploring an abandoned hockey-rink, finding obscure Iron Maiden posters in Humboldt that I couldn't find in Vancouver, and hearing Toronto's "Get It On Credit" album blasting out of a cousin's car late at night (which I later bought. The album, not the car.), and later on the Go-Go's "Vacation" album with my cousin Craig (rest in peace). I then got shit-faced drunk for the first two times in my life, one of them on homemade wine while watching a very unsettling Linda Blair prison-girl movie. 

9 PM and walking dirt roads in the moonlight while doing goofy kid-things with new-found family members in a new land, crickets performing a symphony on a soundtrack for a movie that's slowly disintegrating in my memory as I stumble forward in life.

If I dive deep enough I swear I can smell the breeze of that night.  

The Heitt's went and formed a band together: dad Frank on accordion, joined by wife Adeline since 1954 on rhythm guitar and further accompanied by sons Blane, 19, on bass, Glen, 15, on banjo and Larry, 13, hitting the pigskins. As of 1974 they needed a vocalist so they could play the bar circuit & cocktail lounges: in came Donna, and they were a hit, so much so that they would travel into AB to record Family Band Vol.1 on the Project 70 label.

Now, I've had the LP for a few years and only did some online searching lately, surprised to find the cover making a few "bad album cover" sites. Not surprised that it's there, as you can see in better detail by clicking the image below, but

surprised that such an obscure item has made a few rounds. 

While somewhat obscure, it probably isn't near as hard-to-find as their second outing, fittingly titled Family Band Vol.2. When I grabbed the album Vol.1 at an SPCA thrift, I found the vinyl for Vol.2 sitting inside. A couple years later I actually came across another copy of Vol.1, and nearly put it back before remembering the mix-up, checked inside, and went home with both volumes in my collection. 

While #1 was on an actual label, 2 was on the family's own imprint (Heitt Records, and recorded at Eagle Creek Studio in Rose Town, SK), and a Google search won't bring up any Vol.2 images. If anyone knows of a scan or image of #2, please send it on in... I'm dying to see the newer group image!) 

The label for the second album features an interesting printing error, if the info from the first LP is right: under 'featuring', they list a "Donna Heitt and Koreen Boser", so someone got the post-its screwed up, as I only hear Donna's vocals going at it, and another search reveals it is in fact "Donna Boser" - she has her own, albeit incredibly slight, entry in a Canadian music directory, listing her as residing in Unity and still singing.

And what singing. I can honestly say I've never witnessed the octavural trillery that emanates from Donna. And that's not bad. Does it mesh with the band's upbeat polka-rock? I like to think that maybe it does. Maybe.

Out of the two collections I've snatched three selections - two covers, and... another cover, as I think "...Beer" is traditional. I would call these the highlights, but if anyone wants more, I'll go ahead and get everything down & make it available.

So, get ready to add yet another file to your "Unlikely Beatles Covers" jacket and please, turn up the volume.

(EDIT: have just added the remainder of the two LP's - minus the three tracks listed - due to request. 1-16 are Vol. 1, 17+ are V2)

Track listing, sorta:
    A1 Searching
    A2 Wedding Waltz
    A3 Help Me Make it
    A4 In Heaven There is No Beer
    A5 Never Ending Love
    A6 Boogie in 'A'
    B1 Blue Skirt Waltz
    B2 Beautiful Sunday
    B3 Love, Love, Love
    B4 Just Another Polka
    B5 Did She Mention My Name
    B6 O Bla Di O Bla Da

Download here:
In Heaven There Is No Beer
When I Saw Her Standing There
Rock Around the Clock/Blue Suede Shoes

Family Band

Come a Little Closer

Alright. Just about everybody loves the "wacky Christian record", usually and almost always something done completely diy on the person's own label but also found on occasion on something like Word Records out of Waco, Texas and/or Vancouver, Canada.

Most of the time it's mere imagery that gets the laughs: the soloist in a purple turtleneck with some expansive haystack-pompadour, the insane-looking couple who absolutely must be spending too much time alone together, or the group-shot with members all in the same outfit (or the opposite, with wildly-conflicting dress issues) in a style that was never a fashion-trend anywhere in the world at any time in history.

All of which is incredibly cool, still. Irreligious and in disagreement with the artists' beliefs or an adamant church-goer - either camp simply has to admit that it takes any kind of guts to pile on the 'higher-the-hair, the-closer-to-God' homemade 'do for a Kodak-moment that'll be lining the store shelves for everybody to judge.

And accompanying the odd unfortunate choice of cover-pic is The Bad Album Title.

"He Touched Me", "Come Unto Me", and "Jesus Use Me" are prime examples (and often used more than once by different artists). The sexual connotations are blindingly apparent in today's society, and surely must have eked a few giggles out of more than a few back at the time when these were first issued.

The people in question, however, obviously hadn't a clue to how the religious jargon of their gospel translated to the masses oblivious to how the Bible stated its verse. On the opposite side are The Doomies: "The End is Near", "Take My Life", "We're Going Up That Way!", "Goodbye, World!" etc. and there's always clouds and someone incongruously happy under the title.

And lastly there is The Message. The actual songs on the album. At one of my favorite record-hunting spots lately I flipped past my 100,000th (I'm counting) abandoned copy of Anne Murray's There's a Hippo in My Tub album (and I have to wonder if Ms. Murray is as ubiquitous in the States as she is in her home country? If not, she's the equivalent of, say, Barry Manilow in amount of thrift-cloggery) and chanced on Wesley L. Moore and the Musical Moores album "Come a Little Closer" on Christian Action Records:

I plucked it out: the cover, not really too out there, pretty borderline. If I'd never seen a homespun religious album I'd probably snatch it up in doubletime, but it's really nothing remarkable. Some high hair, a bunch of too-young kids, but...

Dunno why, but I flipped it for track titles and BAM! there we go, home run, maybe with a guy on first: track five, first side, "Communistic Co-Existence Lie". Completely awesome. 75¢ worth right there. A scan of the rest of the titles in anticipation brought up nothing but the usual suspects of Christian recordings, excepting the enigmatic "It's Bubbling" popping out on the second side, but it was a keeper nonetheless.

I get home, adjust the kink in my back resulting from humping an inordinate amount of records of questionable taste for a couple of hours and fish out the album of the day, flop it on the deck and sit down for a gander at the liner notes. As it turns out, the kids get to play some of the instruments: 10-year-old David plays upright bass, drums and harmonica, and Steven also has a hand at the bass and blows on the melodica, while the two girls ages four and two join in the singing.

Side one is all Dad's, though, singing-wise (he also plays guitar while his wife accompanies on the organ): he's plenty happy about it all, gives a back-story at least once before a tune, and the anti-pollution track "Pure, Clear Water" seems to be a re-working of the country-standard "Cool Water".

And then the aforementioned cut I've been waiting for, and it's just as good as I'd imagined. A slight change of lyrics with 'Communist co-existant lie", and he calls it 'Markist' instead of Marxist, and the message is of wholesome American rejection of the then-Soviet Union way of life.

That was as much as I'd hoped for, but side two pushes it up a notch by having a Dad-free cluster of anthems sung for the most part by the children. In "I'm Gonna Rise", we hear David straining out, "I'm gonna rise as Jesus comes through the air", and Peggy Sue (the four year old) doing the Bubbling song.

As a bonus, tucked inside the jacket was a 7-inch with eight tracks on it, some making a repeat appearance on the full-length, BUT - these EP tracks are different recordings, apparently done a year earlier. Make sure you compare the two versions of "It's Bubbling"!

(Note the 'doomie' track) 

None of this I can make fun of. 

The kids are more or less inept at their chosen instruments (as you'll hear on the one instrumental track somewhere in there), the homespun lyrics and the vocals - with the exception of the elder Peggy who has quite the pipes - , well... back ten years or so my younger, more caustic self would have had a snide and ugly field day, but this is just so earnest, and really, so cute (in a non-patronizing way) I can't bat a bad word at it.

Track listing (LP):
    A1 Come a Little Closer
    A2 Don't Forget to Pray
    A3 In the Land of Beginning Again
    A4 Pure, Clean Water
    A5 Communistic Co-Existence Lie
    A6 Sing-a-Long
    B1 I Will Never Be Lonely Again
    B2 I'm Gonna Rise / Leaning on the Everlasting Arms
    B3 It's Bubbling / Somewhere Working for My Lord
    B4 A Talking We Will Go / With Christ in the Vessel
    B5 He's Got the Whole World / Hallalu, Hallalu
    B6 God's Miracles

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LP

7"