The Marshall Tucker Band
Searchin' for a Rainbow

A bit rhetorical, but sincere: songs communicate, records communicate. Through music and through words—regardless of personal tastes—there is intimate and instant communication when they manage to penetrate the listener's emotions. Perhaps music is the most immediate form of art, so it can be a double-edged sword: on one hand, it captures fantastic and unrepeatable impressions, but on the other, there is a risk of dismissing everything too superficially. Certainly, these are obvious reflections, but this album communicates particular and precious impressions; to be guarded jealously. It has an almost dominant denominator: serenity. In fact, I have always found in anyone who loves this album the same perception, the sensation of serenity that comes from the record. A serenity not suitable and not adaptable to a global and frenetic world like that of 2009.

The Marshall Tucker Band constitutes the third fundamental piece of the Southern Rock "trio of wonders". A trio that included Lynyrd Skynyrd and Allman Brothers Band, of course. Three very different bands from each other, who wrote unforgettable pages in the history of music and who have a characteristic typical of Southern Rock: the family saga. Yes, because the engine of the Marshall Tucker Band was made up of two sons from South Carolina, the Caldwell brothers. Tommy and Toy, the undisputed leader, the one who had the gentlest guitar sound in all of Southern Rock. Of course, in Southern Rock, if there is a family saga, tragedy cannot be missing, and unfortunately, the Caldwell brothers left us prematurely. Tommy in a car accident in 1980 and Toy from a heart attack in 1993, leaving the field open to the ghost of the Marshall Tucker to continue to linger until our days.

1974-1975, the years of recordings and publication, but we are also at the final stages of the Vietnam War. That Vietnam which also saw among its protagonists a young Toy, in the late '60s, before he gave life to the legendary adventure of the Marshall Tucker Band. "Searchin' for a Rainbow" is nothing more than the end of the quartet started with "Marshall Tucker Band" published two years earlier. Four beautiful records—in this quartet also "A New Life" and "Where We All Belong"—in two years, each in the wake of the previous one, until reaching the final summation of "Searchin' for a Rainbow"; therefore this record, in my opinion, represents a kind of closure of a painful and traumatic chapter. The Vietnam chapter indeed, in an attempt to restore serenity to the American province, conservative or liberal, without any distinction. Who better than the Marshall Tucker Band in this task? This is a purely personal consideration.

Obviously, if the engine was the Brothers Caldwell, the chassis was robust, elegant, and reliable. In the atmospheres of Marshall Tucker, Jerry Eubanks plays a fundamental role. A sound without his horns, without his delicate flute interventions, or without his tough saxophone blows would be inconceivable. Jerry, who would leave the ghost in 1996.

This journey sounds Country & Western, as in "Keeps Me From All Wrong" (written entirely by Tommy), a perfect setting for the regulars of Southern fairs. This record sounds Jam, sounds Jazzy, and sounds swinging as in "Bound and Determined", for example, where one of the most engaging rhythms I've ever heard is present; where Eubanks, Chuck Leavell—yes, he is also part of the game as a guest (...)—and Toy rope in the track. This journey also contains two of MTB's historical hits, those "Fire on the Mountain" and "Searchin' for a Rainbow", which have become their manifesto, where other two personalities from the Southern not exactly second-rate, namely Dickey Betts and Charlie Daniels, also lend a hand (...) There is also room for a mystical and enthralling "Bob Away My Blues", related to the legend of Country and Western Bob Willis and the Southern country life in general. A journey that continues smoothly without any misplaced jolts. An evenly paced crescendo that is impossible to resist.

Among the bonus tracks of the CD reissue also two live pieces; they too have entered the roster of devoted warhorses: "Can't You See" and "It Takes Time", the latter present in "Tenth" from 1980. One of the few decent things that came out from that record, where Toy and MTB's flame and inspiration were sadly—it was not the only flame to extinguish in the inescapable territorial decline of those years—fading. Incidentally, the last album with Tommy.

"Searchin' for a Rainbow" is made of a completely different cloth. An elegant album, an album that will not disturb any nightclub, precisely because it is capable of entering discreetly but staying forever. Capable of maintaining that wonderful, now rare, fragrance; which, even if you wanted to, you cannot give up.