''Nomadness'' is the ninth studio

album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

band

Strawbs Strawbs (or The Strawbs) are an English rock band founded in 1964 as the Strawberry Hill Boys. The band started out as a bluegrass group, but eventually moved on to other styles such as folk rock and progressive rock. They are best known fo ...

. It was their last album recorded for

A&M Records A&M Records was an American record label founded as an independent company by Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss in 1962. Due to the success of the discography A&M released, the label garnered interest and was acquired by PolyGram in 1989 and began distr ...

and their first with no full-time keyboard player since 1970's

Dragonfly A dragonfly is a flying insect belonging to the infraorder Anisoptera below the order Odonata. About 3,000 extant species of true dragonfly are known. Most are tropical, with fewer species in temperate regions. Loss of wetland habitat threate ...

. Indeed, Strawbs would not feature a full-time keyboard player until 1978 when

Andy Richards Andrew John Richards (born 26 October 1952) is a British-Australian pianist, composer, music producer and keyboardist. The artists he has played with include Frankie Goes to Hollywood, George Michael, Propaganda, Grace Jones, Rush, Annie Lenno ...

joined the band. All the tracks are timed at less than five minutes giving the album a lighter, less 'epic' feel in contrast to the previous three studio albums.

Rick Wakeman Richard Christopher Wakeman (born 18 May 1949) is an English keyboardist best known as a former member of the progressive rock band Yes across five tenures between 1971 and 2004, and for his solo albums released in the 1970s. Born and raised ...

came back to help on electric harpsichord on one song.

Track listing

Side one #"To Be Free" (

Dave Cousins Dave Cousins (born David Joseph Hindson; 7 January 1945) is an English musician who has been the leader, singer and most-active songwriter of Strawbs since 1967. Career Cousins is a founder member of the Strawbs, which started out as the S ...

) – 4:17 #"Little Sleepy" ( Dave Lambert) – 4:10 #"The Golden Salamander" (Cousins) – 4:57 #"Absent Friend (How I Need You)" (Cousins) – 4:42 #"Back on the Farm" (Cousins) – 2:42 Side two #"So Shall Our Love Die?" (Cousins) – 3:39 #"Tokyo Rosie" (Cousins) – 2:48 #"A Mind of My Own" (

Rod Coombes Rodney Coombes (born 15 May 1946) is an English musician. He was mostly known from playing drums with British bands Stealers Wheel in 1972 to 1973 and again in 2008 and Strawbs from 1974 to 1977 and again from 2004 to 2010. Career He has pla ...

) – 4:33 #"Hanging in the Gallery" (Cousins) – 4:32 #"The Promised Land" (

Chas Cronk Chas Cronk is an English musician, best known as the bass player and acoustic guitarist for the Strawbs from 1973 to 1980 and again from 2004 to the present. Chas also toured and recorded with Steve Hackett and Rick Wakeman in the 1980s and Cr ...

) – 4:07 Bonus tracks - 2008 reissue CD #"Still Small Voice" (Cousins) – 2:27 #"It's Good to See the Sun" (Cousins) – 4:05

Personnel

Strawbs

–

lead vocals The lead vocalist in popular music is typically the member of a group or band whose voice is the most prominent melody in a performance where multiple voices may be heard. The lead singer sets their voice against the accompaniment parts of t ...

, (tracks 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9 and 10)

backing vocals A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are use ...

acoustic guitar An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...

dulcimer The word dulcimer refers to two families of musical string instruments. Hammered dulcimers The word ''dulcimer'' originally referred to a trapezoidal zither similar to a psaltery whose many strings are struck by handheld "hammers". Variants of ...

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

* Dave Lambert – lead vocals (tracks 2, 5, 8 and 10), backing vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar *

– backing vocals,

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

– backing vocals,

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

, acoustic guitar

Additional Personnel

John Mealing John Mealing (born 5 April 1942 in Yeovil, Somerset) is a British keyboardist, composer and arranger. After leaving the Don Rendell-Ian Carr Quintet in the late sixties,organ Organ may refer to: Biology * Organ (biology), a part of an organism Musical instruments * Organ (music), a family of keyboard musical instruments characterized by sustained tone ** Electronic organ, an electronic keyboard instrument ** Hammond ...

(tracks 1, 4, 5, 9 and 10),

electric piano An electric piano is a musical instrument which produces sounds when a performer presses the keys of a piano-style musical keyboard. Pressing keys causes mechanical hammers to strike metal strings, metal reeds or wire tines, leading to vibrations ...

(track 7) *Tony Carr –

conga The conga, also known as tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto (lead drum, highest), tres dos or tres golpes (middle), and tumba or salidor (lowest). ...

s *

Jack Emblow Jack Alexander Emblow (born 27 June 1930) is a British jazz accordionist who is best known for his musical work accompanying the Cliff Adams Singers on BBC Radio. Biography Emblow was born on 27 June 1930 in Lincoln, England. His father sang a ...

–

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

(track 5) *

Tommy Eyre Tommy Eyre (5 June 1949 – 23 May 2001) was an English session keyboardist from Sheffield, England, who appeared on records by Joe Cocker, John Martyn, Gary Moore, Michael Schenker, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Greg Lake, B.B. King, John ...

–

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

(tracks 8 and 10),

clavinet The Clavinet is an electrically amplified clavichord invented by Ernst Zacharias and manufactured by the Hohner company of Trossingen, West Germany, from 1964 to 1982. The instrument produces sounds by a rubber pad striking a point on a tension ...

(track 8),

synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

(track 8) *John Lumley-Saville – synthesizer (track 9) *

– electric

harpsichord A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism ...

(track 7) *Tom Allom –

cymbalum The cimbalom (; ) or concert cimbalom is a type of chordophone composed of a large, trapezoidal box on legs with metal strings stretched across its top and a damping pedal underneath. It was designed and created by V. Josef Schunda in 1874 in ...

(track 7)

Recording

Tom Allom Thomas James Allom is an English record producer and sound engineer. His best-known work was in the 1970s and 1980s, working with artists such as Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Krokus, Loverboy, Def Leppard, Kix and Rough Cutt. Allom is a membe ...

– Producer *Vic Gamm – Engineer Recorded at Sound Techniques,

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

Release history

References

''Nomadness'' on Strawbsweb
*Sleeve notes AMLH 68331 ''Nomadness'' *Sleeve notes 5302822 ''Nomadness''

Notes

Strawbs albums 1975 albums Albums produced by Tom Allom A&M Records albums {{1970s-rock-album-stub