JOHN HAWKEN ON TOUR IN MARCH 2006 WITH STRAWBS!
March 2006 brings fans in England a mini-tour of the classic "Hero & Heroine" line-up of Strawbs. Covering a short four dates, the final date will have a filming of Strawbs for a live DVD to be released in the days ahead. Present for this tour are all five of the guys, David Cousins, Dave Lambert, Chas Cronk, Rod Coombes and John Hawken. Show dates and details of the venues, as well as discussions can be found at the official Strawbs website at http://www.strawbpage.ndirect.co.uk

We'll see you on the road!

JOHN HAWKEN ON TOUR IN JUNE & JULY 2004 WITH STRAWBS!

June and July 2004 marks the 30 year anniversary of the legendary Strawbs line-up that birthed the art-rock classics "Hero & Heroine" and "Ghosts". To mark this anniversay, the line-up of all five members -- Dave Cousins, Dave Lambert, John Hawken, Chas Cronk and Rod Coombes -- have reunited to tour the USA and Canada. The reviews are coming in (see below) and the Strawbs are still wowing audiences 30 years later! John is armed with his Moog Voyager, Mellotron voices (thanks to Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues) and other keyboards and synthesizers to insure that the sound is as authentic as ever!

Show dates and details of the venues, as well as discussions can be found at the official Strawbs website at http://www.strawbpage.ndirect.co.uk

To read a review and some of the news from the tour, please visit this page here at JohnHawken.com and watch the site following the tour for more photos, news, comments from John, etc.

We'll see you on the road!

Special thanks to Dick Greener of Strawbsweb for this history and photos.


In 1973, Dave Cousins and Dave Lambert had been holding auditions to replace Strawbs keyboardist Blue Weaver (who would later tour with Mott the Hoople before joining The Bee Gees, with whom Blue would record albums like Main Course, Saturday Night Fever and many others). To fill the hole left by the classically trained Weaver, The Strawbs settled on ex-Renaissance keyboard player John Hawken (also of The Nashville Teens who hit the charts with the top-selling "Tobacco Road"). They also recruited drummer Rod Coombes, who had previously recorded with Stealers Wheel, whose "Stuck In the Middle (with you)" was a major hit, and which also birthed Gerry Rafferty's career (of "Baker Street" fame). Last added to the line-up was bassist Chas Cronk, a session bass player who was a friend of Rick Wakeman and who came to Strawbs at the recommendation of Wakeman to Cousins. The new line-up headed down to Devon for the usual rehearsals and alcoholic entertainment, emerging to head into the studios before heading over the channel to play a short series of European dates.

The new band was tighter and Cousins was reportedly extremely happy with the way the line-up had come together. The studio sessions produced a new single "Shine On Silver Sun" -- which though a return to the more recognised Strawbs sound -- failed to set the charts on fire, despite an appearance on Top Of The Pops.

A short US tour followed, with Cousins writing a major new song "Autumn" during the tour and previewing it at Harvard University. The band were back in Ivar Rosenberg's studios in Copenhagen, recording what would become Hero And Heroine. Cousins's songs on the album continued the trend of plain speaking -- rather than flowery allegories begun with the preceding Bursting At The Seams -- reflecting the bleak period he was experiencing after his marriage breakup. Members of the band were contributing to the development of the musical ideas: the title track, originally demoed to the band on banjo, became a powerful mellotron epic and "Round And Round" had a powerful synthesizer intro. Both Chas and Rod contributed tracks to the set, and John Hawken's instrumental "Heroine's Theme" at the start of "Autumn" was released as a single in response to demand from black radio stations in the US.

Hero and Heroine was released first in the US, and the band undertook a tour there to promote it. Opening at the Academy of Music, and then playing a three night residency at the Bottom Line, they effectively consolidated their already solid following on the East Coast, which remains today the bedrock of their US fan-base. Back in the UK, the album was scheduled for release in April, and a UK tour set up for the same month. The album garnered mixed reviews, the New Musical Express's in particular being astonishingly negative. The title track "Hero And Heroine" was released as a single, followed shortly after by "Hold On To Me", which had had good reactions on the tour; neither charted, however. John Hawken recalled that the UK tour seemed so flat, and the press response so unfriendly -- a sharp contrast to their recent US experience. It is scarcely surprising that increasingly the band saw their future as being founded on North American success.

A third US tour followed, opening again at the Bottom Line, headlining for part of the tour, and then sharing the other half with Poco and King Crimson. Meanwhile, back in the UK, a retrospective album "By Choice" appeared, incorporating the tracks Cousins felt were the main milestones in the Strawbs' career. Whilst rare singles "Forever" and "Here It Comes" were included, "Part Of The Union" was a notable omission.

In the autumn, Cousins & Co. were booked in at the Manor to rehearse and record their next album. However, there were difficulties with Customs & Excise, who impounded the band's equipment for 10 days, which ate into the rehearsal time. On top of that, the pressure of nearly continuous touring had taken its toll, particularly on Cousins who collapsed and was taken to a London clinic to recover. As a result, the album Ghosts took considerably longer than expected to record and its release was delayed until February 1975; there were also difficulties with the sleeve -- the band had had a photograph of themselves superimposed over a photograph of the war memorial at Charterhouse, a suitably ghostly effect. However, the school objected to its use, so an alternative shot had to be found, delaying the album's release still further.

A projected tour of the UK nevertheless took place in November, which had mixed reviews from the UK press. By the end of 1974, Cousins admitted in an interview that the UK no longer figured very much in the Strawbs' plans. In the coming year, they would be concentrating on the more welcoming American market, along with projected trips to Japan, Australia and South Africa. There would be a handful of UK dates towards the end of the year.

Ghosts contains a number of the tracks best-loved by the North American fans who were now the Strawbs' main support. The four-segment title track, written by Cousins whilst on the road, staying at a hotel in Indianapolis and the powerful "Life Auction" were both hot live favourites. The latter has Cousins dirge-like opening poem, set over a series of Hawken's piano discords, which segues into a slice of classic Strawbs instrumentation -- Dave's thrashing 12-string guitar and plenty of power chords both from Lambert's lead guitar and from Hawken's keyboards.

"Grace Darling", recorded in Charterhouse School chapel, with a full choir and released as a single just before Christmas 1974, has been re-recorded twice since, firstly by Dave & Brian on Old School Songs and latterly on Ringing Down The Years by the full band. It also had a release for the French Canadia market with recorded lyrics as "Cherie Je T'Aime".

Another live favourite "Remembering/You And I When We Were Young" pays homage to Dave's childhood in West London, in and around the Old Deer Park in Richmond, with John Hawken's haunting theme wrapped around a classic Cousins' song, written some years previously, but never recorded until then.

Quite a few tapes of concerts on the band's first tour of the US in 1975 still exist, and give a good indication of the band's power, and the warmth with which they were received, particularly in their North American heartland. A&M Canada were particularly effective in supporting the band, and the tail end of the tour in early February took in a series of Canadian cities, with strong press coverage. Cousins had not brought his 12-string, which barred the title track "Ghosts" from the set but the well-lit, carefully rehearsed concerts drew praise from reviewers, and the Strawbs' "poetic mellotron rock" went down a storm. In Toronto's Massey Hall, Cousins was moved to proclaim that the band had done the best gig of their lives, and the band were forced back on-stage for a third unplanned encore of "Tears And Pavan".

Plans for Australia were cancelled in favour of further US touring, but the band did get to fly to Japan to appear live in Tokyo, and to record a TV broadcast, the first beamed out to all the islands which make up the country. The second US tour took in some of the Strawbs' developing markets, aimed at extending the band's reach outside the East Coast. After this tour, however, John Hawken left the band.

But the story of the Strawbs and John Hawken doesn't end in 1975 as in 2003, David Cousins called John Hawken and asked if he would be interested in doing a tour and creating a new Strawbs album of the original 1973/75 line-up -- this, as it was the 30th Anniversary of the release of "Hero & Heroine" and the band had been invited to headline the 2004 North East Art Rock Festival (NearFest) at Lehigh Universary in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. John agreed and the band quickly set-out to create a collection of new songs that would become a part of the Strawbs copious collection from which they would draw for the new tour. NearFest closed the three day festival of progressive rock with Strawbs playing before an audience of which probably half were not even born when the 1973 line-up were recording and touring. But the audience of 1,000 music lovers gave Strawbs two standing ovation encores as the band showed the appreciative audience that great music transcends generational boundaries. The group pulled two numbers from the new album, "Deja Fou" -- "This Barren Land" and "Here Today, Gone Tomorrow" to join the line-up of classics played during the 2004 tour. John named the album in a twisted reference to "deja vu" -- but in French the word "fou" means something "crazy. insane. nonsensical" -- and as John told David Cousins on the phone as they discussed the new project and tour: "Touring and creating a new album in your sixties has got to be crazy! This is definitely a case of 'deja fou!'" But to the audience that caught the 2004 electric Strawbs tour, once the lights went down and the band took the stage -- there was nothing crazy about it at all. It was a rare chance to catch one of progressive rocks truly great bands in action and David Cousins, Dave Lambert, Chas Cronk, Rod Coombes and John Hawken showed the audience that thirty years can easily melt away when great musicians take the stage -- armed with some of the best songs ever created in the world of progressive art rock.

During the tour, Strawbs recorded the final show date at the Northeast Art Rock Festival (NEARfest) where Strawbs were greeted by a standing ovation crowd whose love of the songs and the guys in Strawbs is forver captured on "Strawbs: Live at NEARfest 2004" -- an album that many fans feel is one of the best Strawbs albums in their vast catalog.

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