I couldn’t believe my ears were actually hearing what I was listening to.

There I was, at a warm summer night, in a small Kibbutz community at the green valley, Israel, on the doorsteps of a dirty home pub called “the chimney”– and the music that came from inside, took me on a ride back in the time tunnel…

Even before I set foot inside the place, it made me feel like I was about to enter the Avalon ballroom or the Matrix club in San Francisco, circa 1968… No joking, my friends!!

The guitar player sounded like John cipollina, the late great Quicksilver messenger service Axe man. The drummer was an unbelievable beast and the bass player was thumping hard & imaginatively behind it.

‘This is certainly not your average bar band’, I thought to myself, while entering the small club, curious as hell.

At a first glance I thought I was truly hallucinating (and I swear to god I didn’t…not this time) because I DID SEE a Cipollina look-alike, right there in front of me!

…There he was, standing tall & thin (though wearing slippers) with his long hair hiding his face & his Gibson SG shining above. Behind him I swear I saw the Allman Brothers as a rhythm section (!)- 2 Hugh blond guys, definitely brothers, long hair & tattoos & all…and they played like there’s no tomorrow: Killer vintage psychedelic jams, hard & heavy at times, delicate & jazzy at others, blues-rockers that slides elegantly into moody-late night-psych trips. They knew their craft, and they did it with passion, skill & tons of amazing space-shroom searching.

And in front of them- the people were dancing! Just like in the good old days!

This was one of the best live acts I ever saw in Israel and almost NOBODY knew who they were, except a small circle of friends.

On that first time I happened to catch a “Tree” performance, many moons ago, I didn’t realize that what I saw was actually not the full line up of “Tree”. Next Time I Saw Them – an amazing keyboard player with some classy vintage paraphernalia (including a Univox!) arrived from another void & added blankets of psychedelic atmosphere.

I was mesmerized. Again. As if it was the first time altogether again, but even better!

Then I came to know them personally, and I found 4 amazing individuals, that played together on & off for 5 long years (!).

Nave Koren, one of the best drummers I saw in the land of milk & honey, turned out to be a big record collector as well. More points! His younger brother Dor Koren- a bass player that anchors the ship from colliding with an iceberg. Ben Golan (nicknamed “Bengo”) a smiling guitar Freak, who starts a solo with no intentions of ever repeating himself like thousands other Jam oriented guitar players & Yair Vermut, a keyboard player with a music-teaching background & an ex-member of too many local bands to list them all.. .

In the following year, I went to see them performing as much as I could & even went with them on the unforgettable “Electric Bus Tour” to a night show at the Israeli frontier in the southern desert. Their evolution as a band was somewhat hazy, with the usual ups & downs, but the fact that no show sounded like the other was something that even Dead-heads can’t ignore for long. And the rumor spread quickly.

They always played a bit of covers (at the right amounts) but Mostly original stuff, and I had no doubt in my mind that these guys seek out, as many other good fellows did, the REAL & TRUE sound of their favorite era..

They were asked many times to record something in the studio, but due to the nature of their live performance they just couldn’t figure out how to do it properly.

Should they release a full studio album, what it’s going to sound like? Or maybe they should try and record one of their amazing live shows, but how can they release a statement of their TRUE sound when no show sounded like another?

Their privately-made Live Tapes Blew my mind completely. Especially a 4-cd set (!) that was recorded at the tiny “Pâté phone” Club in Tel Aviv & another unusually moody & jazzy show that was recorded at an Indian restaurant, no less (!) in front of 8 people!

Nevertheless, some of their studio recordings just didn’t seem very much like them…as if the studio had put some restraints on a freedom-flying, no barrels band.