Thoughts Of The Townedger-August Edition

Allow me to take a pause in the album archival blogs that I have been doing all month.  Hard to believe I'm still in 1990 and the whole month is over.  I'll continue to fill in the gaps next month, provided if I can type and provided I don't get fed up.  I have worn out a couple of backspace keys so far this year.

I have continued to appear at various jam sessions for the past month and it's been mucho fun hanging with some of the finest musicians out there.  Last Sunday at Rumors' I was paired up with Tommy Bruner, one of the best songwriters in town and one of the nicest guys you ever want to meet. Tommy also plays in a few other bands, ( Past Masters) and he is the guitarist next to Bart Carfizzi who is the keyboard player and hosts many jams in the area.  The bass player is Jess Toomsen who with her husband Rich are part of Wooden Nickel Lottery, a up and coming blues band, who will be opening for Anthony Gomes in Davenport this November.  They have a album you can get from CD Baby and is recommended.  Tommy has a solo album coming out and I can't wait to hear it.  I hope someday I can borrow Tommy to do some jamming on future projects but he's very busy.   Wooden Nickel Lottery's website is here: http://www.woodennickellottery.com/

Past Masters have been very busy touring the Midwest as well.  They're a fun band to see as well. You have to check out Chad Johnson their lead singer.  He's a pure entertainer. You can catch them at this link: http://www.past-masters.com/

If you want to further confuse them, just tell them Crabby sent ya!.  They probably don't know who I am ;-)

(Honey Badgers: Front: Cathy Hart, Julie Gordon, Dawn Sedelcek, Back: Lorie Parker, Jess Toomsen, Barb Myers.  Brenda Snow took the photo.  Dawn provided her own drum set. Jess was my rhythm section partner.  I didn't associate with The Acousta Kitties at that time, nobody knew of my guitar playing and they didn't know me.  Things would change eventually)

The Sunday Popcorn Jam was taped and can be seen on You Tube or here and it marks the debut of myself playing drums on a couple songs with the musicians in the first picture. Fast forward to 15:30 mark to see me in a brief minute and a half cameo.  Check out Bart's odd look on Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay.  The half hour highlights can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH10WAgankM

I'm finished with the songs on the new album Fitting Finales and it's now on to doing the drums tracks.  I did about 20 songs, including a couple different takes on a couple songs. I think it continues the way Forthcoming Trains did, although I went back to more acoustic songs rather than electric.  I'm sure I'll pick the right 12 songs and then finalize the whole thing before October.  I think after that, I'll see what options is there, if I want to continue to jam often, or try to start up a new band project.  Of course I should have not bought them, money is tight but I couldn't pass up on finding a pair of 14 inch Quick Beat Hi Hats from Zildjian for 100 dollars at Music Go Round.  I think I paid 200 for my old pair many years ago and got rid of for a song.  If nothing else, Fitting Finales will be the first album that I have done using any type of Quick Beats since Postcards From The Edge, 28 years ago.  We're turning full circle again.

Dawn Sedlacek provided the drums for the Sunday jam, and most of her cymbals were Zildjian with the exception of a Sabian Splash cymbal but I loved her 20 Ride cymbal. I know it was a Zildjian but it may have been either a sweet ride or a medium ride.  I really wanted to take that one home with me. Dawn is part of a band called Sound Daze.  She absolutely kills it on Mr Big To Be With You. The surprise is that she did a mash up of Metallica's Enter Sandman with Don't Stop Believein'.  Very impressive.  Since I'm giving props and shout outs to my musician jammers, I'll put in a plug for her band: https://www.reverbnation.com/SoundDaze

I tend to notice for jam sessions that is better to leave the power crashes at home.  The problem is that they overpower everything.  Terry McDowell has a Power Crash 18 inch cymbal that is quite loud, so I end up using it for a ride more often than not.   Since I haven't been using them, I have taken a couple of Paiste cymbals, an 18 inch Innovations Medium Crash and a 18 inch Signature Mellow Crash along with the 3000 20 inch Ride, and the 13 inch Signature medium hats and left the 2002s at home, I rather not have folks bashing on them.   Since Forthcoming Trains, I've been back to Zildjian K's and the Armand Ride for main cymbals.  As I gotten older I tend to favor a smaller crash ride cymbals The Armand Ride is perfect for riding the groove and crash too.   If people never requested to hear them in the last contest that I did in asking folks what cymbals I should use, I probably still be playing the Paiste 2002 and  3000s.  But I tend to like the more fuller and beefier sounds of the session crash of the 18 inch K's and the old beat up Medium Thin K crash that has been a part of my recording career since 1995.  New cymbals may be nice but vintage cymbals are better.

For the first time in over 30 years, Russ Swearingen and me were on stage together again and I have to say it was a highlight in a somewhat frustrating night.  It also provides a reason why I haven't played in other bands, the egos and not being on a same page on certain songs.   Jam sessions are supposed to be fun, not dictatorial.  When Russ showed up and got on the stage, it seemed like we picked up where we left behind.   He seems to know where I'm heading the songs and doesn't take exception to the oddball beats that I will do from time to time.  I don't play things by the record and never will.  I always add a counterpoint or put in some accents.  It's always been that way.  I know I'm not the same wild drummer I was 30 years when Russ and I shared the stage, I can't play that way, I would be dead from a heart attack and even my reservedness, there is a rude tenacity that borderlines on craziness.  There's certainly a lot of drummers in the area that can play circles around me, but I do know I can lay down a beat that can get people to dance, or get crazy.  As much as I like having Bart or T Ray Robertson on stage and them encourage me to play, Russ remains the inspiration and spark, the guy I can lean on more often than Bart or T Ray or Guitar Dave.   I suppose I should have invited Russ to be more involved in The Townedgers music and that's on me and everything I do is secret.  I look at Russ more as the bandmate in Paraphernalia Tyrus than The TEs.  The TEs remain my band and my vision and I don't think he would conform to such tyranny.  In Paraphernalia Tyrus, he is my equal, just as he was in the band we had in 2008, I/O. But then again I kinda withdrew from him in 2008, the flood didn't help.

But when he was on stage last Thursday, I realized that I missed him more than I let on.  Even while rusty, he impressed T Ray to the point that T Ray may have some openings for him to handle.  I'm sure Russ would fit into any band, more so than myself.  If nothing else I do believe Russ really doesn't want to be pegged into a classic rock bar band type of person.   I look at myself as alternative folk garage country rocker.  I'd be bullshtting everybody to think I was a Blues man, or country player.  I love all kinds of music (within reason and certainly not rap) and could play it if I had a general idea what people want me to do.  I can't explain the chemistry that Russ brings to the band, all I know is somehow it works and we have it together.   I know he really doesn't care much for Rocky Mountain Way, like I do but it's our theme song, it made us (Me) notorious 23 years ago and it's still a fun song.  It's a bit strange now that I'm the one singing it but no matter what, I think it's special  moment when we play it together.   I like the chance of sharing the stage with Jess and Tommy but I love it when my best friend on stage with me.  It's like 1982 all over again.

And thank God his wife Deb took a picture of us on stage together.  Otherwise the moment would have been lost forever.

Album Archives: Nice Weather We're Having 1990

In some ways Nice Weather was an improvement over Purseyors Of The Truth, at least for a recording viewpoint.  I ended up getting a new four track after the Fostex fell apart (throwing it against the wall will do that) and finally figuring out how to record without tracks bleeding into one another.  Trial and error more or less.

Dave Crossant was gone, replaced by Robert Knowles who went under the alias of Mike Brookins, simply of the reason that he wanted to remain incognito, never quite figure out the reason anyway.  Neil Delanie remained on board to produced and Hugh McConnell came in to record the record, with mixed results.  Even he was trying to figure out how to record the album.  Later on, we blamed it on dirty recording heads and later versions of the album has a much clearer sound although a bit more in the treble side.

When I think about this album 25 years onward, I'm amazed on how well the songs came out to be.  In the October recordings sessions I had about four tapes worth of music and the best songs made it to the record.

The songs themselves; Jeanette 15 Years Ago (now 40 years ago), basically a song about me returning back to her home stomping grounds and seeing all the changes abound and wondering why the hell I wasted my years thinking that she was the one.  Out of all the all time worst GFs, she's number one on the list.  Not because of who she was or are but rather me bullshitting myself she was the one.

Last Of The Warm Days is such a fun song, I had a Rockpile vibe going on.  Perhaps it contains the best lyric line I ever written: Sometimes it pays to be mysterious.

A Different Shade Of Blue was inspired by Blood On The Tracks and me trying to come up with a story song of sorts.  More like Maquoketa Woman a few years later to which the woman shows up at a gig, talks of old times with her love interest which leads to a private moment to which she tells to the singer of the song that she played their song over and over.  Which leads to a imitate moment to which singer of song stops himself before the moment of passion and noticing she has a wedding band on her finger.  Then tells her to be on her way.  In other words, another patented love gone wrong song done story time.

One early October morning I managed to get out of bed at 8 AM and proceeded to write up and record Old Fart Rock And Roller and Don't Let My Love Pass You By.   The former song about turning 30 and wondering if I will continue to rock on (I'm still am 25 years after the fact, where does the time fly).  I love the call and response of Don't Let My Love Pass You By, with me leading off Don't Let Love, and have the guys reply back Pass You By. The vocals really go back to Can't Seem To Make You Mine, kinda deadpan.  Look Out For My Love was thought up on the spot.  No idea how that came to be but we just went with it.

So Far Away continues to be a problem song.  Originally recorded the lead vocals were buried in the mix, so Richard Dennanbaugh and I recorded them again.  How Are Things is a guitar riff through the digital delay, Geoff Redding adding a counterpoint guitar riff, it was a song welcoming back Jack into the fold.  The Renaissance Park segment with the baby call and response was tacked on.  It sounded good at the time.

Eternal Youth and Route 66 were recorded live in the garage before our fucking neighbor Sally Sunshine called the cops on us. For many many years, I had to deal with Miss Sally complained about us doing anything outside the house, be it basketball, football or acoustic guitar, so we turned the whole thing up to ten and churned out Route 66 before a small gathering.  The thank you at the end was directed at Sally Sunshine and the one finger salute.  You should have been there.

In other words, Nice Weather We're Having begins a new era of The Townedgers sound and while it's in need a new mix (the 2004 mix was devoid of any bottom sound) the album came out really really well.  But at the time I was disappointed in the end results that I pretty much put everything in storage for a while and returned back to my day job, not knowing that my boss would lead me back into playing again, and perhaps beginning what is considered the classic years of The Townedgers.


The Songs:

Black Girlfriend (Smith/Redding)  3:00
Jeanette Fifteen Years Later (R.Smith)  4:26
Last Of The Warm Days (R.Smith)  5:25
Forever Days (Smith/Redding)  3:30
So Far Away (Smith/Orbit)  4:55
The Late Show (R.Smith) 5:50
Highway Of Love (Smith/Orbit)  3:33
Different Shade Of Blue (R.Smith)  8:00
Old Fart Rock And Roller (R.Smith) 3:35
Don't Let My Love Pass You By (R.Smith)  3:45
Look Out For My Love (Smith/Orbit/Redding/Knowles)  1:25
How Are Things (Smith/Orbit/Redding) 2:55
Country Boy (R.Smith)  2:15
Life Is The Blues (R.Smith)  4:25
Eternal Youth (R.Smith)  5:02
Route 66 (Bobby Troup)  3:03

Lyrics written by Rodney Smith, music by those credited. (C) 1990 Townedgers Music Emporium
Except Route 66 which is written by the late great Bobby Troup (C) Londontown Music ASCAP


Album recorded at Maier Studios, Marion Iowa October-November 1990
Recorded by Hugh McConnell with Ned Jackson
So Far Away-vocals recorded by Richard Dennanbaugh

Rodney Smith-Vocals, guitars and drums
Geoff Redding-Lead guitar and backing vocals
Jack Orbit-Guitars and backing vocals
Robert Knowles-Bass guitar and vocals
John Castleman-Bass on Highway Of Love, Eternal Youth and Route 66 

Produced by Rodney Smith and Neil Delanie

Issued as Maier Records MRK 24603  November 1990

Album Archives: Purseyors Of The Truth 1990

Sometimes an album doesn't work.  The intentions are good and songs are recorded and put together but the whole thing just fall short of expectations.  This is one of those albums.

1990 was a oddball year of sorts.  I kept getting derailed by bad choices in dating women.  The year before, a disastrous reunion with a high school sweetheart, the next year wasn't much better.  Somehow I was taken by a strip dancer from Denver named Melissa.  My best friend may have talked up a great story about me and somehow she either felt sorry or obligated to chat with me a while. The story has been told time and time ago, and probably seen multiple times on Maury or Jerry Springer.  Melissa I would say was more of a Plain Jane.  We laughed together on some of the jokes and she did give a bit of attention to me when I has hanging at Dancer's Ranch (in 3 locations).  But it was easy to see that I was getting too hung up on this woman.  Even going to the Flower Shop to buy her flowers, only to have some other dude give her a twice more and her spending more time with him.  I think I wrote a song about it called Love's Not Here.  I do know one day in Coralville she told me about the tragic death of Stevie Ray Vaughan and she was crying and we hugged each other tight.  The last time I saw her was a couple weeks later and she got mad and was screaming at somebody and stormed off.  Even though she gave me her phone number, I spent more time talking to her answering machine.  Love wasn't here for sure.

Purseyors Of The Truth (the actual title) was a play on the words Purveyors and perhaps we should have used that word instead.  It was a very confusing album done under stressful situations. Dave Crossant and I were having disagreements, Geoff wasn't fitting in either and how anything got done is beyond me.   With a new producer Neil Delanie, it was kinda like growing pains in what direction we wanted to take this.  Certainly, the friction with Melissa was showing in songs like Star! and Reason To Believe, but also in life itself with Hard Time Have Begun.

We started recording the album in August of 1990 up till when the four track broke down, to which the Fostex got destroyed in a rage over how the record sounded.  Perhaps the problem was that we never did record things right with that four track in the year and a half I had it.  The direct recording on tracks continue to bleed into one another and there's no separation between guitar, vocals and drums.

That said, the songs were actually quite good, especially Eternal Youth  which was a tongue in cheek song about me looking younger than my years.  Even at age 29, I still looked about 5 years younger, to which I credit living in the basement for so many years to keep looking younger beyond my years. Violence, a 7 plus minute song is interesting for the primitive punk garage rock beat and the same chords repeated over and over.  And of course, Star!, to which Diggy Kat, my long time music buddy and A and R person the past few years calls it one of the best five Townedgers song ever recorded. Which is open for debate.  And says he loves the album.

For for myself, while it has moments, it really feels that something is missing.  In 1991, on the newer four track, I re recorded most of the drums which turned out to be a bigger mistake.  Once thought that the original drum tracks were long gone, turned out to be the four track had dirty heads and cleaning them revealed otherwise.  Perhaps a remix and reissue might be in order but Purseyors Of The Truth is not one of the go to albums.  Soon after, Dave Crossant went back to Minnesota and the Flywheel and I moved on.  Soon after that, Melissa would be out of my life except for a chance meeting a year later.  More about that when the right moment comes along.

Songs:

Hard Times Have Begun  5:14
Star!  6:38
Nothingness  4:19
Violence  7:27
No Confidence Man (Smith/Crossant)  3:50
Freeway Surfin' 3:43
Eternal Youth  5:24
Tomorrow's Little Girl (Smith/Redding)  3:38
Always Something (Smith/Miller)  4:12
Reason To Believe (Smith/Redding)  4:15
You're Not Alone  (Smith/Orbit)  5:20
Three Sedona Red Rocks  5:38

Songs written by Rodney Smith except where noted (C) 1990 Townedger Music Emporium

Recorded at Maier Studios, Marion IA  August-September 1990
Recorded by Bob Kastaballa and Ned Jackson
New drum tracks recorded November 1991 by Richard Dennanbaugh
Freeway Surfin and Violence are the original drum tracks

The band: Rodney Smith, Geoff Redding, Dave Crossant

Produced by Rodney Smith and Neil Delanie

Issued at MRK-24585
Reissued on CD as MRK-25235 2004

Album Archives: Floodlands 1989

The end of the 1980s turned out to be uneventful.  The reunion with the high school sweetheart turned out to be a bust and broke my heart and I got pink eye in the process.  My best friend Russ got released from the Marines in a accident and we talked about getting something going again.  One of many times we tried to do that.

Music wise not much was done, till my parents went to visit Relatives in Missouri on Thanksgiving weekend, so that gave me time to have the house to myself and come up with a new recording.  The end result would be called Floodlands.

The whole thing was done in three days.  Although Dave Crossant was listed, only Geoff Redding participated.  Bob Kastabella miked and recorded the drums but this time adding an extra mike in front of the cymbals, not a good idea.  Some of the songs the pang cymbal just about drowned everything out.

The songs themselves, Darkness was a drum solo with guitar feedback in the background.  Miss Baloney Brain is a hilarious speed metal song, with silly lyrics.  The title track was a protest song about land development in a floodplain, that came true with the flood of 93 and later the flood of 2008. Too Close To The Moon was supposed to have more guitar to add later but I said the hell with that and tacked it on as is.  It came from the 1985 sessions but we could never get the guitar riff right. Even on this version I'm changing up the chords hoping something would stick.

The album was under the working title of Too Far Gone and then later Playground before settling on the name Floodlands.  In the scant session notes, Rick Profit was slated to be the bass player, I have no idea who he was, I don't remember him at all, unless we met at DeSodas over jack and cokes and talked about working together.

The Cassette version had leftover tracks from Moonlight Chronicles and the CD reissue kept them up.  However the newer 2014 remaster focuses only on the November sessions.  Like the previous album, we found a way to equalize the sound a lot better.  On Miss Baloney Brain the guitar is more out front rather than buried in the mix.   When I hear the end result I think Floodlands was a better album than Moonlight Chronicles, the songs weren't as long and more to the point.  It was a nice album to end the 80s.  Where the road leads the next year would be filled with bumps and potholes along the way.  Which led to the next disaster, something called Perseyors Of The Truth.  More about that the next time we meet.

Songs:

Nothing But Time (Smith/Redding)  3:15
Darkness (Smith)  2:00
She's Coming Home (Smith) 3:05
Remember Me (Smith)  3:40
Miss Baloney Brain (Smith) 3:09
The Bride Wore Black (Smith/Orbit/Redding)  4:15
Battleaxe (Smith)  5:11

Floodlands  (Smith/Redding)  3:10
Don't Throw Your Love On So Strong (Smith/Redding)  2:50
On Your Way Down (Redding)  2:55
Too Close To The Moon (Smith/Orbit)  4:10
No Turning Back (Smith/Young)  3:35
Eyes Of God (Smith)  3:30

C 1989 Townedgers Music Emporium

Rodney Smith-Guitar, drums and vocals
Geoff Redding-Lead and bass guitars, vocals
Dave Crossant-Bass player in spirit

Recorded Thanksgiving Weekend 1989 Maier Studios, Marion IA
Recorded by Bob Kastaballa, with Ned Jackson assissting
Produced by Rodney Smith

Originally released as Maier Records MRK-24550   Dec. 1989

Album Archives: Moonlight Chronicles 1989

In 1989 I finally treated myself to a new four track from Craig Erickson and the folks at The Music Loft, a place that actually helped me get a few things along the way.  Basically Camber Cymbals in the early 80s which all got replaced soon afterwards with used Zildjians.  Craig Erickson remains a legend that still lives in Cedar Rapids and continues to play and put out blues albums, but he was instrumental in help shaping the sound better than the low fi albums of the mid 80s.  I had to get something better than the cassette to cassette format and tape players not up to speed.

The thing about the Fostex Recorder that it was cheap, about 400 dollars and had its own built in echo system, to which we overused big time, but the big flaw was that the Fostex had player buttons that would break off and snap off.  Later, in the matter we recorded, that the guitar and drum tracks bled into one another, which made further remixing the tapes on other tape players a bigger pain in the ass to make it sound right.  This recorder only survived a year and half of recording just about everything I threw at it.  Alas, the recordings were very echoey and the treble button was all the way to ten.  Nevertheless I couldn't wait to try it out, we did something like four songs on January 24, 1989, which came out on a EP.  Another album, State Fair was released, but it was basically me trying different ideas and song structures, and using plenty of archival work in the process. Namely railroad sounds from an 8 track that I had called Green Board South.  I wish they could reissue that on CD, it's one of the best train sound effects album ever made.  Especially on a the Quadraphonic 8 Track.

Later in the spring, I decided to record new songs for an actual album.  If you take away Travelogue, I didn't have any new music since Postcards From The Edge, which basically was a year and four months.  Once again Brian Mullahan came onboard to produce it and we ended up making a 90 minute long cassette.  We butted heads on this, I wanted a double album, Mullahan wanted a single record and we kept at it till the whole thing was issued as a 90 minute cassette.  In hindsight, Mullahan knew better, the scope was wide, the inspiration flowing but a lot of the songs didn't quite jell.  I had a good friend Mike Davenport who helped me write a song in a way to thank him for his support. But it was one of the lesser songs on this bloated effort.  Sessions started in March but the record keeping was spotty so therefore dates and locations were lost.  It ended in May of 1989.   In order to give it a record feeling, I added four installments to the cassette version.  When it came out on CD, we simply mastered the source dubbed tape and hope to hell it come out right.  It didn't.

The cassette version (in four installments-in spaces)

Observations From The Forefront 4:34
Gravel Road Memories 6:01
Sitting On A Fence 2:20
Midnight Motel 5:35
Northern Lights  2:25

Shooting Star  5:10
Make Love To A Shadow  3:39
Garageland 3:15
Purple Passion 6:38
Last Train Home 5:20

Live In Fear  6:01
She Knows Nothing About Love  4:49
Molly's Folly 6:20
Going In Reverse At The Same Time (Mike Davenport Lyrics) 3:10

What Comes After 6:09
Somewhere Between You And Me 3:53
Many Things On My Mind  5:36
Teri My Love  7:10
Celebration Of The Garages 2:20

The songs themselves.  I think I wrote a blog about a couple of them Teri and Purple Passion, Teri was for Teri Cortesio a co worker and Purple Passion is about Laura Henry, a  co worker that I managed to see once again when I worked in Iowa City a couple years ago.  She still got those pretty eyes and smile, and is taken.  Live In Fear was about some co worker that pissed me off, don't know what for but he inspired me with this song about kicking somebody's ass.  It actually was one of the better songs on this album.   Make Love To A Shadow was another song about a co worker, Teri Ware I think her name was, she was black and I was white and my folks didn't like that one bit.  A fun girl, I remember her bringing a Marvin Sense record that had Candy Licker on it and she basically spelled it out what she wanted to do with me.  Perhaps I should have took her up on that offer.  Molly's Folly, is explained in another blog, it's about Molly Murphy and my infatuation with her.  Hell I was infatuated with any woman that looked my way it seems.  

In some ways this is the first true Townedgers album.  When Geoff Redding joined up to replace Jack Orbit, we were still Route 66 but in 1996 when a in town band used that name, anything with Geoff on it became The Townedgers.  Ken Miller was replaced by a Minnesotan of the name of Dave Crossant, kind of a beatnik dude that had a liking for weird shit, namely The Melvins, anything that came out on Sub Pop and some band nobody heard of called Nirvana.  He was part of Minnesota Flywheel, a goth punk band.  Geoff Redding came from The Blue Caps (no part of Gene Vincent but rather a 50s cover band) and the thing we had in common that he loved Richard Thompson, the guy from Fairport Convention.

When I was in Gabe's Oasis in 1989, Doug Robertson and I struck up a conversation about he was putting together a Iowa Compilation album, with local Iowa bands putting together music for LP, and I sent him Garageland, which was a mistake and didn't make it on the album, nor did the other two, I forgot which ones but nothing came of it.  It also showed I had a long way to go in order to get the sound down ready for the radio, and while it was fun recording the album on 4 track, the overabundance of reverb and treble made it an impossible listen.  Richard Dennanbaugh took a crack at remastering it in 1997 but we didn't promote it much and another attempt was made in 2004 with Hugh McConnell behind the mastering process and it wasn't much better.  Finally last December of 2014, after getting a new CD recorder, Martin Daniels made a few suggestions, I took notes and we came to find out that only way to make a listenable recording was to have the recording levels all the way down to 1, and even that was pegging the recorder.  In the end, we finally took Brian Mullahan's advice and finally picked the 10 best songs from that album.   And even the length of the songs still pushed the CD over 51 minutes.

But I think the final result we'll have to live with.  It's still not perfect but at least it's a bit more listenable than it's previous efforts.  But with the efforts of Geoff and Dave on this, it really sounds more of a band effort.   Things wouldn't last too long, Dave jumping in and out of the band and me getting involved in with a girl I dated in high school, only to have that blow up in my face and leaving me depressed for the rest of the year.  But at least Moonlight Chronicles, it was nice to finally have a four track recorder that at least made the whole thing sound fairly well.

Tracklist (Single CD version)

Teri  (R.Smith/G.Redding) 6:25
Shooting Star (R.Smith/J.Orbit) 5:10
Sitting On A Fence (R.Smith) 2:25
Make Love To A Shadow (R.Smith) 3:35
What Comes After (Smith/Orbit/Redding)  6:10

Gravel Road Memories (R.Smith/J.Orbit)  5:50
She Knows Nothing About Love (Smith/Orbit/Redding/Crossant/Mullahan) 4:49
Molly's Folly (R.Smith)  6:15
Live In Fear (R.Smith)  6:06
Last Train Home (R.Smith)  5:02

Produced By Rodney Smith And Brian Mullhahan
Engineered By Ned Jackson, Terry Bainbridge, Bob Kastaballa
Recorded At Maier Studios March-May 1989

Rodney Smith-Lead Vocals, Drums and Guitar
Geoff Redding-Lead Guitar and Backing Vocals
David Crossant-Bass
Jack Orbit-Guitar and Harmonica on Gravel Road Memories
Ken Miller-Bass on Molly's Folly

Lyrics By Rodney Smith, Music by Smith/whoever's given credit
Copyrighted 1989 Townedger Music Emporium

Released as Maier Records CMR-24533 On June 8, 1989

Album Archives: Travelogue

Live albums have never been one of my better efforts.  Mistakes are made, words are fucked up and sometimes the whole thing becomes a trainwreck, however it was 5 years ago that time that Town's Edge Rock came out and I thought that perhaps a live effort would be in the works.  Alas, the bars in town were not friendly to alternative garage rockers, so I rented out the Whitter Community Center for one night of messed up versions of the the better known numbers.

A lotta showboating came about on the cassette version of Travelogue, a whopping 90 minute montage of the Whittier showcase on that October 15th 1988 night.  Another set of songs were done at Garden Theater in Marion on talent night, and a few were added to the fray.  Plus, All Over Now, which dated back to March of 1987 at the IMU in Iowa City on their infamous No Sleep Shows.  Which after working a shift, I managed to bring about three cymbals and the old Zickos drumset, to set up and do a 4 minute song to an indifferent crowd.  As far as memory serves me, the Whittier crowd about 50 people did support the effort and applauded whereas the Marion crowd stood in stoned silence, not knowing what to think of Nowhere City or Well All Right.

Way too much filler on the Cassette, so I edited it down to around an hour and took off the excess fat on CD., although the crazed ending of All It Ever Does Is Rain would have been nice to save.  However on Gloria, we got booed off the stage, you won't hear that version anywhere.

However on Travelogue, the longer version of Walk A Thin Line appears.  I think I talked bout the short version and poor recorded sound robbed the song of its charm.   Strange how the song came about, I tuned the guitar in a different chord pattern. It may have been a G chord instead of E when turning the guitar, but it sounded savage.  The old K Mart guitar thrashing through the Gorilla Amp Tube stack all the way up to 10.  Another new song Barbed Wire Fence was  recorded live at the Garden Theater and surprisingly it was well received.   Still, the bash and crash drumming was typical of 1980s Rod Smith drumming.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.  But the best of the live sides are on the CD.  I don't plan to release the ones that didn't make it, I'm surprised that I left Just Another Someday as one of the cuts that did make it.  Hugh McConnell remastered the whole thing on CD and managed to eliminate about half of the WOW and FLUTTER tape hiss that was on the original cassette.  It's not digitally perfect but it does capture the spirit of the band in full glory and full sound.   And I'll leave it at that.


The Songs: (CD Version)

Sail Away To A Brand New Day  4:50
I Wanna Make You Mine  2:35
On Highway 94  3:10
Down Around And Back Again  3:05
Midnight Run  3:10
Just Another Someday  5:15
Fix  2:35
Running In The Rain  4:48
Barbed Wire Fence  2:55
Train Around The Bend  3:17
Someone Like You  5:09
It's So Hard  3:10
Never Again  2:40
Well All Right  3:55
Nowhere City  5:10
All Over Now  4:49
Walk A Thin Line  4:00

Recorded live at Whittier Community Center, Whittier IA  October 15, 1988
Garden Theater, Marion IA 10-20-1988
All Over Now Recorded at IMU, Iowa City IA 3/31/1988

Recorded by Terry Bainbridge, George Stanton and Neil Cheshire
Mixed and mastered by Hugh McConnell (Soundwerks, Iowa City for CD in 1998

Rodney Smith-Vocals, some guitar, and drums
Jack Orbit-Main guitarist, backing vocals
Ken Miller-Bass and so forth

Produced by Rodney Smith, Jack Orbit, Brian Mullahan and Terry Bainbridge

Released as Maier Records QMR-24466 in November 1988

Album Archives: Postcards From The Edge

Somehow Postcards From The Edge was a bit more to the point, but it also has faults.  First of which the Lotus guitar that I had been using was falling apart and during a fit a rage, I destroyed it in a huff after trying to record Love Scene Number 5 and  the bridge neck fell out.   So, I ended up getting the old K Mart guitar out of retirement and for something different added acoustic guitar strings to it.  It actually gave it a very distinct sound, as if I was playing a acoustic through a amp.

Postcards started up around October of 1987 and concluded December 1987, however dates are not provided.  Guess work would have been around the second week of December when things wrapped up.   Brian Mullahan came back on board to produce this while Terry Bainbridge simply mined the recording machine.  We used regular tape instead of the metal kind that made Tales Of The Red Caboose a chore to listen to.  Ken Miller replaced Larry Maier on bass.

I'm really not sure about how the songs came about, but most were written between breaks at work  Basically the usual love songs about nobody that I could get and of course We Never Danced, another barb at Miss Janice.  I think I wrote her a letter of sorts but I don't think she even read it, or else her dad threw it away.  By then she was living the Texas dream.  Glass Mountain was about my frustration of not getting on as a permanent employee at the place I was working out and another song, The Odd Angry Shot was even more pointed.  Driving At Night came into play as I drove home on the backroads of Highway 1 and going through Martelle and a phone booth outside the gas station which provided a backdrop to the song.   But alas, the recording was not as good as it should have been.  Probably would have been better to play the acoustic guitar on that song.  Train Around The Bend actually goes back to The Red Caboose days,  the lyrics added later, Mullahan adding a line or two.   Think About Love, was another attempt to impress somebody, Paula Bakey I believe was the object of affections but she had a plus sized friend that I asked to dance and she said no, she was there to drink.   Made a good line in the song.  I'm Always Bleeding also dates back a few months, it's a blues rejection song of sorts.

Musically the album was better, I think the controlled chaos was more in check than the all out assault that was Tales Of The Red Caboose but once again, the low fi elements and recordings made it sound like a bad bootleg album.  It's a shame really, I think some of my best drumming ever on this album.  The Marching Band Snare Drum would be retired after this album.  If we had a four track, this would be rated higher in the all time best albums.  The Cassette version  Brian Mullahan added snippets of Bloopers, taped mess ups that Kermit Schafer was famous for, but there was  Colgate Dental Cream Commercial spot that was before Love Scene Number 5 that sounded like a good idea at the time.  The CD version, the Bloopers and false starts were removed.  But I included the 1987 live version of All Over Now from a midnight show that came from the Iowa Memorial Union.   And added a bonus cut The Red Telegraph since it got left off the original tape version.  I think it's a very underrated song.

Alas Postcards From The Edge, was the last album to feature my old Zickos drum set.  By that time, I was beginning to get bored of playing drums and was in need of cash so I sold the set off and a few cymbals at bargain basement prices and I have been kicking myself ever since.  The Zickos have always had a loud sound that even cut through the tape hiss but I think it was falling apart.  I would never find another drumset like that although I keep trying.   I would eventually settle upon a new Yamaha four piece set that would shape the music for the next 15 years.  In terms of Low Fi, Postcards From The Edge was a better followup to Wapsi Dreaming.  A lot of sweat and tears went into the recording and this may have been the best album that had my bash and crash playing for all to hear.  Later on, leftovers from the past five albums would find themselves on Collecting Beer Cans For Fun And Profit (QMR-24421-1988 Out Of Print).  Postcards turned out be very listenable and very very punk sounding, despite the way it sounded.  I can't figure that one out.

Tracklist (CD Version)

Another Strange Adventure 5:14
Electric Change 3:00
Going In With My Eyes Open  3:24
Highway Of Love  4:43
The Red Telegraph (Bonus Track)(Smith/Orbit/Parman) 3:38
Love Scene Number 5  4:15
Glass Mountain (R.Smith)  2:45
I'm Always Bleeding (R.Smith)  6:20
Thought For Today (J.Orbit)  :45

Ten Seconds To Love/
Dark Corner Of The Room (R.Smith)  3:47
Shattered Smile  5:22
Train Around The Bend (Smith/Orbit/Mullahan) 3:10
Think About Love (Smith/Miller/Bainbridge) 2:30
Dust In My Tea (R.Smith)  3:11
We Never Danced  (R.Smith)  4:25
Driving At Night  6:16
All Over Now (CD Bonus Track) (Smith/Orbit/Strobie)  4:50

All songs written by Rodney Smith/Jack Orbit except where noted
Lyrics by Smith.  (C) Townedger Music Emporium 1988

Recorded at Maier Studios, Marion IA  Nov-Dec 1987
Recorded by Terry Bainbridge, assisted by Ned Jackson, Gary Tallible and R. Smith
Album produced by Brian Mullahan with Rodney Smith

Rodney Smith-Guitar, vocals and drums
Jack Orbit-Guitar and vocals
Ken Miller-Bass
Brian Mullahan-Special Effects
Mark McClelland-Bass on Think About Love

Released as Maier Records OMR-24417  Jan. 10, 1988

Album Archives: Tales Of The Red Caboose

A few things happened along the way between this album and the last.

1) I made a live album a week before moving to Arizona called Every Hour On The Hour.  The only album that has not seen the light of day on CD.  No, I don't plan to release it anytime soon.

2)  I was in Arizona for about five months, basically fucking off and writing songs and working at shitty temp jobs.  I loved Arizona but alas the ones that have jobs don't pay for shit and there was a lot of running around to fill out apps and then trying to call back.  The closest I got to a job, was at a Discover place.  The lady seemed to like me and kept winking at me after every other question.  Somehow I didn't say the magic words.  Then to top it all off, my aunt kicked me out of the house.  Can't say I blame her, I didn't do very much but it did put a big strain in our relationship and she basically shut me out of her life forever.  We don't get along at all.

3)  Moving back to Iowa, I came to find out that it hardly snowed at all that winter. But Mark Concower, the guitarist on Every Hour On The Hour decided that he wanted to start up a band.  Soon after that he moved out of state and hasn't been heard since.

Tales Of The Red Caboose itself is my first full blown rock and roll record.  The intentions were good but Terry Bainbridge decided to record it on metal cassette tape.  At that time you had Direct Metal Mastering which was supposed to be the wave of the future.  In the way of low fi cassette to cassette recording, it didn't work, each overdub would muffle the sound and the difference of cassette desk speed didn't help much either.  So I ended up buying another cassette deck but still used the slightly faster Realistic as one of the decks, which once again slowed down the recording process.

I think the songs were good, the recordings not so much.  The marching band snare sucked, I could have gotten a better sound out of cardboard boxes.  On this album, I was working with the late Larry Maier on bass, one of the best players ever but had a bad drug habit that eventually cost him his life a year later.  Some of the recordings the vocals got deeply buried in the mix, and I had to rerecord Down Around And Back Again since the first take vocals were barely heard.

The album started around June of 1987 and concluded around August in the basement.  Some songs of note:  Girl From The Other Side Of Town,  I was going through Mount Vernon one day and seen a woman sunbathing with her top unbuttoned.   Just Enough Love was later redone for Forthcoming Trains and is the better version.  Closest Thing To Perfect, another song for the freshman harlot that messed me up for years to come, thinking she was the one that got away.  And each passing day reminding me that she wasn't.   Boys In The Band, was a rewrite of REM's Band Wagon but with a humorous side about playing in a band with like minded individuals that didn't show up for practice.
The Nailer, was a one note start of a song that ended up with a crazy Ted Nugent riff and The Who like ending.  Due to the recording error part of the drums got erased off.  Fool For Your Glasses is a song about me liking ladies with glasses.  Walk A Thin Line was influenced by Husker Du.  However the drum sound on this version sucked, so a later version was the full version and rerecorded drums.  And I think appeared on Travelogue, the live album a year later.

I recorded plenty of songs, and the majority of them made it on Tales Of The Red Caboose, the rest ended up on a compilation cassette called Collecting Beer Cans For Fun And Profit.  One of them, the ironically titled Long Story Short (at 9:22 the longest song I recorded at that time) is a bonus cut on the CD Version.  It was kinda of a run through of a song that had different tempos and feels and ends with a improvised ending.  A fun song but not fun enough for me to redo it any time soon.

If the recording was better Tales Of The Red Caboose would have been a nice followup to Waspipinicon Dreaming.  Instead it's a oddball curio of hard rock that could have done better but it does capture the moments of that time of the summer of 1987.  Not satisfied with the results, I would return back to the studio in the winter to try again with new songs and a new attitude, but still stuck with poor recording equipment.   Something that would dog me for the next couple years till we finally got a decent four track.  But that's later on.

Tracklist:

Down Around And Back Again (R.Smith) 3:15
Closest Thing To Perfect (Smith/Orbit) 3:39
Rain On The Brain (Smith/Orbit/Miller/Bainbridge)  5:43
Just Enough Love (R.Smith/J.Orbit) 3:40
We Could Be Together (Smith/Orbit) 3:03
It's Too Late (Smith/Orbit) 5:15
Boys In The Band (Smith/Orbit) 4:24

Girl On The Other Side Of Town (R.Smith)  2:37
Sweet Memory (Smith/Orbit)  5:05
Fool For Your Glasses (R.Smith) 3:30
The Nailer (Smith/Orbit/Miller/Bainbridge) 7:05
Walk A Thin Line (Smith/Miller) 3:00
Points Of Interest (R.Smith) 4:20
The Plean (R.Smith) 5:00
Long Story Short (R.Smith) 9:22 (CD Bonus Track)

Lyrics by R.Smith, Music credited to where indicated (C) Townedger Music Emporium 1987

Produced and Engineered By Terry Bainbridge
Recorded: Maier Studios June-August 1987
Co produced by Rodney Smith

Overdubs recorded August 28 through September 3, 1987 Maier Studios
Drum tracking by Keith Drummond and Stu Delonmore

Lineup for this album: Rodney Smith-Guitar, drums and vocals:  Jack Orbit: Guitar and vocals; Larry Maier-Bass   Andy Kyle-Bass on Closest Thing To Perfect.


Boys In The Band (Smith/Orbit) 

A slight variation of song titles, on the cassette and CD editions.

Released as Maier Records QMR-24388  (Released Sept. 15, 1987)

Album Archives: Wapsipinicon Dreaming

I disappeared from playing any music for about a year, as I started working in the real world and not playing anywhere, nor doing much.  Since I was having a steady income I could actually upgrade my choice of guitars and cymbals.  I started getting the new Zildjian Impulse Cymbals, which were a knockoff of the Paiste Rudes but much more cheaper.  And any size of Impulse could give a nice ride sound as well.  I then purchased an acoustic guitar, and then bought Dennis Lancaster's Lotus guitar and used that for the next couple years before I destroyed it in a rage when the fretboard neck broke off.  It also couldn't be kept in tune either.  I also picked up a Gorilla amp for about 130 dollars new.  Not exactly a top of the line, some dude actually sold them out of the parking lot but I think I got mine from West Music.

Wapsipinicon Dreaming came into place around the summertime months of 1986, recorded around the time I went to second shift.  Working the graveyard shift played havoc with me, and half the time I couldn't sleep when I was supposed to.  However, while processing Pell Grants in the middle of the night I'd would write bits and pieces of songs as well.  Going through the archives, I came across an narrative about Wapsi Dreaming to be a concept album about a guy trying to make a living, had all the luxury things one could want and a Homecoming Queen for a wife.  But then the bills piled up and the woman left him behind and so one day, he ventured out onto a gravel road which lead to the river and a change of heart.  His place was at a that log cabin next to the river.  However, while reading the narrative of what the album was supposed to be, I never did carried out to be a concept album although the songs on side 1 do indicate the original intention of Wapsipinicon Dreaming.

The album sessions began on May 10th, over a period of 20 sessions which ended on August 27, 1986.  The acoustic numbers were done first, except for You're Telling Me! which showed the tube amp sound of the Gorilla.  The first week, I was battling a 102 degree fever and was sick but I did the songs right off the bat.  I do think the majority of songs did come together during August although the studio notes about the recording sessions are not documented very well. 

Notes on some of the songs, Secret Admirer was written for Sue Sorensen, she was a QC person in the Pell Department and I took a liken to her.  Another of those famed I would like a date with you songs that didn't go nowhere,  nevertheless she was seeing somebody else was about 2 months pregnant at the time.  Yet another bad choice of woman for me.  You're Telling Me, was another song about some girl that I met at the bar, who was tough as nails but loved her cigarettes more than anything else.  But I have no idea who she was.  Running In The Rain was finding about that my nemesis and pain in the ass, the one girl who chased me all over high school was getting married to some guy she met, who was from Iceland, but at that time he did looked a lot like me.  Every five they renewed their wedding vows but this song was me trying to bullshit me into thinking she was the one that got away.  Far from it.

Just Another Someday was a rewrite of Just Another Sunday from The Blasters and perhaps we should have just covered their version instead.   Never Trust A Sleeping Train, is presented here in metallic glory, but when I do the song nowadays it's acoustic.  It should have been acoustic back then. The late Herbie Laidmont provided backing vocals.   While the acoustic numbers are the best songs off Wapsi Dreaming, I'm also proud of the fact that the electric guitar numbers came out just as good.  The way that I played the four four beat and accessing the hell out of thing on She Don't Care About Time.  The recording tandem of Brian Mullahan and Terry Bainbridge, even though it was low fi, that the cymbals came out quite nice and bright.  The instrumental Cook With Pepper was a fun number dedicated to our then little puppy named Pepper who would hang around for another 14 years.

Wapsi Dreaming featured me playing one of those snare drums you see at college games, and I think the one I used came from the old Iowa Hawkeyes Marching Band and it sounded great on The Searcher but on the next song Don't Let It Get You Down, the bottom drumhead deflated and had a big split, so I had to change the head and never did the sound quite right for the rest of the album.

The album was issued on September 1, 1986, and is different from the CD version.  On side 1 She Don't Care About Time is before While My Heart Is Still Beating and Daughter Of The Highway ends side 1.  Side 2 has I Guess You Made It before Cook With Pepper.  On the CD front, I Guess You Made It swaps places with the full named She Don't Care About You This Time and is before Sunny Day Woman which didn't make the cassette version.  Basically, the CD version finally adds the long lost version of I Can't Take It No More and the finale Goodbye, and Daughter Of The Highway got dropped.

After all the false starts and filler songs that kinda make the 1985 albums a chore to sit through, Wapsipinicon Dreaming turned out the be the album that defined the sound that I was looking for.  A blend of acoustic country rock to go with the metallic garage rock, it should have not worked as well as it did and for the most part, this record still holds up quite well, despite perhaps I should have left Sunny Day Woman off it.   Believe it or not, I still perform half of the songs off this album when I play live although I have retired Running In The Rain.  It's basically pointless to sing about that girl that got away and moved to Texas to marry the dude from Iceland, and I think they have a big family, something that I didn't want from her in the time  she was in my life.    But while most of my band mates in the other bands becoming more into hair metal and pop metal I was more comfortable playing this type of acoustic rock.  I suppose Wapsi Dreaming ruined me that I wasn't for the hair metal that was playing around town.   But I know this album did prove to the world that Town's Edge Rock wasn't a fluke.  But it would be a while before I would put out something this good.  New things were on the horizon, and I wanted to follow those hopes and dreams as they took me to Arizona during the winter of 1986-87.  But the road that took me down there would lead me back to where I started from, another setback but also more original material to follow.  I consider Wapsipinicon Dreaming my best album of the 1980s.


Songs: (CD Version)

The Searcher (Smith/Orbit) 2:47
Don't Let It Get You Down (Smith) 3:41
Secret Admirer (Smith/Orbit) 2:40
You're Telling Me! (Smith/Miller/Davidson) 2:50
Country Life (Smith/Orbit)  3:55
I Guess You Made It (Smith/Orbit) 3:35
While My Heart Is Still Beating (Smith/McKay) 3:30
Daughter Of The Highway (Smith)  :42  (Cassette only)

Never Trust A Sleeping Train (Smith/Orbit/Miller/Laidmont) 4:00
Running In The Rain (Smith) 4:18
Just Another Someday (Smith/Orbit/Miller)  5:07
New Adventures (Smith/Miller) 2:55
She Don't Care About You This Time (Smith/Miller) 3:05
Sunny Day Woman (Smith/Edmunds) 2:50
Cook With Pepper (Smith/Orbit/Miller/Mullahan) 2:46
I Can't Take It No More (Smith/Orbit/Miller/Mullahan) 3:20
Goodbye (Smith) 1:25

Produced By Brian Mullahan With Rodney Smith For Fiesta Kid Productions
Engineered By Terry Bainbridge, with Ken Miller And Rodney Smith
Recorded At Gravel Road Studios, Paris IA, and Maier Studios Marion IA (May 16-August 27, 1986)

Lyrics written by Rodney Smith (C) R.Smith/Townedger Music Emporium, Music as indicated.

Rodney Smith-Acoustic Guitar, Lotus Guitar, Gorilla Amp, Zickos Drums, Zildjian Cymbals.
Jack Orbit-Rhythm guitar, harmonica and vocals
Ken Miller-Bass guitar and backing vocals
Herb Laidmont-Backing vocals on Never Trust A Sleeping Train
Brian Mullahan-Percussion and guitar tuner.

Originally released as QMR-24286 Wapsipinicon Dreaming  Sept. 1986

Album Archves: The 1985 albums

When Tyrus played their last show on December 7, 1984 that left me without a band so I started on working on a new album called Rock And Roll Made Me What I Am Today.  For this album, I borrowed my brother's stereo to hook up my guitar sound that you heard on Town's Edge Rock. But for the first time I started to use the Route 66 band name since Ken Miller and Jack Orbit become more viable players when I played live but in the studio it was myself doing most of the instruments.  Rock And Roll Made Me What I Am Today begin life on April 11, 1985 and concluded on May 1st. The reason why I rushed the album was that Mike Swearingen got me to join up with a reunion of Stone Garden a band featuring Virgil Hanson and Rick Novak. Kraig Spratt was the original drummer of this band, but he also played in some of the area's best rock bands of the 80's Rampage, Hostage to name a couple.  http://www.wildcatspratt.com/stone_garden.htm

Virgil and Mike were part of another band of a long time ago, and Rick joined up to complete this lineup but I don't think the intention was to call the new band Stone Garden.  After all, I was the newbie and not well known outside of Paraphernalia/Tyrus.  Wildcat Spratt I do believe is one of the top five drummers who roamed the area and various bands.  Certainly Mike was instrumental in getting me on to this new project and I looked forward doing something new and exciting.  Alas, the Stone Garden reunion fizzled after a month of playing together and basically I was back out on my own.  So I begin what would be the S/T album, or Rodney Smith And Route 66 in May of 1985, just two weeks after finishing up RARMMWIAT.  If the former album felted rushed, the S/T album was forced, as if I was trying to polish up some rough versions of songs.  Had I not been rushed into the Stone Garden project the former album would been the best of the bunch.   I had some great songs that I continue to do to this day, Someone Like You, Does It Matter, even Midnight Run got revisited on Forthcoming Trains and in a better version.  I did like the sound that Glen Tallible provided on RARMMWIAT and most of it holds up.  But the cassette version I threw everything in there, all the songs and some of them shouldn't been on that.  Same thing with Rodney Smith/Route 66, I had good songs but like Name And Number, the lyrics were not first rate.  The centerpiece song Desert Rain got ruined by bad backing vocals and Colden Days ends with a complete meltdown, I was trying for a John Cale sound and that didn't work.   The cassette versions of both albums are much different than the CD Version.  I took 9 of the best tracks from Rock And Roll....and 12 songs from the S/T and threw them together on a single.  I have been thinking of doing separate albums and add the best songs but a few of them are on unmarked cassette copies and I have yet to find Pull The Plug, one of the more key tracks off RAR.....

Eyes Of An Angel was written for Belinda Benford, a nice girl that I briefly dated when I was going to Kirkwood.  She was a good woman with a good heart.  It's too bad that I didn't feel the same way toward her.  

In closing, I don't think I will be satisfied with any of the albums mentioned. Both albums have their own personalities and they seem to clash even on the 2 on 1 CD.  With the completion of the S/T album, it was time for me to find a real job since being a rock star wasn't paying the bills and all showed to be a 24 year old living rent free and the parents tired of supporting my efforts.  Change would change when I finally got a real job at the old National Computer Service place, processing Pell Grants during the midnight shift, three days after getting foot surgery to remove a lump on my foot.  There would be changes in the wind, and for the better, but for now it was time for me to get into the working world and actually earn a paycheck instead of having 30 dollar payoffs playing bar band covers.  In any way, both 1985 albums, while good, remains a frustrating listen.  They should have been better than the way that they turned out.


The Album Rock And Roll Made Me What I Am Today

Someone Like You 2:35
Never Again 2:32
Lonely Man Blues (Smith/R.Swearingen) 3:12
I See You (Smith/R.Swearingen) 2:50
FYA  4:03
Come Off It  3:25
Song For Janice 3:35
I Wanna Love You   1:54
Rock And Roll Made Me What I Am Today  :35
Yuma  4:07
Lovers Without Locks 1:46

Pull The Plug 4:24
Nuclear Cowboys  5:15
Stranger Than The Truth  2:56
Taking A Chance  2:33
You Call This Love  2:19
Paint By Numbers  3:15
Computer Love (Smith/P.J.Trombley) 3:47
Asleep In The Desert  4:33
Nuclear Cowboys Reprise 1:20

Songs written by Rodney Smith, Music by Route 66 except where noted.
Recorded April 11 through May 1, 1985 Maier Studios, Marion IA
Produced and engineered by Glen Tallible
Co Produced by Rodney Smith
Released as Maier Records  MRK 24311  May 1985



Rodney Smith And Route 66 album
Songs:

Here She Comes Now  3:35
Midnight Run  3:57
Let It Down Easy  4:40
Better Days  3:18
End Of The Line  2:27
Does It Matter?  2:24
The Fire Down Below  2:30
Coming Around The Corner  2:38
Colden Days 3:24
Glasshouse  1:24

Desert Rain  6:20
Outside Of Inside  3:30
Eyes Of An Angel  3:00
I've Been Waiting For You (Smith/Orbit/Glarington) 2:57
Some New Highway 3:58
Life Gets Better 3:09
Name And Number (Smith/Orbit/Parman) 3:23
Late At Night 3:37

Songs written by Rodney Smith, Music by Route 66
Recorded May 16-June 5, 1985  Maier Studios  Marion IA
Produced by Rodney Smith for Maier Productions
Engineered by Ken Miller and Glen Tallible
Released as Maier Records  MRK-24324

Gaps in the song titles are considered the end of the cassette side.


In 1998, I compiled the best songs on both albums into a single Cd.  Fact of the matter was trying to get the right song sequence and it turned out that Rock And Roll Made Me What I Am Today songs were easier to compile.  The S/T songs not much so.  But in the end, this is the final song lineup.

Songs:

Someone Like You (Smith/Orbit/Miller)  2:35
Never Again (Smith/Orbit/Miller) 2:34
Nuclear Cowboys (Smith) 4:50
Stranger Than The Truth (Smith/Orbit/Miller) 3:00
Taking A Chance (Smith/Miller) 2:35
I Wanna Love You (Smith) 1:55
Yuma (Smith) 4:08
Come Off It (Smith/Orbit/Miller) 3:25
Asleep In The Desert (Smith/Orbit/Miller) 4:00
Glasshouse (Smith/Orbit/Miller) 1:25
Rock And Roll Made Me What I Am Today (Smith) :35
Some New Highway (Smith/Orbit)  4:00
The Fire Down Below (Smith)  2:35
Boogies (hamburger hell) (Smith) :50
Better Days (Smith/Orbit/Miller) 3:18
Outside Of Inside (Smith) 3:30
Eyes Of An Angel (Smith) 3:00
I've Been Waiting For You (Smith/Orbit/Glarington) 3:00
Does It Matter (Smith/Miller) 2:25
Midnight Run (Smith) 3:57
Coming Around The Corner (Smith/Miller) 2:38
Life Gets Better (Smith/Orbit) 3:05
Late At Night (Smith/Orbit) 3:38

Lyrics by Rodney Smith, Music by whoever's credited.

Album Archives: Infnite Loop

In 1984 I was playing drums for Paraphernalia/Tyrus, and since my drumset was over at Dennis Lancaster's house I really didn't practice much for new tunes.  While it was nice to play in a bar band, we were not making any money at it and I wasn't too happy about not being able to create new songs. At this time, the Kirkwood learning of how to DJ wasn't working and my folks were ready to throw me out of the house, so I started over at Hamilton Business College, later the great scam for profit college Kaplin University in learning Computer Programming.  Our teacher Pam Trombley basically laid it out in black and white that we were not going to get jobs so why not do some partying over at Bulicek's on break.  Half the time we were trying to get Pam home in one piece, one night she somehow gave me a kiss on the cheek.  I fell in love with that.

My love life was confusing. Teresa was long gone and some girl that I had in my Public Relations class took a liking to me and somehow we met at Kitty's one May night.  Perfect chance to get to know her, I sat in my chair and smiled and paid attention more to the band.  She left the bar crying to her friend that I didn't even try.  So over the weekend I promised to go find her at Kirkwood and explain myself and hope things would work out for the best.  I'm still looking for her to explain myself.

Tyrus played about 45 minutes at a graduation party before the cops shut us down.  My folks said I sounded pretty good from where they were at, from the front door of the house while we played six blocks down.  It started out to be a rainy cloudy day before we took to the makeshift tent and the clouds disappeared.  I've been told I was heard as far as Lindale.  And my drums were not even miked up.

With the band taking a couple weeks off, I decided it was a perfect time to come up with a new album of songs.  If anything Infinite Loop is as stripped down as it gets, two microphones, my 50 dollar K Mart guitar and amp combo and my old trusty Zickos set.  Infinite Loop is famous for miking the drums from the ground.  I sat one on them underneath the snare drum, the other over by the base tom and it gave out a distinct drum sound that I have used to this day.  I love to hear the snap of the snare on this album.   The songs themselves came from various sources.  Love Like Backfire is the only song that Dennis Lancaster and I ever wrote together, he had a bunch of lyrics in his note book and I picked this one out as the best of what he had.  Russ Swearingen had a few lines of a song that I took from and patched it all together.  It may have been a juvenile song (about scoring pussy no doubt and the dude getting cold feet at the end) but I do like the riffs that I put in the song.  Although I wrote all of the songs, I did put down a few of my friends names so they can get in the fun of seeing their name scrawled upon a LP label, or at least on the cassette label.  Certainly Ken Miller got lots of credit on songs he didn't have much to do, or Claire Parman or even my other BFF Steve Willard, on Just Having Fun.  Willard really did not play music or write songs.

The album was recorded in my bedroom, known as Sunshine Studios at that time (Maier Studios was the better known name), sessions begin on May 30 and ended on June 12, 1984 before the guys in Paraphernalia Tyrus wanted to get back together.  A August 26th recording date ended up being the Contractual Obligations EP.  Glen Tallible producing those sessions.  The Infinite Loop album was issued to the world on June 2, 1984.  When I listen to the album, I'm surprised on how well it sounded and so did the songs but the record wasn't perfect.  I couldn't find the right line to sang on the song Highway 94 and later retakes showed me with different lyrics but 31 years after the fact, it still annoys me that I couldn't make that song work.  The stop and start of Cash And Carry is perhaps some of my best drum work and Long Time Gone, later appears in a better version on Forthcoming Trains.   If nothing else, Infinite Loop would be the first in a long line of albums that I worked with Brian Mullahan an adventurous dude with an eye for sonic detail and doing oddball things.  Unlike Love Sucks or TE Rock, there was no backing vocals, I did lead vocals and played guitar and overdubbed the drums on the second go around.   The cassette version has both Infinite Loop and Obligations but the CD version  is Infinite Loop only.    Although my vocals still remain whiny and off colored, Infinite Loop still holds up over time on certain songs.  With the other band getting on my case about getting back to the bars, this turned out the be the only album that I did in 1984.  Tyrus would finish up the year at the OK Lounge with a live double cassette of the final performances, Russ would reenlist for another five years in the Marine Corp and I'll be back focusing my energies on my own solo stuff, under the Route 66 banner.  1985 would provide more interesting obstacles among the way.

Songs:

Love Like Backfire (Smith/Lancaster/R.Swearingen) 4:31
Cash And Carry (Smith/Miller)  3:07
It's Not Easy (Smith/Orbit/Parman) 3:23
Just Having Fun (Smith/Willard) 5:33
My Next Song (Smith/Orbit) 3:39
Maquoketa Woman (Smith/Mullahan) 5:14

Long Time Gone (Smith/Miller/Castleman) 4:43
Midnight Drive (Smith/Miller)  4:38
Nashville (Smith/Orbit/Parman) 3:12
Nu Clear Days (Smith/Miller) 5:30
On Highway 94 (Smith/Orbit) 3:15
We Love You (Smith/Orbit) 4:20

Notes:  My Next Song was deleted for a drum solo song called This Is Peace And Quiet?  but actually came from the aborted 1983 echophonics album produced with Jack Orbit.  The final track Going Home, a minute thirty five of shutting things down appeared on original cassette copies when came out but those too are rare and hard to find.

The songwriting credits basically are me with the lyrics and the co writers not adding much but their name.  It was supposed to be a democratic way of spreading the music wealth but again the royalty checks are not even worth the print on the check itself.  Dennis Lancaster and Russ Swearingen did help in the lyrics of Backfire.


All instruments on Infinite Loop are played by Rodney Smith.
Recorded May 30-June 12, 1984 at Sunshine Studios, Marion Ia
Recorded by Rodney Smith, Ken Miller and Mel Larsen
Produced by Rodney Smith, Jack Orbit and Brian Mullahan

Released as Maier Records MRK-24265



The EP Contractual Obligations

Songs:

Sail Away (Smith) 4:24
The Infinite Loop (Smith) :45
Amtrak Baby (Smith/Orbit/Miller/Castleman)  2:30
Correspondence (Smith/Orbit)  3:17
Escape From The Infinite Loop (Smith) 1:05

Recorded August 26, 1984  Maier Studios Marion IA
John Castleman-Guitar on Amtrak Baby
Ken Miller-Bass
Rodney Smith-Guitar and vocals

Produced by Glen Tallible and Rodney Smith
Engineered by Rodney Smith

All songs (C) R. Smith and The Townedger Music Emporium (1984) 

Notes:  Sail Away and The Infinite Loop were tacked on side 1 of the cassette version of Infinite Loop after Maquoketa Woman , Amtrak Baby, Correspondence and Escape on side 2 after We Love You.    Only Sail Away and Amtrak Baby were used as bonus tracks for the CD version Love Sucks (MRK 24237).   Also of note My Next Song and This Is Peace And Quiet were left off the CD reissue in 1998.  I didn't think they were good enough for inclusion, however This Is Peace And Quiet was tacked on the CD version of Bizarre Behavior when I issued that as part of the Big Crash Collection.

Album Archives: Love Sucks

A while ago, I did an original blog about Love Sucks somewhere in the TE Archives, I thought I would update this.

The fourth and final album of 1983 was originally called Hey You, but in the end it was renamed Love Sucks simply of the fact that Love does suck.   Anyway, I was on a roll, and after Living In The Twilight Zone, I ended up using Dennis Lancaster's amp on the next sessions.  The Paraphernalia band was practicing over at my folks house and although in a limited form.  Things were happening, Russ Swearingen returned from his stint in the Marines and was ready to get the band going.  By then he reunited with his girlfriend Chris Shaffer and that seemed to put a kink in our songwriting and get togethers.  As for myself, I ended up falling for a girl named Teresa who was passing out her phone numbers during our Squaw Creek performance when Doug got married to his first wife.  I turned out to be the dumb one who actually called her.

It didn't last but three weeks to which it was obvious that she was younger than me and was still enjoying her high school years and not to be burdened by me, which I didn't have a job and was playing rock star.  When we broke up, it was a rainy night in October after we stopped at the old WMT studios in my attempt to be a radio disc jockey.  I have never been much in terms of ladies man, most of the relationships I had were sparse and not much interaction. The usual feelings of having to check in every waking hour didn't help either.  The feelings of infatuation will drive any mortal man to become what he isn't, being possessive, controlling.  The R. Smith of that time was your confused man child, trying to fit in with the modern world, maybe settle down get married have kids, the kinds of stuff you'd see on Jerry Springer.  Even if it was infatuation, breaking up with Teresa did hurt, and it showed on the making of Love Sucks.

Sessions begun on November 27 and ended on December 20 of 1983 in my makeshift recording studio in the basement and also in the living room.  Produced by Jack Orbit, the record is a more darker sounding, and I used my dad's reel to reel on the basic tracks.  This does sound more of a band album, Jack played guitar as well and bass was done by Nick Alford, a local college acquaintance (and later drop out) who played in the punk band The Weeds.  Larry Maier (RIP) then took up the bass for The Day After.  While the last album had me using a Fender Amp, this time out the Pevey Amp of Dennis' had a much more bottom sound which made the record sound a bit murky.

The songs themselves were much better written than Living In The Twilight Zone and some of them I still perform today.  It's So Hard is my theme song, a song about longing to live in Arizona and surviving the elements and life itself.  And Well All Right, has been known to make a appearance from time to time.  But the songs themselves, most were written after the breakup of me and Teresa, Dead Of Night, and particularly Goin Home which is basically the rise and fall of our time together.  By the final sessions, Dennis's folks let us use their home as practicing place and Dennis got his amp back.  What Is Love, was a thought up on the spot song with me on my 10 dollar K Mart Amp and 30 dollar guitar, and best known for Mom running the dryer in the background.

In the end Love Sucks is a nice followup to Town's Edge Rock although I don't consider it to be as classic. The master cassette copy has technical issue, oxide issues like tape age and a few plays and the sound has varied greatly over the years.  This record is also where I developed a strange whiney type of vocals, kinda goth trance, kinda timid so to speak.  But I think this is where I started to track the backing vocals to fit the song rather than going for the Hi Lo's of the previous albums.  The urgent bass vocal to Moonlight Madness was fun to do.  And I got to play with the effects pedal on The Day After, which was written after seeing that movie on TV.  An attempt to write a protest song.  Overall the songs were best written of all four albums released in 1983, but in the end, TE Rock remains the best definite album of that time.  After this, I would focus my efforts on Paraphernalia/Tyrus and wonder why I even tried in the first place.

Songs:

The Giant Cosmic Oatmeal Cookie (Smith/Glarington)  3:00
Hey You (Smith/Orbit)  3:20
The End Of It All (Smith) 2:00
It's So Hard (Smith/Orbit) 2:45
One Little Girl (Smith/Orbit)   2:35
Well All Right (Smith/Orbit) 2:50
Ain't Life A Bitch (Especially When You're Married To One) (Smith) 3:05

Dead Of Night (Smith/Orbit) 4:17
Around And Around (Smith/Orbit) 3:03
Moonlight Madness (Smith/Strobie) 3:50
What I Need (Smith)  3:22
Goin Home (Smith/Alford) 5:00
What Is Love (Smith)  2:58
The Day After (Smith/Maier)  3:47

Songs (C) R.Smith aka Townedger Music Emporium 1983

Recorded November 27-December 20, 1983  Maier Studios Marion IA
Recorded By Don D Smith, Rodney Smith and Ken Miller
A Jack Orbit Production

Rodney Smith-Vocals, guitar and drums
Jack Orbit-Guitar and vocals
Nick Alford-Bass guitar
Larry Maier-Bass on The Day After
Ron Glarington-Guitar on Oatmeal Cookie

Album archives: Living In The Twilight Zone

1983 was a very exciting year for recording music as you can tell.  After the success of Town's Edge Rock I set out two short months later to work on the next project, an uneven album called Living In The Twilight Zone.  During that time, I was actually using DeWayne Schminkey's Fender guitar amp with loads of reverb, the guess was that Open Highway was practicing over at my folks place and I got access to use it.

While sessions were documented during TE Rock, I don't have very many notes from the studio during the making of Twilight Zone.  This album I did experiment more with the limited vocals that I did have, but this was the beginning of the Realistic tape player playing the songs faster and the discman overdub, the speed was slower, thus each dub and playback made the songs drag slower.

Plus the songs this time out weren't as good.  Outtakes from So Much For That and even a track from Paraphernalia Tyrus, the other band was used for filler songs.  The standout songs had to be Be With Me, a song that was written for Tracy Meskimen, who was dumped by our guitar player and I thought I whip out this song in an attempt to ask her out.  She thought the song was nice but declined my offer of going out.  The other, was a instrumental called Bar B Q.  The reason why I called it Bar B Q? It was smokin! ha ha.

Cocaine Train was a throwaway track, but Russ saw something in the words to reinvent it as a slow blues cooker, rather than the 3 Stooges sound of the original take.  Sometimes reinventing a song will give it a second life, but had Russ not done it, Cocaine Train wouldn't be a second thought.

Lost In The Twilight Zone was basically a light hearted ribbing on Doug as he eventually got married to the girl he left Tracy for.  I think I did the song a few times playing live in the 80s but since then it's been retired.   Love Is Never On Time, while interesting with the AC DC intro, just haven't stood the test of time either.  Less said about While The City Sleeps, the better.

As much as I love getting that Fender reverb guitar sound, there's nothing much else I can recommend from Living In The Twilight Zone.  It would have helped more had the tape players recorded in the same speed, or have different backing vocalists than the ones I provided on this album.  In the CD reissue, this album  and So Much For That were issued as a standard 2 on 1 CD.

While chances were taken on Living In The Twilight Zone, I commend myself on a change of direction of sound but going for a Marx Brothers feel did not work (or is that The Hudson Brothers?) The next album would be a lot more darker and a return to the sound of TE Rock, but the cost of going back to that sound almost cost me my sanity in the process.  Living In The Twilight Zone was a moment having fun in the sun although this record hasn't held up over the years.


The Songs:

Living In The Twlight Zone (Smith)  5:15
Be With Me (Smith/Orbit) 4:20
Love Is Never (Smith/Orbit/Strobie) 6:33
While The City Sleeps (Smith/Orbit) 3:00
Bar B Q  (Smith) 2:42

Cocaine Train (Smith/I.M.High) 4:47
Arizona Nights (Smith/Orbit) 3:18
Walking Near The Wapsie  (Smith)  2:20
Communication Breakdown (Smith/Orbit) 3:20
Town's Edge Rock (Smith/Orbit) 2:15

You Were With Me (Cassette bonus track) (Smith/Schminkey) 4:08

Songs (C) Rodney Smith, and Townedger Music Emporium 

Produced by Rodney Smith with Jack Orbit and Mel Strobie
Recorded by Rodney Smith, assisted by Dennis Lancaster, Mel Strobie & Ken Miller
Recorded at Maier Studios, Marion IA Aug-Sept 1983

R.S. played all instruments and sang
Jack Orbit played guitar and sang
Mel Strobie played bass and sang
Ron Glarington played guitar on Walking Near The Wapsie
The Open Highway Band is featured on You Were With Me
(Mike Swearingen, Doug Bonesteel, Dennis Lancaster, DeWayne Schminkey)

Released as Living In The Twilight Zone as Maier Records MR-24224  October 1983

Album: Town's Edge Rock

It's a good thing I kept the old worn out notebook that housed the lyrics to Town's Edge Rock.

Back in the early 80s I managed to play drums on a part time basis for Open Highway, which is Paraphernalia without Russ around but I was chomping at the bit to play more of my own stuff. Most of 1982 would find me at Dewayne's house and getting my ears blown out by Doug Bonesteel's loud amps, thus the reminder if you can't play well, play loud and nobody will notice.  But after a falling out, the Open Highway Band got put on hiatus, which would last for about 8 months.  In the meantime I was going to Kirkwood to get into radio broadcasting (which turned out to be a bad idea) and it turned out to be a two year of doing nothing but waste my parents'  money.  But I sold them an idea I could make money playing in bands.

The Cedar Rapids music scene was your typical bar band classic rock stuff, hardly anything original. Certain bands did play originals, Hostage comes to mind, Madness (later Akasha) likewise, but whatever I was doing was garage rock material and since I just started learn how to play guitar and writing songs whatever I was doing was not suitable for the bars.  It was more punk rock than Free Bird.  And So Much For That was a rough first album, recorded from reel to reel to cassette.  However with Town's Edge Rock, I discovered a new way to record, straight cassette to cassette but using the reel to reel to mix the sound.   A good idea but with each overdub, the tape hiss would increase.  But I thought that added more to the sound and at that time both the discman player and the piece of shit Realistic player had the same tape speeds.  Later on I come to find out that the Realistic played cassettes much faster and later releases would have the song slower than usual.  That would not get corrected till I got a real four track a few years later.

T.E.R sessions started on June 8 of 1983, recorded during breaks at Kirkwood and concluded on the 23rd of that month.  The original working title was Combat Communications.  For the first time, the album was recorded "dry" meaning no echo in the vocals or drums.  Most of the lyrics came together during classes at Kirkwood, so much for education, where I would jot lyrics instead of notes.  The most interesting aspect of this album was that I didn't use a regular amp for the guitar but rather hooking the guitar up through an old PA head amp, and run through my old Sears Console Stereo, I came across one of the best sounds I ever got from a guitar and with plenty of reverb too.  Alas, that was used during the TE Rock sessions. Mom donated the stereo to Goodwill a few weeks later.

Like So Much For That, I tried to capture the drum sound that I was doing in the other bands but I came to find out the hard way that you can't go all out on recorded guitar tracks.  The Keith Moon bash and crash sound would have me come off the beat and then have to redo the damn track all over again.  I was a notorious cymbal hitter back then.  And knowing this now, I would have let off bashing so many cymbals on these songs.  I was still trying to find my way in order to make the songs sound polished as well as accenting drum beats and rolls and make them sound good too.   I was not blessed with a singing voice, in Open Highway other folk did sing but on my projects I have to sing them.  So there's a bit of off singing, but I think it's more of a innocent bashful singing, kinda like Alfalfa from The Little Rascals so to speak.

The songs themselves, there were some good moments and some of them have been used in later albums, with better results.  Jack Orbit and I did wrangle about with the arrangements and believe me there were some interesting drum rolls, the forced Bo Diddley, drum roll of Morockin Roll, the stop start of I gotta let you go refrain on   Hole In The Head and the stutter beat of Summer Breeze (although the corny high end vocals made that song somewhat painful to listen to).  I certainly worked my ass off on these songs, even though the all over the place Driving With Ned is a fun song to listen to.   Some songs do stand out.  All It Ever Does Is Rain was a song written about a friend that committed suicide and the end results.  Moonlight And You was written about my brief three week get together with Amy Holtz, Summer Breeze was written about trying to locate her a year later and the third verse pretty much explain things.  However the best known song remains All Over Now.  Yes it was a very angry bitter song aimed at the girl that I wasted my high school years waiting for, but she never returned and ended up having three kids before she turned 18.  I think in some ways Jeanette may have been instrumental in keeping my rock and roll dreams alive, if we were together I doubt there would be any Town's Edge Rock or any other album for that matter.  But in the end Jeanette turned out to be the worst girlfriend I ever had and what better way is to write about that in a song.  I had a friend that was a relative to Jeanette and when she did get married, somehow All Over Now got played at her reception after the wedding.  Needless to say, the groom didn't like the song and pretty much destroyed the cassette.  Nevertheless, while Jeanette's marriage didn't last too long, All Over Now has been one of my most requested songs when I play live.

Another first was the overdubbing of vocals on side 2, starting with You Ride On It, a simple call and response played with two chords.  I think we did about 6 overdubs before settling on just 4 of the vocals.  The object was to have a high vocal and a lower vocal to go with the main vocals. On Baby Wanna Dance, I added cowbell and tambourine to the mix and it's a mess, but on later songs such as Cant Seem To Make You Mine or Hole In The Head, I overdub the vocals only.  Driving With Ned was the instrumental but on the song Highway, the "drum solo" is nothing more than me banging out a beat on the guitar but kept going since it made some interesting feedback sounds from the guitar.  Not bad for a 30 dollar K mart guitar.  I do believe that the vocal overdubs on side 2 made T E Rock a much more worthy listen and it would set the foundation of the sound of Rodney Smith.  I really have not ventured too much out of that sound since then, only tweaked and polished it up on each new release.

While 30 years plus may have dated the sound and the intention, Town's Edge Rock is the important first album that gave me the confidence to continue to make albums.  But it also proved that good albums take time to complete, unlike the first takes of the Big Crash Years  While So Much For That begins the journey, it's Town's Edge Rock that gets things going in the right direction.  The followups would be forthcoming, but it would be a while before anything topped the rude tenacity and garage rock logic of Town's Edge Rock.

Tracklist:

One Track Mind 2:58
Two Lines Backwards  2:50
Baby Wanna Dance (Smith/Orbit/Miller)  3:00
13 Minutes To What?  1:35
Moonlight And You  5:05
Ever So Much  2:55
All It Ever Does Is Rain  4:17
Morockin' Roll (Smith/Orbit)  2:40
Driving With Ned (Smith/Orbit/Miller/Jackson)  2:10

You Ride On It  3:25
Fix  2:10
Can't Seem To Make You Mine  3:35
Hole In The Head (Smith/Miller)  2:41
Highway  4:06
Nowhere City  2:20
All Over Now (Smith/Orbit/Strobie)  4:14
Summer Breeze (Smith/Orbit)  3:36

All songs written by Rodney Smith  (c) Rodney Smith except where noted
Recorded as is at The Rock Room aka Maier Studios, Marion IA  June 8-23, 1983
Recorded by Rodney Smith, assisted by Ken Miller and Mel Strobie
Produced by Jack Orbit with Rodney Smith 

All instruments and vocals are played by Rodney Smith
Mel Strobie-Bass on All Over Now
Jack Orbit-additional guitars
Ken Miller-Bass

Originally issued as Maier Records  MRK 24199