The Reviews Are In!

Rickenbacker Resource Forum So. Calif. MiniCon - 5/8/2010 

The variety of different music styles was great.... Loved hearing the surf music and the Byrds Collective (if you get a chance to see them play, do go; they really have an authentic Byrds sound, and are a super-nice bunch of guys who are top-notch musicians);

Melissa Breitsprecher - Senior Member RRF

Rusty's Surf Ranch - 3/25/2010

The guys have pretty much got their act together and when they're all in synch, it sounds pretty good...In short, the Collective are good, but almost too polite in their performance..........

The vocals were all good, if also a bit quiet. Mark Miraglia (McGuinn), Ken Hearn (Clark) and Dave Michaels ("the Croz") all sing competent leads and have the two- and three-part harmonies down. Pat Hayes (bass) and the redoubtable Stephen J. Arti (the continuity link between SoCal's two legendary Byrds tribute bands, the other being Andrew Gold's Byrds of a Feather a few years back) were a knowledgeable and professional rhythm section.  

Miraglia's 12-string playing was good, accurately capturing the style and feel of McGuinn's original approach. When he took leads, however, his volume pedal let him down and they didn't penetrate very well. The same for Michaels, whose brave interpretation of "Eight Miles High's" jazz leads was even less audible. Almost inaudible. Hearn and Michaels usually played rhythm and memorably joined Miraglia playing Rick 12s for "Eight" and "Turn!" That was a memorable sight: a blonde, a black and and a red, all working at once.

JB - The Byrdsmaniaxlist

The Cellar - March 4, 2010

It was an Excellent show put on by the Byrds Collective   last evening in Long Beach!! At least one Ric 12 string was in every song and about half the other tunes had a second Ric playing. Total count of four Rics on stage.

They had their set broken down to three-phases of the Byrds career: Folk-Rock stage, the Psychedelic stage and the "Country Rock" stage. First part was all authentic instruments to the original Byrds line up with Croz playing his Gretch, (no STP sticker!) and later on, in the "Country" side of things, a Parson's B-Bender Tele was used. Mark had a '67 MapleGlo 360-12 that had been modded to a 370 with a third Toaster. He also had a back-up 370-12 of a later year with the bigger headstock. 

 
I chatted with most of the guys, before, during and after, and they were real cool.   
Highlights for me were Mark doing an excellent job on his McGuinn style vocals (with a touch of a Dylan twang) on My Back Pages and Chimes of Freedom and his great, jangly MG 370-12 stuff on everything..... The very tasteful double Ric in tandem guitar solo that Ken and Mark did together on Turn-Turn -Turn. Dave did an excellent solo on Eight Miles High on his Fireglo 12 string and Dave's B-Bender "Clarence White" style was nice on the medley they did of Ballad of Easy Rider and Wasn't Born to Follow as well as You Ain't Going Nowhere and some other Graham Parsons tunes. 

They had great harmony vocals throughout, exemplified by Feel a Whole Lot Better and Have You Seen Her Face.  Bassist Pat Hayes did a great job anchoring down the bottom end and telling some history of the Byrds in between segments and drummer Steve Arti never missed a beat !

They opened the show doing MTM in style of the original 45 release, with Croz playing his accent parts on the upper frets and they finished the show with an MTM encore where the three vocalists each chose their favorite of Dylan's five verses for a different spin and making a longer version of the song and the second guitar played the B-Bender in the style of Clarence White as you would have heard his fills on MTM on the "Untitled" LP, "The Byrds do Dylan" CD or the "Live at the Filmore 1969" CD.

Highly recommend RRF-ers (or any Byrd-aholics) to check them out at an upcoming gig !
You can download several of their Byrds cover tunes from their site:
http://www.thebyrdscollective.com/

My apologies -- I forgot my camera   

Rich Ferguson - Rickenbacker Resource Forum

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We've added some new recordings to the Songs page and the audio player at the bottom of your page.  

NEW! NEW Added 3/12/2010 - The Bells Of Rhymney - The Byrds Collective (From The Byrds album, Mr. Tambourine Man)

The Byrds Collective has recorded (and presented on this site for your enjoyment)  Eight Miles High.  Originally released March 14th, 1966 this song reached number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100.

I'm legally required to reminded you that this is The Byrds Collective, not the actual Byrds (I know how you can mistake the two).