One of the well-respected, if criminally underrated, bass players, Chas Cronk is mostly famous for his decades-long, if intermittent, stint with STRAWBS, but there’s more to his creative biography, including spells with Rick Wakeman and Steve Hackett. What it almost doesn’t include is a solo career, as the veteran released only one album under his name, the meditative “Mystic Mountain Music” from 2002, although Cronk’s trademark songwriting and playing were a major part of “Touch The Earth” – his 2007 collaboration with the bandmate Dave Lambert, who’s present on Chas’ sophomore offering.
Scheduled for release in February 2022, “Liberty” was planned to be out as an EP, its title track issued on YouTube a year ago and, given a group treatment, arrived on STRAWBS’ 2021 record, "Settlement" – yet the platter ended up as full-length outing, featuring also another Cronk’s colleague, Dave Bainbridge. It’s going to look like this (read the review):
Liberty
1. Liberty
2. Take My Hand
3. A Splash Of Blue (with Dave Lambert)
4. Everybody Knows
5. Flying Free
6. Into The Light
7. Slipping Downstream (with Dave Bainbridge)
8. Away
9. System Overload
10. Reverie
