Turnquist Remedy - Iowa By The Sea (Reissue) (1970/2006)

For an obscure one-shot act, Turnquist Remedy had a reasonably well-established career and quite a solid pedigree. The band formed in Los Angeles and was active from one end of California to the other between late 1968 and late 1971. Its core was the quartet of Michael Woods (vocals, guitar), Murphy Scarnecchia (lead guitar), Scott Harder (bass), and John Maggi (drums), but at the time they recorded their sole LP in 1970, the group had been augmented by session ace Larry Knechtel, who had just recently finished contributing the indelible piano part to Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water." Iowa by the Sea was recorded in Hollywood with former New Christy Minstrel Barry Kane and legendary engineer Al Schmitt (everyone from Sam Cooke to Jefferson Airplane) behind the boards. (In fact, the band was one of the first acts signed to Schmitt's nascent MCA subsidiary, Pentagram.) Despite its good reputation, the album didn't make much of a dent coming out of the already oversaturated L.A. pop market, and Turnquist Remedy would never record again, though the band did continue playing live for a year or so before ultimately packing it in. In addition to his duties as one of the most in-demand session pianists, Knechtel would soon thereafter join the lineup of Bread, contributing significantly to that group's hitmaking sound. Woods followed Knechtel into session work on the '70s El Lay scene and, in 1978, would join as a full member a resurgent America (at the recommendation of Harder, who was then the band's road manager) on second guitar, continuing with the group through all its incarnations over the next several decades. John Maggi would go on to play with String Cheese, which recorded an LP on Wooden Nickel, a label best known for releasing the earliest albums by Styx.