''Seven'' is the sixth studio album (seventh overall) by American

country rock Country rock is a music genre that fuses rock and country. It was developed by rock musicians who began to record country-flavored records in the late 1960s and early 1970s. These musicians recorded rock records using country themes, vocal sty ...

band

Poco In software engineering, a plain old CLR object, or plain old class object (POCO) is a simple object created in the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) that is unencumbered by inheritance or attributes. This is often used in opposition to the comp ...

. It is the first album they made after leader

Richie Furay Paul Richard Furay (born May 9, 1944) is an American musician and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member (with Buffalo Springfield). He is best known for forming the bands Buffalo Springfield with Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Bruce Palmer, and Dewey ...

left the band. The front cover was designed by

Phil Hartman Philip Edward Hartman (; September 24, 1948 – May 28, 1998) was a Canadian-American comedian, actor, screenwriter and graphic designer. Hartman was born in Brantford, Ontario, and his family moved to the United States when he w ...

. On this album the group experimented with a harder rock sound on some of the tracks.

Release history

In addition to the conventional 2-channel

stereo Stereophonic sound, commonly shortened to stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configurat ...

version the album was also released in a 4- channel

quadraphonic Quadraphonic (or quadrophonic, also called quadrasonic or by the neologism quadio ortmanteau, formed by analogy with "stereo" sound – equivalent to what is now called 4.0 surround sound – uses four audio channels in which speakers are po ...

edition on LP and on

8-track tape The 8-track tape (formally Stereo 8; commonly called eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, and eight-track) is a magnetic-tape sound recording technology that was popular from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s, when the compact cassette, ...

in 1974. The quad LP release was encoded with the SQ matrix system. The album was reissued in the UK on the

Super Audio CD Super Audio CD (SACD) is an optical disc format for audio storage introduced in 1999. It was developed jointly by Sony and Philips Electronics and intended to be the successor to the compact disc (CD) format. The SACD format allows multiple a ...

format in 2018 by

Dutton Vocalion Dutton Vocalion specialises in re-issuing on CD music recorded between the 1920s and 1970s, and in issuing albums of modern digital recordings. It was established by British recording and re-mastering engineer Michael J. Dutton. Dutton Laborator ...

. This edition is a 2-albums-on-1-disc compilation which also contains the followup 1974 Poco album ''Cantamos''. The Dutton Vocalion release contains the complete stereo and quad mixes of both albums.

Reception

In his

Allmusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...

review, music critic Bruce Eder wrote of the album "With strong, soaring harmonies, a healthy balance between acoustic country-rock and heavy rock & roll, and some fairly strong songs, ''Seven'' is a major surprise, given that this is the group's first post-Richie Furay album... with one or two additional strong songs, this would be a highly recommended album, and as it is, it's quite good. Unfortunately, not everything here is as strong as "Drivin' Wheel" or "Rocky Mountain Breakdown.""

Track listing

#"Drivin' Wheel" (

Paul Cotton Norman Paul Cotton (February 26, 1943 – July 31, 2021) was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter. He was a member of the band Poco and the writer of their international hit song " Heart of the Night". Before that, he was co-guitarist f ...

) – 6:10 #"Rocky Mountain Breakdown" ( Rusty Young) – 2:16 #"Just Call My Name" ( Timothy B. Schmit, Noreen Schmit) – 5:12 #"Skatin'" (T. Schmit) – 4:42 #"Faith in the Families" (Cotton) – 3:43 #"Krikkit's Song (Passing Through)" (T. Schmit) – 3:33 #"Angel" (Cotton) – 4:55 #"You've Got Your Reasons" (Cotton) – 5:14

Personnel

– vocals, lead and acoustic guitars * Rusty Young –

pedal steel guitar The pedal steel guitar is a console steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings, enabling more varied and complex music to be played than with other steel guitar designs. Like all steel guitars, it can play ...

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and in modern forms is usually made of plastic, where early membranes were made of animal skin. ...

, dobro, rhythm, acoustic and electric guitars * Timothy B. Schmit – vocals, bass guitar * George Grantham – vocals, drums, percussion With: * Jim Messina –

mandolin A mandolin (, ; literally "small mandola") is a Chordophone, stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally Plucked string instrument, plucked with a plectrum, pick. It most commonly has four Course (music), courses of doubled St ...

on "Rocky Mountain Breakdown" *

Burton Cummings Burton Lorne Cummings (born December 31, 1947) is a Canadian musician and songwriter. He is best known for leading the Guess Who during that band's most successful period from 1965 to 1975, and for a lengthy solo career. Cummings has been induc ...

– keyboards *

Bobbye Hall Bobbye Jean Hall is an American percussionist who has recorded with a variety of rock, soul, blues and jazz artists, and has appeared on 20 songs that reached the top ten in the Billboard Hot 100, ''Billboard'' Hot 100. Early career, work for ...

–

congas The conga, also known as tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are stave (wood), staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto (drum), quinto (lead drum, highest), tres dos or tres golpes (middle), an ...

* Al Garth –

fiddle A fiddle is a Bow (music), bowed String instrument, string musical instrument, most often a violin or a bass. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including European classical music, classical music. Althou ...

on "Rocky Mountain Breakdown"

References

{{Authority control Poco albums 1974 albums Albums produced by Jack Richardson (record producer) Epic Records albums