Album Archives: The First And Last Reunion 1993

After Drive In Blues, I was having some successes and getting positive feedback, even though at the expense of a indifferent love interest.  So maybe it was time to move on to other things.

Brian Mullahan was working on other projects so I tapped Richard Dennanbaugh to help with the next effort, which got back to more experimental and longer songs.  While Brian was a bit more restraint on production, Richard favored ideas to try out.  Songs like Wish You Would Love Me with an extended jam and multi tracked vocals, compressing the guitar sounds to make them sound like whacked out Ouds on the song titled ?, with Ken Miller playing a fretless bass.  Or stretching out the song Girl On A Bridge over to 8 minutes long complete with meltdown.  On The CD version we edited it down to 7.   However, still reeling from Wynna and her goofyness, a few songs were basically leftovers from Drive In Blues, Closing In, a song about falling for somebody that doesn't love you (Check), Wish You Would Love Me (which might be more toward Melissa than the soon to be Mrs. Draper), The Love In You (failing to see through the bullshit stories that Wynna was telling me early on).

Of course, the infatuation wheel was spinning here, and Miriam, was about a new temp at work that I took a fancy upon and of course knowing of the end result that this was not going to work as well either. Doomed to failure.  Looking For A Way Out, dates back to Amy, the girl that I went out with for three weeks in 1982.  The one that had a Bubba boyfriend, loved his truck more than her (bla bla) and I was  the rebound guy and I ended that, I knew she'd return back to Bubba anyway.  But this song is that What If I did go all the way on that faithful night that we were together, and she wanted to make love but to me not with Bubba around lurking somewhere.  Had we done that, life might be a bit different today.  Geoff Redding added a cute tag riff at the end but for a 7 minute song, it's a chapter out of my diary of life but as a song it's a long filler one.

The First And Last Reunion is the first album to be recorded elsewhere.  In late 1992 my brother found a duplex on the SW side of town that he had one part of the house and I had another and it worked out very well.  It enabled me to continue to play drums without having irate parents telling me to cut that noise out.  And it made a nice place to record new music.  So I named this place Broadcast Manor, to which I did a song of the same name.  For the next four years it would be home.

For a while Dennis Pearson came on board to play guitar.  We struck up a conversation at West Music one day and he took me up on a offer to play in the band although his tenure was brief.  Geoff was there all of the time, and he did overdub on a couple things that Pearson couldn't do.

In the classic period of the 1990s, The First And Last Reunion is the black sheep of the family. Not as radio friendly as was Drive In Blues or Diamonds In The Skies and perhaps Brian Mullahan not being part of it might have something to do with it.  Strange to say we have this album already done and ready to submitted when Jack Orbit called up and said he had ideas of a new project and Brian Mullahan signed off on the deal.  So this record got shelved for about six months, while we would work on what would be the final classic piece of the puzzle of the classic years.  However, the cover photo basically explains the type of music we were playing.  Junkyard trainwreck garage rock and it sounds like it.  This might be my favorite all time album cover ;-)

Technical notes:

Recording dates were not documented so the guess is that most of the songs were done in February and March.  Miriam does have a recording date of 2/21/93  Tornado was recorded 4/17/93, Wish You Would Love Me  4/18/93.  Still Love Jane 4/29/93

The Songs:

Wish You Would Love Me (Smith/Pearson)  6:00
Holding On (Smith/Redding)  4:05
? (Smith/Redding/Miller)  2:20
Still Love Jane (Smith/Miller)  4:14
Lovers Night Out (R.Smith) 4:08
The Love In You (Smith/Miller)  2:40
Girl On A Bridge (Smith/Muncie)  7:01

Tornado (Smith/Redding/Pearson/Miller)  6:25
Desert Skies West (Smith/Celica)  3:00
Closing In (R.Smith)  3:22
Me And John Lee (Smith/Miller)  2:37
Broadcast Manor (R.Smith)  4:35
Miriam (Smith/Orbit)  3:45
Looking For A Way Out (Smith/Redding)  6:55

Lyrics: Rodney Smith (C) 1993 Townedgers Music Emporium

Band:  Rodney Smith, Geoff Redding, Ken Miller, Dennis Pearson
Bi Celica: Guest vocalist on Desert Skies West

Recorded at Broadcast Manor, Cedar Rapids Iowa from Feb to May 1993
Recorded by Richard Dennanbaugh, assisted by R. Smith and Ken Miller
Produced by Rodney Smith and Richard Dennanbaugh

Special thanks to Mike Davenport for his support and encouragement.

Acknowledgements and thank you to:  Jerry Scott, Mitchell Gold, Alison M, William Pass, Nate Paulson and The Doctor Jones Band, Bruce Stanley, Carol Becker and Erin Tapken at Relics Records CR, Brother Rick Smith and the N Street Crazies.

Also: The Gin Blossoms and Echohouse for a great time at Chuy's, Billy Janey (who never knows my name when he sees me at Relics or West Music), Craig Erickson (Guitar God), Merrill and Skip (The West Heads at West Music) Sonny Lott and Divin Duck (Sonny was the coolest guy to talk music with when he was a Janitor at NCS in around 1992 1993), Mike Swearingen (Mr. Golden Throat) and YOU.

The TEs use Yamaha Drums, Zildjian Cymbals, Fender Guitars, Tascam 4 track and love their mommy.

Released as Maier Records MRK 24704 in late 1993