A bunch of artists turned their backs on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip in the Sixties and moved out into the wilderness of the canyons. They triggered a mellow revolution and created a sound that still resonates, revived by artists like Fleet Foxes, Jenny Lewis and new guns Leopold And His Fiction and Jonathan Wilson.

It all started sometime after 1965, when musicians started to move away from the Beat bars and coffee shops of Hollywood’s Sunset Strip and up into the canyons snaking their way up the mountains to the East of Los Angeles.

They swapped the Strip’s hipster gear of turtleneck sweaters and Chelsea boots with the rural workwear of denim and cowboy boots and started the search for a fresh sound and a new, simpler way of life.

Turning their back on the Hollywood studios with their house orchestras, arrangers and minions, the Canyon settlers’ new music was handmade and down to earth. Well, for the first few years before it all blew up in coke-addled pomp. But that is a different story.

The Original Canyon Rockers
Laurel Canyon, a maze of one way lanes through thick Eucalyptus trees, is the closest to Sunset Strip and its music clubs and hangouts. Laurel Canyon is where Joni Mitchell, Gram Parsons and his Flying Burrito Brothers, Judee Sill, Crosby Stills And Nash, James Taylor, the Eagles, Gene Clark and Doug Dillard hung out during the late Sixties. Topanga Canyo is a bit further out. Canadian ex-pat Neil Young moved here to get closer to the rural heart of California.

Together, these artists shaped what became Canyon Rock, a mellow, rambling sound that does not deny its Country Music influence. They started telling increasingly inward looking stories in their lyrics - A generation of soul searchers sharing their private thoughts with the public, a bit like social networking before its time, really.

The music is chilled out and loose. Back then it was the perfect antidote to the intense and increasingly paranoid Rock scene. Some forty years later it has aged remarkably well, leaving a pretty timeless canon of mellow music that is too intelligent and intriguing to be simply ambient.

The Young Guns
Like the first generation of Canyon rockers, many of the new guns come from outside California and create a melting pot of influences. Daniel James, frontman of Leopold And His Fiction, came from Detroit to California. Like Gram Parsons before him, Jonathan Wilson is a Southern gent who swapped Dixie with the California sun. He left North Carolina in the mid-90s and.

Like the original Canyonites, the new guns brought their own fantasies of a simple live in the countryside and a nostalgia for the slow pace of the Old West. California is a place where playing Country music suddenly takes on a new meaning. Sounding ‘Country’ is about tapping into the joint consciousness of all those who came seeking solace in a spirit distilled from a picture of an America long gone.

Sounds like an awful lot of Hippie Wild West shite, but it’s really just about getting out of the rat race.

So here you go, in this post you will read about two new acts and a few old favourites who can take you out of the rat race for an hour and transport you into altogether calmer pastures even if it’s just in your minds.

New Talent To Watch

Leopold And His Fiction
Based in San Francisco, Leopold And His Fiction are strictly speaking Canyon Rock by association. Steeped in the Rock vibe of his hometown Detroit - think MC5, Stooges, White Stripes - Leopold frontman Daniel James plays with a harder edge than his southern brethren in the LA canyons. In his quest for a new life he is a kindred soul, however.

In true Canyon Rock spirit, ‘Ain’t No Surprise’ was recorded on the move. James set up his recording kit in rented apartments, friends’ living rooms, unused attics and the odd closet.

‘One For Me To Find’ with its vivid images of ‘open roads and these blue skies’ captures Daniel’s travelling life. All Country shuffle drums and strummed acoustic guitars it is an infectious, upbeat tune that’ll have you itching for a change in your own scenery.

I love ‘Broke’ with its trashy sixties organ. Listening to ‘Broke’ is like opening the door to a San Francisco garage that hasn’t been touched since 1967. Pure class.

‘Sun’s Only Promise’ is another Sixties flashback with a sub-Doors or even Stooges feel. ‘Hawk Eyes’ cranks up the volume a bit more and shows Leopold And His Fiction at their rockiest.

Daniel doesn’t ignore the Country heritage of Canyon Rock and turns in a neat front porch Country Rock number with ‘Katie May’. He can do pastoral, too, like on the soft ‘Pretty Neat’ and the widescreen instrumental ‘Adanelia’.

Jonathan Wilson
Like Gram Parsons in the 60s, Jonathan Wilson is a southern boy who swapped Dixie with the California sun. Wilson left North Carolina in the mid-90s heading for Laurel Canyon.

Gram Parsons had his visions of bright, new Country Rock when he left Dixie. Wilson is well steeped in Country, too, but his music has a darker, more grotesque edge to it.

There is a Victorian, turn of the century feel to Jonathan’s music. His songs conjure up images of freakshow characters, suppressed desires and unspeakable events - All somewhere between 19th century murder ballads and Bob Dylan’s vivid imaginations of the Old West.

Watch the video for Jonathan’s ‘Natural Rhapsody’, directed by Michael Graham. A mixed party heads for a picnic in a field, things get a bit wild and the pastoral innocence suddenly tips into unease. Or was it all just a bad dream? What exactly happened?

Watch for yourself and try figure it out.

The video is a fitting visualisation of Jonathan’s music, all nice and innocent on the surface but with an unsettling aftertaste.

Welcome to Jonathan’s hall of mirrors - nothing is as straight as it seems, folks. Listen to Jonathan covering Madonna’s insanely chirpy ‘La Isla Bonita’ and turn it into one cool campfire ballad that’ll send a shiver down your spine.

Jonathan has picked up Laurel Canyon’s tradition in recent years, hosting mid-week jams with old hands and up and coming talent. Established players come from bands like Wilco, The Black Crowes, The Jayhawks and 60’s band Electric Flag. Newcomers include Jenny Lewis and singer-songwriter Jacob Dylan.

Insane as it may seem, this dude is still unsigned.

If you like Jonatahn Wilson’s music, check out his friend Jenny Lewis below.

Some Recent Releases

Jenny Lewis ‘Acid Tongue’
Lewis, who made her name with Alternative Rock outfit Rilo Kiley, slips into the sound of early 70’s Canyon singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell or Judee Sill with great ease. The harmonies on the title track are pure class, I haven’t heard something like this since Sill’s ‘Heart Food’ album.

‘Black Sand’, ‘Godspeed’ and ‘Sing A Song’ are in a similar vein, chilled West Coast Rock with intricate melodies. It’s smooth stuff but you can sense how Lewis could turn any minute and drop the soft play.

Lewis is free to let go on the Country Rock numbers ‘See Fernando’, ‘The Next Messiah’ and ‘Carpetbaggers’. Yet it’s the quiet songs where she’s at her most mesmerising.

‘Carpetbaggers’ features Elvis Costello in a duet with Lewis. Costello, a long time Country fan, also contributes members of his band The Imposters who play on Lewis’ album.

The two types of music on ‘Acid Tongue’ reflect the genesis of the album. Lewis said in interviews that she was inspird by the private jam sessions at West Coast musician Jonathan Wilson’s house in Los Angeles’ Laurel Canyon.

Judee Sill ‘Abracadabra’
This voice will send a shiver down your spine. Sill transcends the singer songwriter genre with an almost gothic, spiritual quality.

What you get on Abracadabra is basically laid back Canyon Rock with a touch of country and some far out lyrics. Sill herself called her songs ‘country-cult-baroque’.

David Crosby and Graham Nash took Sill under their wings early on in her career and that surely explains some of the country influences on tracks such as ‘Ridge Rider’ and ‘Archetypal Man’.

‘Abracadabra’ combines Sill’s first two albums ‘Judee Sill’ from 1971 and ‘Heart Food’ from 1973 with a number of demos, live recordings and outtakes. Sill’s voice towers over it all. Whether caught offguard in the studio or in an early, intimate concert setting her soothing vocals combine lust for life with a dry, almost melancholic awareness of death.

Sill had her share of ups and downs. A runaway from California with a history of mixing with the wrong boyfriends and depending on the wrong substances. One of the first stars of the Canyon scene, her career ended abruptly in 1973 after she fell out with label mogul David Geffen. Sill tragically died in 1979, aged only 35.

Neil Young ‘Sugar Mountain - Live At Canterbury House’
Young literally had just walked out of Buffalo Springfield, the successful mid-60’s Folk Rock band, after a series of clashes with head honcho Stephen Stills. Fed up with the Rock establishment, he moved out to the sticks - well, for Los Angeles - living out his ’simpler life’ fantasies in Topanga Canyon.

The Canterbury House gig features the first fruits of Young’s move. Straight, Folk and Country inspired songs with introspective lyrics. The recording predates Young’s solo debut by almost a year and is a rare chance to hear his songs without any embellishment.

Even compared to later solo performances, this is very low key and bereft of guitar wizardry or showmanship. Young’s stage banter - and there’s a good bit of it - is self depreciating and slow coming. ‘Live At Canterbury House’ captures a shy artist before Rock stardom set in.