Description
Harvest Time is the sophomore album by the British folk-rock group Water Into Wine Band, independently released in the UK by the band in 1976. The album was recorded by Lawrie Dipple at Free Range Studios in London, England; June 1976, with the band producing. Wind music by Bill Thorp and other arrangements by the band. Water Into Wine Band features William “Bill” Thorp (vocals, violin, viola, piano, glockenspiel), Ray Wright (vocals, acoustic guitar, bass), Pete McMunn (vocals, acoustic guitar, glockenspiel), and Trevor Sandford (vocals, acoustic guitar, bass). The track “Moonglow” also includes guest musicians such as Dave Cooke on guitar and Judy MacKenzie on vocals (of Dave & Judy fame).
The title track epitomizes the band’s folk classical fusion in an epic pastoral piece featuring a wind quintet and entwining two folk songs. The first evokes a powerful image of a simpler past, rooted in the earth and country, and celebrating the blessing of fertility. The second weaves a darker tapestry of a future where all sense of dependence on a creator has been lost, all earthly wisdom forsaken, and becomes a cry for a return to a simpler world where what is truly needful is understood.
All rock influences were left behind for this privately-released and immensely rare follow-up to Hill Climbing, the band opting instead to explore folk and classical themes yet still within a solidly progressive framework. Opens with a pair of dreamy folk ballads, «Wedding Song» (not the Stookey tune) and the stunningly beautiful «Waiting For Another Day». Listening to Bill Thorp’s passionate violin here it’s easy to see why he was accepted into the London Symphony Orchestra (so I’ve read). The medley «Scottish Suite» follows with some fine. [Ken Scott, The Archivist, 4th edition]
Harvest Time, CD re-issue
Water Into Wine Band was formed at the start of the ’70s by three folk guitarists and a classical musician who met up whilst studying at Cambridge. Their “live” set of largely introspective story-songs and debut album ‘Hill Climbing For Beginners‘ soon established the group on the fledgling Jesus Music scene alongside the likes of Malcolm and Alwyn and Parchment. After graduation in 1974 WIWB turned professional and, by alternating between church coffee bars and the increasingly popular folk club scene, their future looked promising. However, after undertaking a five week tour of the American mid-west and east coast the penniless and tired troubadours performed their swan song during a Greenbelt rainstorm in August 1976. Happily, after attending that farewell gig I was soon the proud owner of their final vinyl offering – the now highly collectible ‘Harvest Time’. Hearing again those melancholic musings on scratch-free CD I find the album still an evergreen source of joy in its silver jubilee year. A long-ago rural theme of love and labour pervades a set of unhurried stories sung in tandem with the rustic melodies of Bill Thorpe’s fiddle and countless percussion instruments. Lest we forget their student origins, the band change gear and, aided by McKenzie Cooke, recall their quirky humour by imitating the sound of a gramophone needle jumping the grooves of a vinyl record on the ’30s standard «Moonglow». Maybe, if we all go out and buy a couple, this CD could even herald a reunion tour. Now’s there’s a thought. [Chris Tozer, Cross Rhythms, July 2002]
English progressive folk rockers, Water Into Wine Band, are best known for having its 1973 debut album, Hill Climbing For Beginners, remixed into relative blandness by the forces that were at Myrrh Records. Apparently the original mix released by Myrrh’s U.K. division was deemed too rough for the U.S. market.
That said, it’s easy to understand why WIWB’s ’76 sequel, Harvest Time saw no domestic release. Though issued in the act’s homeland around the time Brit folkies Parchment and Nutshell were considered marketable Stateside, the compositional ambition and lyrical themes here may have been the factors that have kept it have kept it a horrifically collectible import LP. Until folk rock archivist label Kissing Spell saw fit to bring it into the digital age, that is.
The five tracks on the original LP’s first side touches upon earthly matrimony and romance (a «Wedding Song», which isn’t Noel Paul Stookey’s hit, «Waiting For Another Day», the swing jazz oldie «Mooglow»). A lengthy medley of public domain Brit folk standards and the album’s hookiest ditty, «Patience», about how women have more of the titular virtue than men, round out the first half. The diptych of «Patience» and «Moonglow» segues sweetly, the jazzy vocal harmonies in the bridge of the former setting up the tempered swing vibe of the latter. Those with a head for ’70s U.K. Christian pop will be pleased by the duet vocals by Judy MacKenzie (whose solo LP’s so need to be reissued as well!).
Album’s second half is taken up by the title tune. Make that title suite. Multi-part piece poetically envisions the Second Coming (and believers’ responsibility in giving Him a bumper crop) fits a minor key rock song structure around a reel, a dirge, classical “systems” music ala’ Phillip Glass and other formfitting tangents. It works, it’s lovely, it even grooves on occasion, but it – along with songs that aren’t even ostensibly about God on the first half – was all probably too seemingly uncommercial for an American Christian market that still arguably lags behind its brethren across the Atlantic in terms of creativity and imagination.
Water Into Wine Band, to my knowledge, never recorded studio work after this, but they left a splendid legacy with what little they put on tape. Should the double-CD reissue of WIWB’s first long player (with both U.K. and U.S. mixes), expect my review to run here. [Jamie Lee Rake, The Phantom Tollbooth, 6/4/2005]
LP tracklist:
Side One
A1. “Wedding Song”
A2. “Waiting For Another Day”
A3. “Scottish Suite”
A4. “Patience (Is A Virtue)”
A5. “Moonglow”
Side Two
B1. “Harvest Time”
Note: Re-issued on CD by Kissing Spell in 2001 as a part of their Erewhon Underground Folk-Rock Series 1968-1978. Available at Bandcamp: https://waterintowineband.bandcamp.com/album/harvest-time
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