The Ducks: High Flyin' (2023)

The summer of 1977 saw a new band hit the clubs of Santa Cruz, California. Taking their name from a local myth about a surfer killing a lot of ducks and thereby casting a curse on the town (or just randomly spotting ducks out the window), The Ducks were an eclectic bar band with a heavyweight roster. Singer-songwriter-guitarist Jeff Blackburn of Blackburn and Snow was the ringleader, Bob Mosley on bass brought notoriety from being a member of the popular Moby Grape, session drummer John Craviotto was a local hero, but it was the lead guitarist who made The Ducks something of an obsession for the town of Santa Cruz that summer. Yes, Neil Young joined this group as an equal member, moved to Santa Cruz, and took kind of a summer music vacation that year.

For context, this is the Neil that had done massive international tours with CSNY and Crazy Horse in the couple years prior. With The Ducks, he wasn’t the leader, just a member of the band. Neil’s longtime friend Sandy Mazzeo booked the gigs, and they were incredibly open. All the members sang lead vocals, as demonstrated on the double live album High Flyin’. While published under the auspices of the Neil Young Archives, it only features five songs written and sung by Neil, none of which are new to Neil fans. However, the arrangements with this band are very different. I’ll get into those in a bit.

Santa Cruz went a little crazy for The Ducks that summer, buying up duck calls, wearing duck hats, and spreading news about gigs mostly by word of mouth. On High Flyin’, you can hear the band banter with the crowd with various duck puns and quack quacks. It sounds like a hell of a good time. Neil stretched out and just had fun playing guitar with no pressure for awhile. He does great with Mosley’s funky numbers, backs up Blackburn with blistering leads, and is obviously having a great time on the Craviotto-led covers. Photos of the time show that he placed a large Santa Cruz skateboarding company sticker on the top half of Old Black. Without the pressure of leading a band or writing all the songs, Old Black soars. You can almost hear the freedom in his playing on instrumental “Windward Passage” and the abandon he lets loose with on “Silver Wings.”

“Are You Ready For the Country?” is the first Neil song that shows up here and The Ducks give it a much tougher, Muscle Shoals type of groove that suits it better than the Stray Gators. “Human Highway” is perfectly good here but I think Neil has done it better, including on the soon to be recorded version for Comes a Time. Neil compared his time in The Ducks with Buffalo Springfield and the band do “Mr. Soul,” a song that has never left Neil’s rotation in live performances. The Ducks’ version is one of Neil’s rawest, a relentless drumbeat backing angry distorted lead and rhythm. Neil snarls and sneers the lyrics, updating the the old psychedelic song to the late 70s, blowing the doors off local venue The Catalyst in the process. At this time, Neil was becoming more and more aware of punk and this sounds like him experimenting with it for the first time.

Two of Neil’s songs benefit the most from The Ducks, and have become my preferred versions of these songs. “Sail Away” is miles better than the Rust Never Sleeps version to me (recorded during Comes a Time). I love Neil’s electric on this and the rhythm section gives it a funky little shuffle. It’s almost like the rollicking party boat version instead of the yacht ballad of the released rendition. Previously it’s not a song I really cared for, but I would happily take it in this form every time. The other song that The Ducks transform is “Little Wing,” a song that Neil recorded with Ben Keith in 1975 but that wouldn’t find a home until Hawks & Doves in 1980 (it been slated for Homegrown, though). A lovely song with some of Neil’s best harmonica, it has always been one of Neil’s “nice” songs. The Ducks’ arrangement is more akin to “Cortez the Killer” or “Like a Hurricane,” a slow, majestic guitar odyssey with gorgeous leads and harmonies. It’s a magical take and you can hear the crowd slowly going crazy for it.

Let’s take a moment to position the summer of The Ducks in Neil’s recording chronology. After touring the world with Crazy Horse in 1976, he recorded a few songs with them and a motley crew at his ranch while preparing American Stars ‘n Bars (and Chrome Dreams) as well as shepherding Decade into existence. As far as I can tell, the last recording sessions prior to the winter was the April 1977 material. Then there is a pause until September when he started recording Comes a Time material in Florida. So The Ducks come right after the roadhouse rockers of American Stars ‘n Bars and the country folk of Comes a Time. When you hear the Bob Mosley and Jeff Blackburn songs on High Flyin’, it’s not surprising that Neil transitioned into Comes a Time, his big return to country. On the flipside, Rust Never Sleeps can be heard in the angry punk take on “Mr. Soul,” and the piercing guitar on “Little Wing.”

Sadly, the carefree life of The Ducks came to an end when Neil’s beachhouse got broken into and he had equipment stolen. Apparently it ruined the vibe for him and he fled, surfacing in Florida soon after. The rest of the band held on for a little bit after, but faded away. Bob Mosley struggled with schizophrenia. John Craviotto would go on to found his own drum company, the successful Craviotto Drums. Jeff Blackburn would be tied forever to Neil Young through the latter’s use of one of Blackburn’s lyrics. The infamous phrase that Kurt Cobain quoted from “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue),” “It’s better to burn out than fade away,” comes from Blackburn. In The Ducks’ case, it was a bit of both. They certainly burned brightly for a summer and left an indelible mark on Neil’s next two albums.

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