Country rock, as birthed from the mid sixties, is an odd genre. At times, dependent upon whose plying the style, country rock might mean something vaguely psychedelic. Other times, it all just sounds like supped up country songs with a pronounced electric element. But as the decade pushed on, there were greater and greater variations on the form that came to include concepts as wide ranging as organ jazz and the most messed up SF conception of psych.

Skip Battin, who’d eventually play a role in the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, cut his teeth in a few bands which gigged around the Los Angeles area. Some of his ensembles earned a bit of notoriety, but even those group’s that were able to find its way into the studio didn’t possess the same bite or the same sort of thoughtfulness his latter groups did.

Evergreen Blueshoes was one of the groups Battin worked with, writing a large portion of the band’s material and functioning as its singer. There’re obvious hints at the Byrd’s sound. But most interesting are the forays into music that doesn’t seem to concretely tied to anything within the realm of country music.

Some of that might be attributed to Al Rosenberg, who also had a hand in writing the group’s material. But whoever was responsible for the composition coming at the end of the band’s only long playing album – The Ballad of Evergreen Blueshoes – had his head into some pretty tripped out fair.

“Jewish Teahouse,” assumed to be written by Rosenberg based solely upon his last name, takes in anything that the guitarist found interesting at the time. There’s a bit of spoken word politicization as well as a modicum of traditional progressions tossed in. But focusing on the odd organ turns the song takes, it’d be difficult to peg Evergreen Blueshoes as anything even remotely tied to country rock. The organ, all dark and ominous, pushes the track forward in a sort of Doors manner while a drum cadence serves to work out a repeating bass figure with the guitar eventually contributing accompaniment and a bridge for those keys. The song’s odd regardless of how one might figure genres. So really, the main aspect of this release – apart from its personnel – that could sit in squarely in country rock territory would be it’s overly hippified cover art. And while the image of naked dudes might be enough to scare some listeners off, just get past it and turn to side two.