Dillard & Clark, The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark (1968)

The Byrds all went rustic concurrently in the late 60s, despite being apart. Unsurprisingly, Gene Clark did it best; while the remaining official-Byrds began strip-mining the past for inspiration, Crosby rotted away on a farm with CSNY, and the Burrito Brothers only slowly eased into place, the best songwriting, melodies, and singing were all to be found here—naturally, in the shadows of all those albums, in terms of public profile.

It is a literal expedition—down to New Orleans, from Memphis to Colorado, crossing into San Bernardino (in the restored outtake “Lyin’ Down the Middle”)—and unlike the space-age flight fixations of Roger McGuinn, Clark still travels the old routes; “Train Leaves Here This Morning” is both song and entire worldview. He drifts from one heartbreak to the next, and if it’s not quite as sorrowful as subsequent solo albums, Dillard’s ace picking and strumming has a lot to do with it. Clark is in righteous form as always, forlorn until he tears it up on a (non-LP) “Don’t Be Cruel” that sounds like an instruction manual for Gram Parsons, who wished he could do this (and whose fellow Burritos pop up, including a mini-Byrd reunion with Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke). It’s hard to believe these are nearly all originals—they whisk by in under a half-hour, sounding effortless and timeless.