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
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