Alan Wachs was 16 years old when he graduated high school in 1971 in sunny Los

Angeles, California. Growing up, Alan refined his craft playing in thrown-together
bluegrass and old-time bands with help from dear friends and musicians such as Ann
Brown, Barry Soloman, Steve Perlman, Tony Recupido and Steve Einhorn whose
impressions can be heard scattered thoughout Wachs full length studio release
Mountain Roads & City Streets. Well received by the locals, Wachs and his collective
were featured on the Nothern-Hollywood station KPFKs Folk Scene, hosted by Howard
and Roz Larmin and headlined one night at the Troubadour.
Destined for greener pastures Wachs found himself unbound by shackles of an
institutionalized higher education. Wachs, guitar in hand, took to hitchhiking around
California, visiting friends in Santa Cruz, San Francisco and Sonoma eventually landing
in rural Oregon. Wachs was overwhelmed with the beauty of the Pacific Northwest and
fell in love with the lifestyle cultivated by an older family friend, Ken Kahn who wrote
songs and sang in a group with his girlfriend. The group lived together in a quasi-selfsufficient way, tending goats, chickens and bartering with the neighborsall of this in
stark contrast with the perceived phoniness and poison of living in Los Angeles. The
group drew inspiration from the simpler lifestyle and the challenge to survive in a new
territory. As true hippie-pioneers some members of this newly formed counterculture
emerged themselves in the local history and composed songs in congruency with the
determined culture. Wachs, on the other hand, blended the modern with the archaic
hoping to create something that still resonated. With this opportunity to build something
new, the group began performing together along with other new vaudeville musicians,
sword swallowers, fire-eaters, jugglers, and other circus performers in a sort of new age
medicine show. This also set the stage for one of Wachs groups called the Blue Sun Lyric
Theatre based in Vernonia, Oregon, which existed as a marionette and puppet theater for
children and adults.
It was 1978 when Alan first began work in a real recording studio to record
Least Of My Strangers b/w Adventures Of The Invisible Dog. Scott Borden, a friend,
introduced Wachs to Leigh Kaplan who owned a 24-track studio called Sierra Pacific.
Kaplan produced Adventures Of The Invisible Dog while Wachs was able to selfproduce Least Of My Strangers. Wachs recruited old friends Steve Pearlman to play
mandolin and Tony Recupido on lead acoustic guitar. It was Least Of My Strangers that
broke out, becoming a number 1 record in Bowling Green, Kentucky for a few weeks.
Under the tutelage of Roger Davenport, partner to Hunter Hancock, premier Los Angeles
rocknroll DJ, Wachs was coached on airplay and self-promoting. The full length,
Mountain Roads & City Streets was recorded in a small 16-track studio in North
Hollywood owned by a former mastering engineer at Capitol records with all of the songs
written between 1973 and 1979. Wachs, who had been living with his then girlfriend now
wife outside of Portland, returned to Los Angeles for several months to record and
produce his album. Interested in marrying the simplicity of acoustic instruments with the
intensity of rocknroll poetry Wachs set to create an album that had the relevance rock
but could fit in with the timeless textures of folk music with acoustic arrangements.
Mountain Roads & City Streets had two pressings with the lion share of the distribution
executed by Wachs himself but without any sort of roadmap to follow, Wachs again faced
the challenges of surviving in new, unchartered, territories.