Fever Tree

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Fever Tree were an American rock group of the 1960s chiefly known for their anthemic 1968 hit San Francisco Girls (Return of the Native).

The band hailed from Houston, Texas and started in 1966 as folk rock outfit The Bostwick Vines, but changed their name to Fever Tree a year later after the addition of keyboard player Rob Landes. They subsequently moved to San Francisco and got sucked up by the flower power music scene there.

Their fifteen minutes of fame arrived when their anthemic song San Francisco Girls reached #91 in the U.S. charts, somewhen late 1968. Like most of the band's material, it was written by the couple of Scott and Vivian Holtzman who also were their producers. This 4-minute track captured all the band's trademarks: Dennis Keller's incantation-like vocals, the quick shifting between slow parts with an almost sacral feeling and faster, more rock-oriented parts and especially the searing guitar work by Michael Knust.

Fever Tree also released their self-titled debut album in 1968, which charted at #156. A second album, Another Time Another Place followed in 1969. Apart from San Francisco Girls, they never had another hit, although they later also tried writing songs themselves when they had dropped the Holtzmans as producers. The band finally called it a day in 1970 but reformed in 1978 with only guitarist Michael Knust remaining from the original line-up. This new formation made no impact whatsoever, and Fever Tree was not heard of again until 2003 when Michael Knust passed away from an accidental drug overdose.

Fever Tree's first two albums ("Fever Tree" and "Another Time, Another Time") were re-released on October 31, 2006.