20 Years After His Death, Fred Drake Estate Releases New Music

The Estate of Frederick Charles Drake is honored to announce the long-awaited release of ‘new’ music by Fred Drake, I Give You Life, available on Bandcamp June 20, 2022. Proceeds from the sales will go to a non-profit *organization helping survivors of the recent shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

I Give You Life is an album composed of work Fred Drake created and recorded in his home studio, the illustrious Rancho de la Luna, during the 9 years he reigned in Joshua Tree (1993-2002). Fred’s vision helped lay the groundwork for what has become a world-recognized destination for musicians and other creative people. Songs range from the resigned-in-anticipation minimalism of The Waiting Room to the psychedelic ambient serenity of Ride and from the haunting Is it Any Wonder? to the wry cowboy tenderness of God Bless This Horse. The wistful Maybe Someday opens with the very young voice of Fred’s niece Taylor Cook who has become an artist and contributed the cover illustration for this collection. Fred’s sense of humor and inventiveness is evident throughout, an artist facing the eternal, fully present, as is his soulfulness, his rage and quiet dignity – even at his most bawdy.**

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Fred Drake was born in Taft, California near Bakersfield and raised in Houston, Texas. He attended high school at the private American School in St John’s Wood, London. He was a drummer in numerous ‘modern’ bands in Hollywood in the 1980s. He tested positive for HIV and experienced an injury during a surgery which left him unable to play drums full-time. Fred then turned his talents toward recording. Not limited to the drums, Fred was a multi-instrumentalist often playing a wide variety of instruments – and always creating interesting sounds. He often collaborated with his many friends from all parts of the world. Fred moved to the sleepy desert town of Joshua Tree in 1993 and opened his studio, Rancho de la Luna, affectionately known as, “The Rancho,” often working all through the quiet, starry night and ‘ending’ the workday with a sunrise ride on his beloved Arabian Stallion, Kashmir.

The album Fred “moved to the desert to make,” the genre-defying ’Twice Shy,’ was released on the fateful September 11, 2001. Fred spent some of his last moments on earth, just 9 months later, listening back to other music he’d made in his beloved desert home, his House of the Moon, choosing his favorite mixes, some of which are now heard for the first time on this compilation.

In addition to Twice Shy, Fred’s first solo album, Cowbells for Cowboys, released on vinyl in 1990, is currently out of print. A CD of his ambient work, the Sky Party, was released posthumously in 2004.