the carpenter's union-XIAN SPIRITUAL PSYCH POP-1972 Free Design like harmonies

THE CARPENTER'S UNION - 1972?

 

• Acoustic Guitar, Vocals – Jim Dell
• Bass – Andy Afflick*
• Drums – Nick Kent
• Lead Vocals, Harpsichord – Elaine Overholt
• Organ, Piano – Cam Shearer
• Vocals – Karen Dell

Canadian Christian outfit, very scarce and very fine quality, especially comparing it to the hundreds of early 70's XIAN groups that released very derivative hit or miss albums. Most of the songs on this LP are originals, except the song "tell it all" by Kenny rogers and two originally recorded in 1967 by THE FREE DESIGN "proper ornaments". and “You could be born again” (written by Chris Dedrick)
 I have owned this LP for many years, and always thought it sounded like the Free Design, and now the obvious hits me on the head, because they are directly influenced by them!  (floating harmonies, pop psych vibe, excellent clear production, some musique concrete moments with ‘samples’ flown in through some songs to add effect to the statements of the lyrics)

Siblings Karen and Jim Dell add original songs to this LP.  (“Karen’s song” only shows up on the TODAY various sampler “SPREAD THE NEWS” under the Carpenter’s Union name) 

This was distro’d out of the City of London Ontario through YOUTH FOR CHRIST ministries.

It's really a fabulous album all the way through.

There exists 2 different covers for this album.


One note of interest, one singer in the group " Elaine Overholt" has gone on to much prominence in North America as a premier vocal coach, she has been featured on the ELLEN show of recent and has done much respected musical work. This is some
of her earliest work.

This has crossover players into other Today recordings like Power and Light Co, Potter’s Clay and basically the whole group on Carpenter’s Union shows up with Norma Jean Mainse on her self titled mainroads album.