More Townedgers Albums from the Archives.

 Back in the 1990s and 2000s I didn't play in any other bands outside of The Routers, a band that featured Dave Dobler and Greg Nutter and the late Paul Stynenski  (Mike Swearingen appeared in the 1992 version of the Routers) in 1991, which got me back into music again.    We made an live album which I cherry picked the best songs but never saw fit to reissue it.

For the most part, the official albums are still remain the ones that I reference when I want to play the songs again.   However, I did compile albums that had the alternative versions and songs that didn't make the original album themselves.   A Long Time Forgotten, started out with sessions with Garth Richardson produced in 2004 but the masters have been misplaced.  Most of the songs resurfaced on LTF, but these were electric and not acoustic.   I may have stumbled upon the original CD master copy while going through the archives but to be honest only Nevada Streets was the best of the batch.  What's missing is Rolling And Tumblin, which came out on a best of that got shelved. Which means I will have to try to find that best of, I don't think it's been thrown away.

The master tape of 20, the 2003 album is sadly misplaced.  And sad to say, that the 2000 tape masters of There's Nothing Left and Road Less Traveled are ruined.  Somehow the old 4 track we used,  and tapes had an expiration date.  Terry Bainbridge took a listen and shook his head, cassette tapes lost the fidelity. So, I have the studio CDs finished but they will have to be the source for me to go to while compiling best ofs or outtakes.

But anyway, Searching the divine archive of The Townedgers/R.Smith, most of the CDs dubbed from the original finished tapes have managed to stay fairly clean.  A couple attempts to revisit them later on, were polished up, but by removing the tape hiss, some of the songs lost their creative soul.   Anything from the low fi years (1983-1988) were recorded from cassette player to player, but one of them played the tape faster than the others which proved to be a painful listen.  Getting a four track, we managed to correct the speed and removed the excessive tape hiss but the anything goes of Tales Of The Red Caboose, all we could do was compress the tape.  It still sounds ugly but at least we have managed to scoop half the mud and hiss to make it listenable.  

As mentioned before, the echophonic years (1976 to 1982) are pointless to revisit so all have fallen out of print.  There was talk about putting together the best of that time, but it's not needed.  The Power Of Positive Thinking (1981) would be considered reissue material over the 1980 and 1982 albums but then again the 1980 original CD doesn't play at all.  The 1976 Beautiful Renditions is interesting for the overdubbing used back then but I couldn't play or sing very well.  Good intentions but it was more jazzing around with Dad's reel to reel players. 

The past few album I did add a cd of outtakes or cover versions.  There's a CD that contained the 2013 outtakes from No Exit/30 but I can't bring myself to issue that.  The performances are ragged, the covers are not that great and most were grandiose failures.  I may use that as a title if I want to add it as a official reissue but who knows.  

Stories From The Road is the first best of The Townedgers and it covers from 1983 to 1999.  I tried my best to include the best songs from the albums of long ago and far away. However, I did use the long version of Walk A Thin Line and live versions of It's So Hard and All Over Now.  Observations From The Forefront was part greatest hits and part oddities but somehow that album worked better.  The original sources of the original recordings could be all over the place. 

New Found archives albums.

Stories From The Road-The Best Of (2000)

More Rodney Smith And The Townedgers (2001)

New Bottles For Old Wine

Even More Rodney Smith And The Townedgers 

Sing Along With The Townedgers Or Highway Music 

Mixed Blessings (2006)

7/7/7 (2007 Live album)

Solon (2007 Live in the studio album)

Acoustic Favors 

the 2013 Leftovers album (not issued)

The 2007 albums came quickly.  At that time I started winning and buying Paiste cymbals off Ebay and had quite a collection when I did both albums. Both album had the RUDE lineup for those albums. Over time, those albums kept getting lost in the stacks of CDs in the house.  Over time,  both 777 and Solon turned out to be a pretty good idea of how the TEs would sound live.

More was actually a comp of the best outtakes and one off singles.  Most came from the 1996  Light At The End Of The Tunnel outtakes.  New Bottles dives deeper into the archives, with a 1996 drum remix of some of the lesser known tracks from the 80s, to which Running In The Rain was used for the greatest hits.   Some songs were redone later for other albums, Somewhere Down The Line for example.   Summertime Dream has sadly out of tune guitars that make it painful to listen.

Highway Music was our answer to karaoke.  Instrumental tracks, and if you knew the words, good for you. Most came from Modern Problems album.   I tend to find the album without lyrics to be somewhat boring.  

Acoustic Favors was a bunch of acoustic numbers done one night and made a CD of it, but that has disappeared as well as Even More RS/TE.  That was recorded straight to CD one day.  Wish I could find that CD, it did paved the way to my acoustical adventures playing live as well.

Mixed Blessings was found. It was recorded on CD RW, which doesn't play on the regular player.  It includes the majority of the Garth Richardson produced aborted album.  I might try to record from CD player to recorder in the near future but it's not one of the best albums I have done.

The 2013 Leftovers album contains the rest of the NO Exit recordings but without The End, to which I thought about naming that album The End.  Martin Daniels mixed up a reference copy to which I believe this is that.  

It wasn't uncommon for me to mix up a comp of songs that didn't make the original album.  The companion 2009 Country was outtakes from Pawnshops For Olivia.  The Eminent Dormain album was the companion to Logic And Lies, and the Leftovers from No Exit/30.   Elegy basically the scrapings of the bottom of the barrel plus a few things from the 2020 TE album.

The Townedgers Archives have been in disarray for many years.  This week, I am trying to make sense of it all and to see if any of these albums have some sort of value.  Solon is the best of the two 2007 live in the studio albums.  Hopefully if I can find a computer with recording these cds so I can get them back into print.