Category Archives: Mira

The Family Tree

Featuring members of the Brogues and the Ratz, the Family Tree made this one 45 for the Mira label before releasing several singles and an lp on RCA and a final 45 on Paula. The RCA records have a polished English pop quality to the production, while this earlier Mira record has more of an Northern California garage sound.

You could say “Prince of Dreams” is heavily influenced by Dylan, while “Live Your Own Life” is reminiscent of the Beau Brummels, but this doesn’t take away from the quality of both songs.

Bob Segarini from Stockton, California was in a group called Us who made demos for the Autumn label that were never released. He then went into the Ratz, which included Gary Grubb better known as Gary Duncan of Quicksilver Messenger Service.

Duncan left the Ratz for the Brogues, who also included bassist Bill Whittington. The Brogues released two great 45s I’ll cover here someday. With members Rick Campbell and Eddie Rodrigues entering the draft, the Brogues broke up. Bill Whittington and Segarin formed the Family Tree, with Mike Olsen on keyboards and Newman Davis on drums. Mike Dure joined on guitar by the time of this recording, as he is co-writer of “Live Your Own Life” with Segarini.

Bob Segarini:

The Family Tree’s first record was for Mira, the people that did “Hey Joe” by the Leaves. Mira put out a single, “Prince of Dreams”, in ’66, and we had a lot of gigs and stuff.

We went into Gold Star [Studios] with [engineer] Doc Siegel and recorded for a week towards an album for Mira. We cut eight tracks; they were sort of produced by Sonny Bono, who was working in Studio B with Phil Spector on something.

Brian Wilson was doing the Smile album when we were in there. In fact, members of the Family Tree played things [on the Smile sessions] like the saw, hammer, and nail, and I believe I played the electric drill. We were there when they had the fire in the bucket, and they all had the little firemen’s hats on.

The Mira LP never materialized, but the demos from that session led to the contract with RCA. The band went through several personnel changes, and I’m not sure if Mike Olsen (who later changed his name to Lee Michaels) played on the Mira sessions. Bob Segarini went into Roxy and then the Wackers, and continues to make music to this day.

Source: Bob Segarini quoted by Ritchie Unterberger in his notes on Roxy.

Special thanks to JG for sharing the 45 scans and music.

Chris Ducey, Chris and Craig

Updated to include information on the Chris Ducey album and the Penny Arkade

In 1965, Chris Ducey recorded the album Songs of Protest and Anti-Protest for the Surrey label (Mira’s budget subsidiary). Surrey had printed the sleeves when they realized they had a problem. Ducey was either under contract to another label or publisher, or he just refused to sign what was probably a one-sided contract favoring the label.

Supposedly Mira/Surrey label owner Randy Wood had already sold the album’s European rights based solely on the cover, a photo of Brian Jones at the Action Club in West Hollywood.

Randy Wood hired Bobby Jameson (who had not been part of the original album sessions) to write new songs to match the titles on the album! Jameson recorded these songs with Marshall Leib producing. Jameson claims he never signed a contract either, and that releases from then to now have all been illegal. All he was paid was $20 or $25 a song for writing and recording them.

The Leaves recorded Jameson’s version of “Girl from the East” as the b-side to their second release of “Hey Joe” in March of 1966, though when the song started breaking nationally, they dropped it in favor of a band original.

Some of the sleeves changed Ducey’s name on the front to “Chris Lucey”, but some still read Chris Ducey so there must have been a couple printings of the covers.

The album saw release again in 1966 on the Joy label, this time in Bobby Jameson’s own name and the title changed to Too Many Mornings with a photograph of smokestacks. For some reason this release changes the title of”With Pity, But It’s Too Late” to “Just One of Those Days”.

Read the full story on Bobby Jameson’s blog, bobbyjameson.blogspot.com

In 2012 Chris Ducey’s original version of the album showed up as an mp3 download on Amazon released by something called Essential Media Group, LLC. Though sharing the titles, the songs are completely different from Jameson’s, with different lyrics, tempos, and simpler arrangements. Overall it’s more of a folk session, dominated by acoustic guitar and Ducey’s voice. Neither the compositions nor the production are as adventurous as Jameson’s version.

Jameson wrote on his blog “I purposely didn’t listen to Ducey’s songs in 1965 for fear of being influenced by his work.”

After this debacle, Chris Ducey met Craig Smith while auditioning and landing starring roles along with Suzannah Jordan in a series pilot called The Happeners about a Greenwich Village folk trio. They performed their own original songs, and there was an appearance by the Dave Clark Five. ABC never picked up the series, and the pilot itself seems to have aired only once and is currently lost.

Craig Smith had been in the Good Time Singers for their two albums on Capitol in 1964.

Chris and Craig Capitol 45 Isha
Together Chris and Craig made the pop-psych gem “Isha”, released by Capitol in July of 1966, with “I Need You” on the flip.

Around the same time as this 45 came a single on Downey 140, which credits the artists as Craig & Michael. Both songs, “Drifty” and “That Kind of Girl” were written by Brian Carman and Steve Crawford, and I see it mentioned, accurately or not, that Craig was Brian Carman of the Chantays, so I’m doubtful this is Chris Ducey and Craig Smith.

They spent nearly a year rehearsing their originals with musicians including Don Glut on bass and Mort Marker on lead guitar. They cut a demo, now seemingly lost, “Rhyme or Reason” (written by Chris) and “(She Brought Me) Something Beautiful” (written by Craig) with John London of the Louis and Clark Expedition.

In 1967, they formed the Penny Arkade with Don “Marvel” Glut on bass and Bobby Donaho on drums. Michael Nesmith backed them with equipment and rehearsal space and they started playing live shows. Nesmith brought them into TTJ studios in Hollywood and Wally Heider’s studio. Late in 1967 they went into RCA studios to record songs for what they anticipated would be their first album, including the twelve-minute “Not the Freeze”.

Also at the end of 1967 the Monkees used a Craig Smith composition, “Salesman” as the opening song for their album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.. Smith placed other songs, such as “Country Girl” with Glen Campbell, and “Holly” with Andy Williams. He co-produced with Bob Thiele a single for Heather MacRae, his girlfriend at the time, writing both songs “Hands of the Clock” / “Lazy Summer Day”, and with the Penny Arkade providing the music.

Enriched by his songwriting royalties, Craig Smith decided to leave the Penny Arkade to travel in South America and Asia. He returned around 1970 a changed man. Monkees producer Chip Douglas ran into Craig in 1971. “He was spaced out and had come back from Peru and had an album he was selling hand to hand. He had a spider tattooed in the middle of his forehead. He was just a nice kid, a nice American boy. To see him years later it was pretty bizarre. He said ‘Remember me. I used to be Craig Smith'”.

Without Craig, the Penny Arkade recorded four more songs, “Woodstock Fireplace,” “Sparkle and Shine,” “Face in the Crowd” and “Year of the Monkey”, and then added a new lead guitarist, Dave Turner. Turner left and they added David Price on rhythm, John Andrews on lead guitar and Bob Arthur, and rechristened the band Armadillo for another year or so of live shows.

Craig utilized half a dozen Penny Arkade songs on his early ’70s solo albums, Apache and Inca under his new name, Maitreya Kali. The rest of the Penny Arkade tracks were not released until Sundazed collected what could be found on Not the Freeze, though many other recordings including their masters seem to have been lost.

Craig Smith passed away on March 16, 2012.

Sources include: Don Glut’s detailed history of the Penny Arkade (a good read, I recommend it).