Twin Engine recorded about an album's worth of country-rock with pop and
Beatles flavors in 1971, though it didn't see the light of day until it was issued on a self-titled CD in 2004. Though it was derivative of bigger California acts such as
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and
the Flying Burrito Brothers, it was well done, with good duo vocal harmonies. Any chance it had of getting a wider hearing at the time was dashed when their hoped-for deal with a bigger label fell apart.
Twin Engine were the Los Angeles duo of singer/songwriters Constantine Gusias and Randy Naylor, who wrote about equal shares of the dozen songs that ended up getting issued more than three decades after they were recorded. Naylor had been a guitarist-keyboardist-vocalist in the minor L.A. late-'60s, folk-pop-rock band
the Poor, who put out four singles. (The Poor's main claim to fame included a pre-
Poco/
Eagles Randy Meisner in the lineup, as well as future
New Riders of the Purple Sage Allen Kemp and
Patrick Shanahan.) After
the Poor broke up, Naylor hooked up with local guitarist and singer/songwriter Constantine Gusias, coming to the attention of songwriter/performer/producer
Joey Stec (who had been in
the Millennium). With
Ralph Scala of
the Blues Magoos, he produced sessions with
Twin Engine (made up of Gusias and Naylor) in 1971, and including contributions by Southern Californian folk, country, and rock heavyweights
Clarence White,
Chris Hillman, and
Sneaky Pete Kleinow. As
Stec and
Scala had a production deal with United Artists, there was hope that
Twin Engine could release product through that label. But that ended when
Stec and
Scala were let go by United Artists, and
Twin Engine broke up; Gusias has said that he turned down an offer to be in a group that
Randy Meisner was forming, thereby possibly missing a chance to be in
the Eagles. The
Twin Engine album had reached the acetate stage, and a surviving copy was discovered in Naylor's possession much later, leading to its release in 2004 on Rev-Ola. ~ Richie Unterberger