Album Archives: 20 2003

The end of The Townedgers as a collective band.

Since Light At The End Of The Tunnel, the band had its most stable lineup, with Geoff Redding and Mark McClelland in tow, but there was discontent growing, basically upon me and not promoting the music as well.  Family issues were at hand, Geoff had a family and Mark wanted more of us getting out and yours truly basically happy hanging at record stores and buying cheap music and talking about it on various social media sights.   The problem was Mark was not a singer, nor Geoff and I really didn't want to sing the majority of songs live.  Another problem, I would forget words if we did play live and it pissed me off to fuck up words to the songs I should know by heart.  I mean I sang It's So Hard for 30 years, why is it that some of the lines are blurred in my brain and I can't remember them?  This has been a lifetime struggle for me to even sing songs and be convincing at that.

All my life, I have been a stutterer, which is why I don't talk much and when I do, sometimes the words that I want to say I can't.  A fucking disability if there was ever one.  That might explain why I never got the girl in the end or the ones that I did get would find somebody new.  After Isabella I really wanted no part of the dating scene, even though I did meet up with a couple of women on line they would not last for more than two dates.  Another drawback, stage fright.  I always had it while playing guitar and playing live with guitar in hand were very few and far between, I would rather play drums and let somebody else sing the songs but in the case of The Townedgers I had to sing the songs since I wrote them and neither Geoff or Mark had the vocal capability to sing them although Mark could sing Hey Cowboy Nice Hat.

For the TE album 20, I had to do something to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Town's Edge Rock and the bright idea was to do a half live and half studio album. There were two unplugged dates recorded.  One was at The Mill in Iowa City on a acoustic jam night, the other was in Platteville at the Pizza Uno Annex, where they too have a jam night and we did Northern Light in tribute to Ty Longley, the Great White guitar player that was killed in that awful fire.  But in the way to record the warts and all sound, Geoff hit the wrong high note on Remembrance Wind, the drums were off on Yuma.  Some songs we did some radical changes, the original version of You Tell Me Why, the bridge part nobody could hit the high notes, so we redid that to better effect.  Hugh McConnell mixed Back Again and sped it up on the master recording.

For the first time ever 20 might have been The Townedgers as product and not a good one at that. So I haven't promote it much or talked about it.  Most of the songs were rewrites or tossed off efforts trying to be songs.  I think we were trying to be funny on MB 20 (or matchbox 20 sucks) or trying to rekindled a love song in the short You're A Hoot.  Love's Not Here, originally done for Nice Weather We're Having, is more blistering and more angry than the original, and basically not because of Melissa who by then was 12 years gone but perhaps it was Hugh McConnell telling me to sing it as if she was in that room and leaving with her friend to go to Burger King without you tagging around.

The only time Town's Edge Rock, the original intent to celebrate that release, ended up that only One Track Mind came from that album and looking back perhaps we should have revisit that album on a song by song basis and put it up to date.  But we all got bored with it, and did absolutely nothing till late November that we did a quick two weeks of recording of whatever lyric sheet was laying around and whatever guitar riffs that were thought up on the spot.  If anything, I did do All Night Dancing, the 1981 song from Power Of Positive Thinking, improvising along the way.  Up to the crazy ending to which I yelled one two about 8 times and ended the thing.  Oh, we did a cover of I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight but took the arrangement from The Fresh Young Fellows rather than Boyce And Hart.

Martin Daniels did then mixed and mastered the tapes and that was that.  However in the archives of The Townedgers' tape masters, the masters to 20 have disappeared or have been misplaced.  And the record was issued a week before the new year.  In that time, the friction between me and the band came to a head and Mark McClelland was let go to do his own thing, I couldn't work with him anymore.   From here on out, The Townedgers simply became me and the four track with occasional help from Geoff and Martin.   The stage fright was winning out, I didn't feel compelled to hit the stage singing ever again.

In any case, 20 is actually where I changed my drumming from a smash and crash made famous in the 80s and most of the 90s to a more rhythm beat driven  and a bit away from the Keith Moon book of smash and crash.  For the first time, I felt more comfortable this way rather than try to do a drum solo in every song.  My drumming has always borderlined on trainwreck beats and outrageous cymbal crashes when I was playing in cover bands and in bars.  As for 20, the album itself I may have made references that it wasn't one of the best but when I play it in the car, it seems to sound the best and I have to hear the songs all over again.  Perhaps it was Martin Daniels adding more of louder drum sound that makes 20 all worth hearing, warts and all.   Perhaps it was the tension that was between me or Geoff or Mark that made the record sound angry.  I cannot get over the fact how angry that I sound on some of the songs, be it Love's Not Here or One Track Mind or even the cover of I Wonder What's She's Doing Tonight or All Night Dancing.

To further confuse the listener, This Will Happen No More renamed Rainy Night In Portland was a sad song about the best time I was with Lisa when I saw her in 1999 and four years later, the loneliness and yearning to return to that time is evident in the vocal.  Or the playfulness of You're A Hoot a small time love song about forthcoming love making.  Certainly when I'm in love I can write a love song that's playful and fun.  Even on the throwaways such as Winds Of Change, it comes with a bizarre waltz odd time beat that Geoff Redding was playing through a delay amp.  Later, I revisited I See You, a song that Russ Swearingen wrote the lyrics and I put to words on a 1985 album not used, but 18 years later, I worked the melody into something that doesn't sound out of place on this record. Russ and I rarely write together, we only have done a handful of songs in our lifetime, and all of them happened before 1985.  He remains a progressive rock kinda guy, but on I See You I turned that into a an acoustical power pop number.

In the long run, 20 does deserve its place in the Townedgers music resume and history and has stood the test of time and so so reviews and is perhaps the best album that captures The Townedgers in sound and vision and fury.  We all worked our asses off to get to this point and even when I think about the process of how this record happened, it tends to work against a damn good sound that we got from these sessions.  In the early 2000's I still bank on The Road Less Traveled as the best of the lot but 20 might suggest otherwise.  Certainly, 20 remains one of the more aggressive and angry albums I ever recorded, but sounds are deceiving, I think I was in a pretty good mood when the album took shape.

The Songs:

Eternal Youth  (R.Smith)  4:05
Northern Lights (for Ty Longley) (Smith/Redding)  2:30
Remembrance Wind (Smith/Maier)  3:44
Yuma  (R.Smith)  3:00
Rainy Night In Portland (Smith/Redding)  3:33
One Track Mind (R.Smith)  2:50
You Tell Me Why (R.Elliot-Clears Music ASCAP)  3:35
Back Again (Again!)  (R.Smith)  3:48

You're A Hoot (R.Smith)  1:30
All Nite Dancing (R.Smith)  3:45
Winds Of Change (Smith/Orbit)  3:53
Love's Not Here (Smith/Redding)  3:41
After You Go (Smith/Orbit)  3:50
MB 20 (Smith/McClelland)  :40
I See You (R.Swearingen/R.Smith)  2:20
I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight (T.Boyce/B.Hart EMI Blackwood BMI)  3:10

Lyrics: Rodney Smith, Music: Where indicated.
Except I See You: Lyrics:  Russ Swearingen
(C) 2003 Townedgers Music Emporium

Band: Rodney Smith, Geoff Redding, Jack Orbit, Mark McClelland

Live Recordings recorded at The Mill, Iowa City IA 1/25/03 (Track 2,3)
Pizzeria Uno Annex at Platteville  WI 2/1/03 (Track 4,5)

Studio Recordings Recorded At The Junkyard, Springville, IA (Nov-Dec 2003)
Recorded By Hugh McConnell, Martin Daniels with Rodney Smith
Mixed By Martin Daniels at WTF Productions in Stone City, Iowa
No Pro Tools were used in this recording.

Thank you:  Russ And Debbie Swearingen, Steve Anthony, Bruce Stanley, Diggy Kat, The Smith Family and GOD

Special Thanks to Donna Will

Thank you Brian Mullahan for the memories

Issued as Maier Records MRK 25220 in Late December 2003

Produced by Rodney Smith with Hugh McConnell