Gene Parsons’ Kindling is a nice 'n quiet country/ folk/ bluegrass record. It’s not my thing, really, but I appreciate its pleasantly relaxed vibe, and I understand where Parsons is coming from. I think he was always more of a country and bluegrass guy than a rocker. He just happened to be a very good rock ‘n roll drummer, but his real musical passions lay elsewhere. And secondly, there’s some ‘let’s get back to the country and back to what’s really important’ sentiment expressed intermittently throughout the album, which leads me to believe (without knowing for sure) that Parsons wanted to make mellow, down-home music in the aftermath of having toured continuously with the Byrds for close to five years. Fair enough. You’ve gotta give the guy credit for not making a corporate rock record. 
But the best thing about Kindling might be the sleeve. The front shows Parsons, presumably at his cabin someplace, standing with an axe in front of a huge pile of chopped wood. And on the back we see the cozy kitchen inside the cabin, replete with wood burning stove, natch. You can practically smell the firewood burning and the biscuits baking. It all oozes with rustic authenticity, the simple pleasures of country living. I wish I were the kind of person who could buy into this stuff. I guess I can appreciate it in a detached way. It’s neat that people are into rural lifestyles where they subsist off the land and chop their own firewood and live in cabins and what have you. But the idea that country living is somehow more real than life in the city, and that it’s superior because it’s less superficial and less wedded to material things, that’s the part I can’t accept. It’s silly, and it’s conservative. Plus, I grew up in a penthouse apartment in Manhattan and I tend to get frightened when I’m in the woods…
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