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Customer Reviews of Traveler's Tale

If they only had a singer....alas!
Oh, what SRC conjures up in my memory! The "scream" in the middle of the Hall of the Mountain King/Beck's Bolero, live at Daniel's Den, in Saginaw Michigan. It was exciting. It was great. It was Scott Richardson's best vocal ever. These guys were good! Even with Ray Goodman in for Gary Quackenbush (out for a year with a broken limb from a cycle mishap) on lead guitar, (listen to his licks at the end of "Never Before Now"). The rhythm section cooks, epsically on the uptempo "Diana", with a driving bass line, and E.G. Clawson's pulsating beat. Glen Quackenbush's swirling Hammond organ never sounded better. The songs weren't the problem here (w/ the exception of "the Offering". An ambitious lemon! Were the orchestrations an attempt to cover Richardson's vocal?). Richardson is the flattest sounding lead ever. And that's saying alot. On every song, on every SRC record he's off pitch. When I think of how this group might have succeeded with someone like the Rational's Scott Morgan on lead vocals. Of course, Morgan turned down a chance to sing lead with Blood Sweat & Tears after Al Kooper got the boot. (I'm sure David Clayton Thomas thanks Scott to this day). This record, "A Traveller's Tale", had some decent pop songs. The aforementioned "Diana" is a stand out number. It demostrates Glen's chops on piano against a driving tempo. "By Way of You" has a nifty little change of rhythm for Ray's solo (trying to sound like Gary, and doing a decent job of it). A real pop gem, "Never Before Now", is a song that begs a better fate. Even Richardson's doubled vocal if off here. Despite these shortcomings, I like this lp. If fairness to Richardson, he was a decent live performer, he had stage presence, and he cowrote most of the SRC material. The guys he was competing with at the time weren't great singers either, (w/ the exception of Scott Morgan).
The Amboy Dukes, beside Ted Nugent, went through at least two lead vocalists. Bob Seger had a distictive, but not great voice. Question Mark (of "96 Tears" fame) wasn't a great lead by any means. But they were all better than Scott Richardson, and they all scored top 20 hits nationally. Musically, SRC was as good or better than any of those bands. Too bad, I would have loved to see them make it.

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SRC fades away with psychedelic era
As the psychedelic era faded away at the dawn of the '70s, SRC was a band without a sound. Traveler's Tale, their third album, was not quite psychedelic, not quite progressive, not quite commercial...it's a tepid album in search of a musical personality. It also suffers from the absence of Gary Quackenbush on lead guitar, who left after two albums and was replaced by less-talented guitarist Ray Goodman.The album was also poorly produced, with a muddy sound further clouding the murky musical waters. This was their final shot on a major label (Capitol). Their two previous albums (SRC and Milestones) are much preferred over this one.

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At their best with this album
The SRC were a great local/regional band from the late '60s early '70s. They had many hits in the Ann Arbor/Detroit market with as much, or more, potential as any band from SE Michigan during the era: including Segar, Nuggent, or the MC5. If you had seen them as I did, in all kinds of concerts and events, you'd have to agree that musically they had everything necessary to break into the big time on a national scale. The Quackenbushes were way ahead of their time on the Hammond and Les Paul - still sounding completely awesome on Travelers Tale yet today! I highly reccomend Diana and By Way Of You as songs that sound as fresh now as they did when written. My personal favorite Never Before Now, is a emotional, uplifting song that should be rerecorded by a major artist, to prove just how good these guys really were. Too bad for all of us, they quit so soon.