River Saint - Valley People Sing (2023 Remaster)

The 1970s were a crazy time for record labels in America. The underbelly of the industry was a veritable wild west, with shady characters setting up imprints as tax shelters, pressing records in small quantities, inflating the costs spent on them, and then reporting huge losses on tax returns. Often releasing albums by unknown artists and demo tapes that had been laying around, these labels never cleared rights to release any of the music and the artists were not informed or compensated. Some of the band names and song titles were even changed and some artists wouldn't discover that their music had been released until many years later. These practices went on into the early 1980s until the IRS caught wind of the scheme and the party was over. These often interesting yet mysterious albums became known as "Tax Scam" albums. One of the better oddities to emerge from that period was an album by what appears to be a South Florida based rock band named River Saint, whose lone album entitled "Valley People Sing" appeared in 1977 on the short-lived Van Dyke Records label. Recorded and mixed at Studio Center Sound Recordings in North Miami, "Valley People Sing" is a well-produced, written and performed album by a very competent band with a decidedly folk-rock style, with great harmonies provided by the unidentified Valley People Singers, and is well worth a listen. This does not sound like some fledgling band that just wandered into the studio one day - this is a well-conceived album featuring finely crafted songs and dynamic playing from the musicians involved. In other words, this album likely would have gained more traction if it had been properly released and marketed. The band members are listed as Jim Keegan (electric bass, vocals), Steve McNamara (guitar, vocals), Art Schmidt (guitar), Gary Vandy (guitar), Pat Powers (harmonica); Steve Brettholtz (drums), Bruce Shepard (saxophone) and the Valley People Singers (harmony vocals). The album's listed producer, Gary Vandy, was a locally known producer and engineer with many albums that bear his credit in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Tax scam or not, this is a fine album that will stand up to repeated listening and certainly deserves to be heard by a wider audience.