VIA PRESS RELEASE | Hoyt Axton was a singer-songwriter and occasional actor whose songs arguably enjoyed more success when covered by other artists—he wrote “The Pusher,” as recorded by Steppenwolf and featured memorably in the soundtrack to the counter-culture classic Easy Rider, and of course, his “Joy To The World” (with its memorable opening line “Jeremiah was a bullfrog…”) was a global smash for the US vocal harmony combo Three Dog Night.
As a recording artist, however, Axton recorded many albums over a thirty-year recording career, and this—My Griffin Is Gone from 1969—is one of his very best. A ruminative and considered twelve track set, it features a fine cast of session players behind Axton, including the likes of James Burton on guitar, Jim Gordon on drums, and Larry Knechtel on keyboards.
Included in the tracks are his fine anti-drugs opus, “Snow Blind Friend” (Axton had many drug issues through his life), “Beelzebub’s Laughter,” which sees him enter the arena of social commentary, and the album has gained much traction in recent years in praise of its baroque orchestration, earning positive comparison to the likes of Phil Ochs’ Pleasures of the Harbour, and Goodbye and Hello by Tim Buckley.
