Dave Walker - Late 1970s - Raven and Mistress

Raven and Mistress

Walker then moved to San Francisco and joined Raven (a band which in its short life had a revolving door of personnel but was fronted throughout by the late ex-Quicksilver Messenger Service guitarist John Cipollina). It is known that Walker did some live shows with Raven, but most accounts suggest Walker never recorded with Raven due to legal difficulties. (It was apparently due to these legal problems that they could not finish a record deal they were working on and the album Raven had recorded, without Walker.) In 1976 the album was put on the shelf but was eventually released as John Cipollina's Raven after the band split in 1980.

Walker and some ex-Raven members, joined a new "revolving door" band who called themselves Mistress (not to be confused with the later heavy metal band Mistress).

Mistress encountered legal difficulties as well, though Walker did demo a song he had co-written for the project called "High On the Ride". This track appears on the album, released after Walker had left, although it is unclear whether any Walker vocal takes from the demo sessions appear on the finished product. If they were used, they are uncredited. The album included a minor hit, with the ballad "Mistrusted Love" scraping into the US top 50 singles chart. Legal difficulties also caused the eponymous album recorded by Mistress (again without Walker) in 1977 to be shelved, but it was released in 1979 by RSO Records, nearly two years after Mistress broke up.