Stoneground
Encyclopedia
Stoneground was a rock
band formed in 1970 in Concord, California
. Originally a trio, Stoneground expanded to a 10-piece band by the time of their eponymous 1971 debut album. The group appeared in two films, Medicine Ball Caravan (1971) and Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972), and released three albums before singer Sal Valentino
quit in 1973. Three other band members—Cory Lerios
, Steve Price
and David Jenkins
—left to form pop
group Pablo Cruise
. Stoneground continued as an act through 1982, with only Tim Barnes and Annie Sampson remaining from the early incarnation of the band. Barnes and Price led a reformed Stoneground in 2003 and released a studio album the following year.
Band manager and former Autumn Records
executive Tom Donahue
introduced the band to ex-Beau Brummels
singer Sal Valentino
and John Blakely (guitars, bass), both of whom joined Stoneground. Four female vocalists—Annie Sampson, Lynne Hughes, Lydia Phillips, and Deirdre LaPorte—were also added to the group. While touring America
and Europe, the band added another new member, bassist/keyboardist Pete Sears
, later of Jefferson Starship
and Hot Tuna
. Stoneground's self-titled debut album
, released in early 1971, featured seven different lead singers on the album's ten tracks.
Music journalist Robert Christgau
said the album was "certainly the aptest use of Sal Valentino since the Beau Brummels were on Autumn".
A Billboard
review remarked that "Stoneground has a lot of advance publicity to live up to, and in light of their first LP
the predictions may have been somewhat inflationary, though there's no denying the potential for excitement here".
During this touring period, Stoneground was a "traveling house band
" for Medicine Ball Caravan, an attempt by Warner Bros.
to promote the band
and capitalize on the success of the concert film
genre following Woodstock
.
The Medicine Ball Caravan film, which documented the 8,000 mile cross-country trip by 154 people
in a "hippie caravan"
of buses, trucks and musical groups, was directed by François Reichenbach
—with Martin Scorsese
as associate producer—and released in 1971.
Three Stoneground songs appear on the original soundtrack, which also contains songs by Alice Cooper
, B.B. King, Delaney & Bonnie, Doug Kershaw
, and The Youngbloods
. Allmusic writer Joe Viglione criticized the soundtrack for devoting "a third of the music [to] the bar band sounds of [Stoneground]".
Pete Sears
left the band and returned to England to record on Rod Stewart
's classic "Every Picture Tells a Story
" album, later returning to the USA with Long John Baldry
. Cory Lerios
(keyboards, vocals) and Steve Price
(drums) joined the band prior to the recording of Stoneground's second album, the double-LP Family Album
, released in 1971. Billboard described the music as "infectiously exciting and ... colored by a wonderfully lighthearted feeling", and praised Lynne Hughes' vocals on "Passion Flower",
the closest Stoneground ever came to having to a hit single
.
The song was also included on Fillmore: The Last Days, a 1972 triple live album chronicling the final run of concerts organized by rock concert promoter Bill Graham
at San Francisco's Fillmore West
, which closed on July 4, 1971.
In 1972, the band released their third album, Stoneground 3
. They also appeared in that year's Hammer Studios
film Dracula A.D. 1972 starring Christopher Lee
and Peter Cushing
.
By 1973, the band was dropped by Warner Bros. due to disappointing record sales, and tensions within the group had risen after three years of constant touring. Stoneground's original formation played their final concert on January 6 at Sacramento Memorial Auditorium. The performance was released as an album, The Last Dance: Live January 6, 1973, by Dig Music in 2001. Within weeks of the concert, Sal Valentino left the group
and moved on to a short-lived Beau Brummels reunion. Three other members—Lerios, Price, and David Jenkins
—left to form the pop group Pablo Cruise
.
Barnes led various rosters of Stoneground for another ten years, along with original member Annie Sampson and singer Jo Baker, who joined in 1974.
Other members included Terry Davis (guitars, vocals), Fred Webb (keyboards, vocals) and Sammy Piazza (drums).
The band released three more albums during this period: Flat Out (1976), Hearts of Stone (1978), and Play it Loud (1980).
In 1982, Stoneground released "Bad Machines and Limousines", an E.P. with early band member Pete Sears
appearing as a guest on keyboards.
In 2004, a reformed Stoneground—featuring Barnes and Price—released the album Back with a Vengeance.
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
band formed in 1970 in Concord, California
Concord, California
Concord is the largest city in Contra Costa County, California, USA. At the 2010 census, the city had a population of 122,067. Originally founded in 1869 as the community of Todos Santos by Salvio Pacheco, the name was changed to Concord within months...
. Originally a trio, Stoneground expanded to a 10-piece band by the time of their eponymous 1971 debut album. The group appeared in two films, Medicine Ball Caravan (1971) and Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972), and released three albums before singer Sal Valentino
Sal Valentino
Sal Valentino is an American rock musician, singer and songwriter, best known as lead singer of The Beau Brummels, subsequently becoming a songwriter as well. The band released a pair of top 20 U.S...
quit in 1973. Three other band members—Cory Lerios
Cory Lerios
Cory Lerios is an American pianist and vocalist noted for his fast and flowing style of playing. He is one of the founding members of the platinum-record selling rock and roll band Pablo Cruise, and for the past 30 years has scored music for film and television.-History:Cory Lerios got his first...
, Steve Price
Steve Price (musician)
Steve Price is the drummer and percussionist for the California smooth rock band Pablo Cruise. Price was member of the band at its conception in 1973 and stayed until early 1981. In 2004, Price and two other original members of the band re-united with a new member, George Gabriel, to tour across...
and David Jenkins
David Jenkins (musician)
David Jenkins is the lead singer for the California smooth rock band Pablo Cruise. Jenkins was a member of the band at its conception in 1973, and stayed until they disbanded in 1985. In 2004, Jenkins and two other original members of the band re-united with a new member, George Gabriel, to tour...
—left to form pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
group Pablo Cruise
Pablo Cruise
Pablo Cruise is a pop/rock band currently composed of David Jenkins , Cory Lerios , Steve Price and Larry Antonino . Formed in 1973, the band released eight studio albums over the next decade, during which time four singles reached the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart...
. Stoneground continued as an act through 1982, with only Tim Barnes and Annie Sampson remaining from the early incarnation of the band. Barnes and Price led a reformed Stoneground in 2003 and released a studio album the following year.
History
Stoneground was formed in 1970 in the San Francisco suburb of Concord, California. The original lineup consisted of Tim Barnes (guitars, vocals), Luther Bildt (guitars, vocals), and Mike Mau (drums).Band manager and former Autumn Records
Autumn Records
Autumn Records was a 1960s San Francisco-based pop record label. Its most prominent contract was considered The Beau Brummels, a band who released a pair of top 20 singles, "Laugh, Laugh" and "Just a Little"....
executive Tom Donahue
Tom Donahue
Tom "Big Daddy" Donahue , was a pioneering rock and roll radio disc jockey, record producer and concert promoter....
introduced the band to ex-Beau Brummels
The Beau Brummels
The Beau Brummels were an American rock band. Formed in San Francisco in 1964, the band's original lineup included Sal Valentino , Ron Elliott , Ron Meagher , Declan Mulligan , and John Petersen...
singer Sal Valentino
Sal Valentino
Sal Valentino is an American rock musician, singer and songwriter, best known as lead singer of The Beau Brummels, subsequently becoming a songwriter as well. The band released a pair of top 20 U.S...
and John Blakely (guitars, bass), both of whom joined Stoneground. Four female vocalists—Annie Sampson, Lynne Hughes, Lydia Phillips, and Deirdre LaPorte—were also added to the group. While touring America
and Europe, the band added another new member, bassist/keyboardist Pete Sears
Pete Sears
Peter 'Pete' Sears is an English rock musician. In a career spanning more than four decades he has been a member of many bands and has moved through a variety of musical genres, from early R&B, psychedelic improvisational rock of the 1960s, folk, country music, arena rock in the 1970s, and blues...
, later of Jefferson Starship
Jefferson Starship
Jefferson Starship is an American rock band formed in the early 1970s. The group is a spin-off from the iconic 1960s psychedelic/folk group Jefferson Airplane. The band has undergone several major changes in personnel and genres through the years while retaining the same Jefferson Starship name...
and Hot Tuna
Hot Tuna
Hot Tuna is an American blues-rock band formed by bassist Jack Casady and guitarist Jorma Kaukonen as a spin-off of Jefferson Airplane. It plays acoustic and electric versions of original and traditional blues songs.- Jefferson Airplane side project :...
. Stoneground's self-titled debut album
Stoneground (album)
Stoneground is the debut studio album by American rock band Stoneground, released in 1971 on Warner Bros. The album featured seven different lead vocalists, including Sal Valentino on four of the album's ten songs....
, released in early 1971, featured seven different lead singers on the album's ten tracks.
Music journalist Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics".One of the earliest professional rock critics, Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, published since 1969 in his Consumer Guide columns...
said the album was "certainly the aptest use of Sal Valentino since the Beau Brummels were on Autumn".
A Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
review remarked that "Stoneground has a lot of advance publicity to live up to, and in light of their first LP
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
the predictions may have been somewhat inflationary, though there's no denying the potential for excitement here".
During this touring period, Stoneground was a "traveling house band
House band
For the British band that existed from 1984-2001, see The House BandA house band is a group of musicians, often centrally organized by a band leader, who regularly play an establishment. It is widely used to refer both to the bands who work on entertainment programs on television or radio, and to...
" for Medicine Ball Caravan, an attempt by Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
to promote the band
and capitalize on the success of the concert film
Concert film
A concert movie, or concert film, is a type of documentary film, the subject of which is an extended live performance or concert by a musician ....
genre following Woodstock
Woodstock (film)
Woodstock is a 1970 American documentary on the Woodstock Festival that took place in August 1969 at Bethel in New York. Entertainment Weekly called this film the benchmark of concert movies and one of the most entertaining documentaries ever made...
.
The Medicine Ball Caravan film, which documented the 8,000 mile cross-country trip by 154 people
in a "hippie caravan"
of buses, trucks and musical groups, was directed by François Reichenbach
François Reichenbach
François Reichenbach was a French film director, cinematographer producer and screenwriter. He directed 40 films between 1954 and 1993.-Selected filmography:* America As Seen by a Frenchman...
—with Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
as associate producer—and released in 1971.
Three Stoneground songs appear on the original soundtrack, which also contains songs by Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades...
, B.B. King, Delaney & Bonnie, Doug Kershaw
Doug Kershaw
Doug Kershaw, born January 24, 1936, is an American fiddle player, singer and songwriter from Louisiana. Active since 1949, Kershaw has recorded fifteen albums and charted on the Hot Country Songs charts.- Early life :...
, and The Youngbloods
The Youngbloods
The Youngbloods was an American folk rock band consisting of Jesse Colin Young , Jerry Corbitt , Lowell Levinger, nicknamed "Banana," , and Joe Bauer . Despite receiving critical acclaim, they never achieved widespread popularity. Their only U.S. Top 40 entry was "Get Together".-Background and...
. Allmusic writer Joe Viglione criticized the soundtrack for devoting "a third of the music [to] the bar band sounds of [Stoneground]".
Pete Sears
Pete Sears
Peter 'Pete' Sears is an English rock musician. In a career spanning more than four decades he has been a member of many bands and has moved through a variety of musical genres, from early R&B, psychedelic improvisational rock of the 1960s, folk, country music, arena rock in the 1970s, and blues...
left the band and returned to England to record on Rod Stewart
Rod Stewart
Roderick David "Rod" Stewart, CBE is a British singer-songwriter and musician, born and raised in North London, England and currently residing in Epping. He is of Scottish and English ancestry....
's classic "Every Picture Tells a Story
Every Picture Tells a Story
Every Picture Tells a Story is the third album by Rod Stewart, released in the middle of 1971. It went to number one on both the UK and U.S. charts and finished third in the Pazz & Jop critics' poll for best album of 1971...
" album, later returning to the USA with Long John Baldry
Long John Baldry
John William "Long John" Baldry was an English and Canadian blues singer and a voice actor. He sang with many British musicians, with Rod Stewart and Elton John appearing in bands led by Baldry in the 1960s. He enjoyed pop success in the UK where Let the Heartaches Begin reached No...
. Cory Lerios
Cory Lerios
Cory Lerios is an American pianist and vocalist noted for his fast and flowing style of playing. He is one of the founding members of the platinum-record selling rock and roll band Pablo Cruise, and for the past 30 years has scored music for film and television.-History:Cory Lerios got his first...
(keyboards, vocals) and Steve Price
Steve Price (musician)
Steve Price is the drummer and percussionist for the California smooth rock band Pablo Cruise. Price was member of the band at its conception in 1973 and stayed until early 1981. In 2004, Price and two other original members of the band re-united with a new member, George Gabriel, to tour across...
(drums) joined the band prior to the recording of Stoneground's second album, the double-LP Family Album
Family Album (Stoneground album)
Family Album is the second album by American rock band Stoneground, a double album released in late 1971 on Warner Bros. It consists of both live and studio recordings and includes a mix of original songs and covers.- Composition and recording :...
, released in 1971. Billboard described the music as "infectiously exciting and ... colored by a wonderfully lighthearted feeling", and praised Lynne Hughes' vocals on "Passion Flower",
the closest Stoneground ever came to having to a hit single
Hit single
A hit single is a recorded song or instrumental released as a single that has become very popular. Although it is sometimes used to describe any widely-played or big-selling song, the term "hit" is usually reserved for a single that has appeared in an official music chart through repeated radio...
.
The song was also included on Fillmore: The Last Days, a 1972 triple live album chronicling the final run of concerts organized by rock concert promoter Bill Graham
Bill Graham (promoter)
Bill Graham was an American impresario and rock concert promoter from the 1960s until his death.-Early life:...
at San Francisco's Fillmore West
Fillmore West
The Fillmore West was an historic music venue in San Francisco, California made famous by concert promoter Bill Graham. Named after Graham's original "Fillmore" location at the intersection of Fillmore Street and Geary Boulevard, it stood at Market Street and South Van Ness Avenue and was formerly...
, which closed on July 4, 1971.
In 1972, the band released their third album, Stoneground 3
Stoneground 3
Stoneground 3, sometimes stylized as Stoneground Three, is the third album by American rock band Stoneground, released in 1972 on Warner Bros...
. They also appeared in that year's Hammer Studios
Hammer Film Productions
Hammer Film Productions is a film production company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies and in later...
film Dracula A.D. 1972 starring Christopher Lee
Christopher Lee
Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ is an English actor and musician. Lee initially portrayed villains and became famous for his role as Count Dracula in a string of Hammer Horror films...
and Peter Cushing
Peter Cushing
Peter Wilton Cushing, OBE was an English actor, known for his many appearances in Hammer Films, in which he played the handsome but sinister scientist Baron Frankenstein and the vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing, amongst many other roles, often appearing opposite Christopher Lee, and occasionally...
.
By 1973, the band was dropped by Warner Bros. due to disappointing record sales, and tensions within the group had risen after three years of constant touring. Stoneground's original formation played their final concert on January 6 at Sacramento Memorial Auditorium. The performance was released as an album, The Last Dance: Live January 6, 1973, by Dig Music in 2001. Within weeks of the concert, Sal Valentino left the group
and moved on to a short-lived Beau Brummels reunion. Three other members—Lerios, Price, and David Jenkins
David Jenkins (musician)
David Jenkins is the lead singer for the California smooth rock band Pablo Cruise. Jenkins was a member of the band at its conception in 1973, and stayed until they disbanded in 1985. In 2004, Jenkins and two other original members of the band re-united with a new member, George Gabriel, to tour...
—left to form the pop group Pablo Cruise
Pablo Cruise
Pablo Cruise is a pop/rock band currently composed of David Jenkins , Cory Lerios , Steve Price and Larry Antonino . Formed in 1973, the band released eight studio albums over the next decade, during which time four singles reached the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart...
.
Barnes led various rosters of Stoneground for another ten years, along with original member Annie Sampson and singer Jo Baker, who joined in 1974.
Other members included Terry Davis (guitars, vocals), Fred Webb (keyboards, vocals) and Sammy Piazza (drums).
The band released three more albums during this period: Flat Out (1976), Hearts of Stone (1978), and Play it Loud (1980).
In 1982, Stoneground released "Bad Machines and Limousines", an E.P. with early band member Pete Sears
Pete Sears
Peter 'Pete' Sears is an English rock musician. In a career spanning more than four decades he has been a member of many bands and has moved through a variety of musical genres, from early R&B, psychedelic improvisational rock of the 1960s, folk, country music, arena rock in the 1970s, and blues...
appearing as a guest on keyboards.
In 2004, a reformed Stoneground—featuring Barnes and Price—released the album Back with a Vengeance.
Albums
| Year | Album details |
|---|---|
| 1971 | Stoneground Stoneground (album) Stoneground is the debut studio album by American rock band Stoneground, released in 1971 on Warner Bros. The album featured seven different lead vocalists, including Sal Valentino on four of the album's ten songs....
|
| 1971 | Family Album Family Album (Stoneground album) Family Album is the second album by American rock band Stoneground, a double album released in late 1971 on Warner Bros. It consists of both live and studio recordings and includes a mix of original songs and covers.- Composition and recording :...
|
| 1972 | Stoneground 3 Stoneground 3 Stoneground 3, sometimes stylized as Stoneground Three, is the third album by American rock band Stoneground, released in 1972 on Warner Bros...
|
| 1976 | Flat Out
|
| 1978 | Hearts of Stone
|
| 1980 | Play It Loud
|
| 2001 | The Last Dance: Live January 6, 1973
|
| 2004 | Back with a Vengeance
|
EP
| Year | Album details |
|---|---|
| 1982 | Bad Machines and Limousines
|
Singles
| Year | Song |
|---|---|
| 1971 | "Queen Sweet Dreams"
|
| 1971 | "Looking For You"
|
| 1971 | "You Must Be One Of Us"
|
| 1972 | "Passion Flower"
|