bands such as Arthur Lee and Love, Tim Buckley and Spirit, and from England, Caravan and folk music generally. The style of music also reflected the rural environment and would possibly fall into the "folk rock" genre. The name Cold River Lady was taken from a poem by Paul "Jazz" Jones the drummer from Carcass. The first gig took place at Brown's Club of Clubs, a converted cinema in Knighton on the Welsh border in spring 1971 supporting Pete Brown and Piblokto! and local Hereford band Sam Gamgee. Pete Brown, (who was a poet and had written many of the lyrics for Cream with Jack Bruce) and Phil Ryan (Pete's then organist and song writing partner, later of Welsh band Man) both enjoyed CRL's set with Pete volunteering to help in bringing the band to the notice of record companies. The band at that stage was in a loose form and Phil, Will and Mike all went off to University, only all to give up within the year with a view to taking the band more seriously. 1972 was the start of the main song writing period of the band based on the core output from Phil and Mike. Will had kept in contact with Pete Brown who wanted little excuse to leave London for the odd weekend in Hereford. Pete persuaded Polydor Records to make the first demos of the band with Pete producing. Four songs were recorded of which, from this session, "Far in the Fields" and "Sauna Bath Blues" are included on the 2010 release Better Late than Never. Also present on this session was Paul "Chesh" Cheshire (from the band Sam Gamgee) who added some electric guitar on three of the songs. Paul had been in Hunderton primary school with Griff and had recommended Griff for the band to Phil Will and Mike. Sam Gamgee was Chesh (guitar & vocals), Kelvin Wilson (bass & vocals), Tic Taylor (drums) and Ian "Ernie" Williams (guitar) (former member of Carcass). Chesh, Kelvin and Tic had all previously been members of the young schoolboy band, The Phantoms, who had made winning TV appearances at the age of 12 on Stubby Kaye’s Silver Star Show (ATVs ‘60s equivalent of Opportunity Knocks / X-Factor) as well as gigging regularly on the local village hall circuit - a circuit also frequented by the Silence and Doc Thomas Band who were later to mutate