2012 Box

THE 2012 BOX

Behold the eco-friendly liner notes to the 2012 River Road Archives Box Set: they will not be printed on paper (not even recycled paper), but will remain here for you to draw up any time at your leisure.

The Obligatory Boxed Set was first remixed and committed to analog 4-track tape in 1997. The ace technicians here at Frogmore Studio spent late 2011 exploring new ways to present these archival demos, ad-libs, rehearsals, jam sessions, and amateur recordings of live appearances. In most cases, the original mixes were simply remastered for noise reduction, editing, and compression (a phenomenon necessitated by the move from high fidelity stereos to ear buds and wee computer speakers). In some circumstances, where the mixes were known to be drastically improvable or where the tape hiss on each of four tracks rendered the old mixes barely listenable in the age of digital sheen, the original, analog, two- or four-track cassette tapes were digitally remixed, with each track individually polished, and then put back together producing a cleaner sound than ever was possible before.

That is the purpose of this collection: to present, for posterity if not for enjoyment, the clearest, cleanest masters of the River Road Music archives. Many of the recordings that have appeared in successive iterations of the Obligatory Boxed Set will not be found here. No one needs yet another rendering of "So This Is Oxford"; nobody benefits from a remix of "Welcome to my crisis of faith" or the inclusion for the zillionth time of "No Tortured Artists"; and many of the tracks that appeared on two mid-90's album projects, Signs Following First 11 and Gliding, simply did not seem worth revisiting yet again since they were remastered in 2009 as complete collections. This set, in other words, was never intended to be comprehensive--or even broadly representative, though we feel that it is. The track listing is dictated solely by a consideration of what would be worth listening to, rather than filling CD's to capacity just because we could.

CD1

Part One: Grogg & Wolter

It took me five years too long to realize the dream of being part of a functioning, performing, creative band. And the band consisted of two people. But there's always something special about your first band, and GW does still mean something quite significant to both of us. We never took a paying gig, nor did we ever record in a professional studio, but we played some live concerts, we practiced like hell, we composed earnestly, and GW was for real.

1. John Barleycorn (trad.) GW - First concert, July, 1988, Bloomington, Illinois.

2. High Ch’ing* - This moderately stupid song was one of the first two or three originals that Kurt and I presented to each other. I've recorded it over and over, almost tongue in cheek, each time I've been in a new studio environment. Here I am in the late 2000's recorded by Dave Schrider at his studio, with him providing drum track, bass and slide guitar. None of the handful of tracks Dave and I worked on was ever completed before circumstances kept us from having the time or ability to finish what we started.

3. Spring Hill Mining Disaster (Peggy Seeger) GW - another one of the traditional songs Kurt and I put in our repertoire early on, when we didn't know if we were supposed to be a folk group, a nascent rock band, or a very poor person's Simon & Garfunkel.

4. End of an Era GW - We never had a satisfactory version of this rudimentary song, but I've done some playing around with the cleanest practice recording I could find in the archives.

5. Statements of Faith GW - never one of our prominent songs, the chorus holds together well enough, and by editing out the worst of four awkward verses and rearranging a refrain here and there, it passes without causing too much damage.

6. Honeybee GW - In 2010 Kurt and I got together and, with no intentions for anything other than to be together for a while as he recovered from the agonizing dissolution of his marriage, we each brought out a couple of new songs for each other. This and one of his--his best composition ever, in my opinion--were captured with a not-very-high-quality digital camera and placed on YouTube, from which this audio recording was taken and only slightly edited for sound quality.

Part Two: England

In 1989-90 I experienced the fulcrum of my life by spending a year in England. Tracks 7-11 chronicle that year and take me back to the circumstances in which they were written, almost all in my temporary home in Bedford. (None of these, I note, is an original recording from that year, though plenty exist.) Tracks 12 and 13 are later ruminations--the second one instrumental--which, in my mind, belong more to that time than to the later years in which they were composed.

7. Pigeon of Bedford - there are some seriously dumb lines in this song. But it was the first lyric I was able to spit out in Bedford.

8. Little Losses GW

9. Flower Pot Rainy Monday - the song wasn't completed until 17 years later, but the original scribblings remain in my lyric book. It was addressed to myself in almost schizophrenic fashion as I wrestled with the total contentment and total agony of being in the environment of my deepest dreams. Ironically, though the memory fades, I am almost entirely sure this was not actually scribbled in the Flower Pot but in another, more modern pub.

10. On My Leaving GW

11. English Breath (Grogg/Wolter) - I share composer credit with Kurt, who one night soon after I returned Stateside in 1990 generously ad-libbed a melody for the words while I played the alternating chord pattern. His extemporaneous melody is replicated by me on this 2005 solo recording. The lyric sort of personifies England and my dream-like experience of it.

12. Alastair, Nigel & Clive - one of the Schrider recordings that was never completed. I remastered it from the best available working mix from those sessions c. 2008, which was preserved not for quality but only as a reference; that's why the sound is a bit wobbly. I’ve taken the liberty of speeding it up ever so slightly.

13. William Walker - this was never intended to be an instrumental but I have been utterly unable to craft a lyric for it (I work in the opposite order: the words sit in a lyric book, maybe for years, before I put a melody to them.) For info on Walker, look up Winchester Cathedral. It's an amazing story and I mean this tune to be a gentlemanly tip of the cap in his direction.

CD2

Part Three: All You Care to Eat at the Bridge View Inn

The story of our family's farm and heritage in north central Indiana is our own, but the Midnight Stations part of it is that we often gathered there for rehearsal from our respective bases in Indianapolis, Louisville, Chicago etc., and indeed John's tune "Sea of Reality" was recorded there in October 1992, and the three that precede it here are a trilogy that I wrote for the Stations, though we've only ever gotten around to recording "Eel River." Nevertheless the ruralist/American folk/Woody Guthrie-inspired approach of the Stations has its spiritual home right there in that farmhouse. And in the family restaurant in Roann to which we often repaired (even after Jim stayed up late a couple of nights, mentally listing synonyms for "upchuck").

1. 900 Miles (Woody Guthrie) The Midnight Stations - Jackson, Peter Haskins, and myself in November, 1991, gathered for an overnight exploratory session at John's modest first place in Indianapolis. It's that amazing time in life when you are just getting started, newly married, new jobs embarking on actual, promising careers—and still brave enough to try stuff like what we were up to. My advice for all young people, and has been since I was that young myself: love your 20s.

2. Jesus Christ (Woody Guthrie) The Midnight Stations - I'm pretty sure the "Hallelujah" refrain was added by U2.

3. Stations (J. Ritchie/K. Grogg) - the song from which the name of the band was taken. I loathe the idea of a band naming a song after itself, like a theme song, so much so that even though it happened in the opposite order, I have always resisted us recording this one (also the fact that the verse melody is lifted more or less directly from Jean Ritchie's tune "L & N" which is memorably performed by Michelle Shocked).

4. Amazing Grace (John Newton. 18th cent.) The Midnight Stations - Look, I can't get the sound any damn better on this recording. The static hiss on the tape is overwhelming, like a constantly rushing river (the tape was from a May 1992 worship service at Trinity Presbyterian Church, Oak Lawn, Illinois, which closed in 2000). I peeled off the top layer of static by running a digital noise reduction, then silenced the gaps between each line of the song, then coated the whole thing in a mild reverb that covers over the gaps to make it as seamless as possible. Also did some minor volume tweaking to cover some slightly off notes here and there and restore a sense of dynamics.

I'm telling you, this is it. No more. This is the final draft.

Until the next box set.

5. The Ladies’ Auxiliary (Woody Guthrie) Same church, me going solo and missing my buddies, either a month or a year later, I can't remember which.

6. Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms (trad.) The Midnight Stations - Why be in a band? Because it's ridiculously fun and occasionally just ridiculous—in a good way. In this case, a great way. Here, they are learning the song from me as they hear it for the first time, in preparation for my father-in-law to sing it with them (and without me, hence my "playing" him at the end).

7. Stockdale Mill - Recorded in Vivian's apartment in Louisville, 10/92.

8. Roann Covered Bridge - Wilmington, 11/11. The most recent recording in this entire boxed set. The out-of-tune 1992 demo had never worked and was beyond hope for remixing.

9. Eel River** The Midnight Stations - Wilmington, 7/04

10. Sea of Reality (John Jackson) The Midnight Stations - this is the essential, classic sound, atmosphere, energy level, and certainly line-up of the Stations, in my opinion.

11. 150 - a total remix, for which I edited a hell of a lot of noise out of the unsatisfactory 1993 recording, and I don't just mean static. For some reason I was not hearing myself well, and couldn’t stay on pitch. My layered voices were ungodly-awful, and the bass part didn't work at all, so I have stripped this down as much as possible. I believe I have entirely deleted the harmonica track as well.

12. Sesquicentennial - This remaster is way over-edited, stripping away too much with the removal of the persistent tape hiss. Probably I should have just remixed it from the original four tracks, but to be honest, I kind of thought "enough is enough" by the time I got to this one. It's too long, and is being re-worked for my debut commercial CD anyway.

Part Four: Bardstown Road Singer-Songwriter

The Stations ran their course without ever crossing the finish line and I was miserable about it for many long months, more than a year. I loved being part of a full band with commercial potential, loved writing songs for serious people to seriously consider, loved owing it to others to improve as a musician with as much woodshedding as necessary. And when it all petered out, as graduations and life changes inexorably moved us geographically apart from one another, I had no idea what the hell to do, other than keep writing. From my new base in Louisville as the spouse of Vivian Hare, I did. Some of these were written specifically for the Stations both before and after our original dissolution.

13. If You Should Die*

14. So Little to You Kurt Wolter - a beautiful solo rendition Kurt recorded by himself in 1994 in preparation for our reunion/farewell GW gig at the Lucca in Bloomington.

15. Treat You So Kind Signs Following - Nicole's lovely voice in the background. Jim cannot be blamed for the bass part as I stubborly wouldn't let him play a walking bass line, which is naturally called for by the chord progression; I thought it gave the protagonist too confident of a stride. Not sure I can print what Jim thinks of the bass part which I overlaid later, due to local obscenity laws.

16. Cockroach Fodder

17. Restaurant Hell - probably could have done without this one, but what the heck.

18. Banner Elk, NC

19. Bring Me Li’l Water, Sylvie (Leadbelly)

20. May I Ask For Discipline

21. Memories Rain Down - this is a painful one, left incomplete and never intended as a demo, drawn from my experiences—one in particular, in fact—as a student chaplain in an oncology unit in Louisville.

22. Light in the Darkness (Keith Grogg)/The Holly and the Ivy (trad.) Here's me in our new digs in Carolina Beach in late 2000, home alone late one evening with the tape recorder running for no real reason, brilliantly recording the sound of my nostril hairs along with guitar and vocal. "Light" was a tune I had come up with in 1993 and tried several times, in Chicago and Louisville, to produce an adequate demo, never succeeding. It segues into "Holly," which makes a nice Christmastime piece for solo guitar, in keeping with the atmosphere of the song.

CD3

Part Five: City of Looms

The mid- to late-1990s demo recordings—first for a nascent group that never got off the ground called Signs Following, then on my own—were characterized by my use of a 4-track recorder which was borrowed from Jim and never returned, as it quietly died of neglect in a closet some time in the early 2000s. It had been dying for years, actually—first issuing copious amounts of tape hiss to even the most basic tracks, and later by jamming thunderous bolts of destructive static electricty onto the tapes, even as they were being played back. With the help of digital editing technology, I have not only been able to reduce much of the overwhelming noise—future generations will have absolutely no concept how ridiculously noisy these recordings were—but also to go in with surgical precision and remove the booming clicks that marred many of these tracks. Still, this is not my favorite period, though some nice things did come out of it, particularly those later recorded by the Stations in 2004.

1. Scanning the Heavens

2. Arctic Circle

3. Between the Extremes

4. The Bellows

5. The Courier

6. Cried Like a Baby

7. Cattle Wisdom

8. Still Trying to Find You** The Midnight Stations

9. Map of the Heavens

10. Autumn Depot** The Midnight Stations

11. Grandfather Is Sleeping

12. McLean County Line - this is a recovered semi-precious gem from 1999, one of the last songs ever recorded on that by-now-crippled four-track I was permanently borrowing from Jim. I never realized until excavating it for this collection how close the lyric comes to being a manifesto of my musical aspirations, at least those from 1986-99.

13. World War II Veteran

CD4

Part Six: River Road

We moved to Carolina Beach, NC and the greater Wilmington community in the autumn of 2000. Stations, lyric books and music-making in general were in deep enough hiatus that they seemed to be over. But as summer 2003 approached, I found to my surprise, and by complete coincidence, that I would be interacting with each of the four Stations, as we of course maintained our close friendships over the years. Kurt brought a tape that I never knew existed: a recording of Grogg & Wolter's first public performance, advertised in downtown Bloomington and attended by people neither of us knew or had any connection with—in other words, it was the night Grogg & Wolter moved out beyond a small circle of friends and into the public square. Around the time of Kurt's visit, Jackson was working on a set of home demos, and Jim had invited me to his July wedding, in part to sing a rendition of the Doxology, newly composed by him for four voices. I was asked to prepare some music for the Fall Festival at our church and I teamed up with a friend here who played guitar so that I could work on banjo, mandolin, and a beginner's viola. The excitement of all these events led me to learn, for once, how to actually play the damn things. To my amazement, this had a remarkable effect on my ability to do so. And suddenly, bada-bing, the Stations were back up and running—hundreds of miles apart, but still: that "fifth person"—the identity of the Stations—was alive and well, and we all got together again over a long July 4 week-end in 2004 for formal recording sessions.

1. Bringing In the Sheaves (Knowles Shaw, 19th. cent.) - July 2003, when I lacked all sound equipment except two half-arsed mikes and the tape deck into which they were plugged.

2. Heading for Home - the original demo from 2003. This song was only adequately recorded once, by Dave and me in 2007, and the file was subsequently lost. Guitar is in open D tuning with a capo on 2.

3. Tomahawk Park - composed one day at the park in question where I saw the words "Justin loves Sarah" with a heart shape drawn around them, and tried to imagine what might have led to the moment somebody put it there. Guitar in open C tuning, which I had never worked with.

4. Miss Indiana (John Jackson) w/John Jackson, recorded at his place, summer 2003.

5. Deeper than the Tides - I thought I had a sure-fire winner here for the Stations, but it fell with a thud upon submission. I would have thought that it might be too overtly religious, but in fact I think just the sound itself was what they found less than inspirational. I've never been sure that everyone in that band realizes that if they wanted to take a crack at a song that happens to be presented in a crappy demo, all they have to do is play it themselves the way they envision it--and not feel like the first thing we try is the way it has to be from now on. Maybe we respect each other too much to want to mess with each other's ideas.

6. Dark as a Dungeon (Merle Travis) - later to appear on the rustic 2004 solo folk project Sourwood Mountain.

7. California Not Now** (Kurt Wolter) The Midnight Stations - Kurt's tune, which he modestly and incorrectly derides as a "kindergarten rhyme," was the greatest hit to emerge from our 2004 sessions at Telfair Circle in Wilmington.

8. The Morning Boats of Southport - This is kind of neat. In 2005 I got out a lyric book wherein I'd written one of several lyric drafts with this title. I pushed down the record button and spent the next six minutes entirely improvising chord progressions (in open D tuning) and melody lines, starting and stopping, but always continuing on to the next line or verse. I forgot about that tape for six years, and then in 2011, found it, gave it a play (whereupon it was as new to me as if someone else had recorded it), and, using Audacity's editing tools, chopped out and pieced together these two minutes of song. Here's a plug for Audacity: some of the edits are obvious enough to hear; but for many more than that, you would be amazed to know that it hadn't originally come out that way on the tape.

9. John Jackson Turns 40 - During a mid-2000's lull in creativity, the eponymous occasion called this up one morning before going to work.

10. Purple Jacket - a year later, the lull persisted but hey, I did it last year for Jackson; I can do it this year for my brother Kenneth.

11. The Resistance* - I confess to totally trashing out this remaster. I'll redo it for the next box set, I'm sure, but it was one of the ones that's tantalizingly filled with absolute brilliance from Dave Schrider—keys, drum program, lead guitar, bass, recording and mixing—but frustratingly incomplete. We had major problems getting anything acceptable out of me, vocally. In this master I have tried to bury my histrionic vocal as much as possible.

12. All Along the Watchtower* (Bob Dylan) - Dave played everything but the acoustic guitar on this track, and gave me a huge and incomparable gift in doing so. Unfortunately I was never able to go in and tweak any of the vocals which I would like to have done. But with a backing band like this, I'm not complaining.

13. It’s Just Business - for a Stations project proposed by Jackson; he gave me the title, and the song wrote itself in about ten minutes. I believe it is the best I've ever written from a compositional/relevance standpoint.

14. WYSIWYG 2 - more an example of editing than performing, I had a mandolin in my hand as I experimented with some multi-track recording/editing software. Lots of copying and pasting here. Bass is the only other instrument; otherwise this is all mandolin tracks, and none lasted more than about 20 seconds.

15. All Is Well (James O. Hendricks) - the composer is not Jimi Hendrix, but a hymnist born in 1920. This was a demo that I recorded in bits and then pieced together digitally for the guys in Drive Thru Pharmacy to learn for use at a community event; we've since performed it several times a capella.

16. Brother Bartimaeus - My first time with Pro Tools mini, which I had with me in my quarters during a spiritual retreat at Mepkin Abbey in November, 2011, where I recorded this throwaway, one-verse piece. Since the walls were thin and it was mainly a silent retreat, I absolutely whispered into the mike—just as I had done in seminary in 1993!—and then cranked it way up during the mixing. Kind of inspired for inclusion here by "Her Majesty" being tacked onto the end of Abbey Road, I guess.

On we go, into the uncertain but wide open future.

*Produced by David Schrider, mastered by Keith Grogg

**Mixed by John Jackson, mastered by Keith Grogg

KG, Jan. 2012

Instrumentation

Acoustic guitars

Nylon-string guitars (my first K, and Tich Herald’s in England)

Voice

Mandolins (Lotus [deceased] and Mid-Missouri Mandolin Co)

Electric bass

12-string guitars (Harmony [deceased] and Fender F360S-12)

Electric guitars (thank you, Kurt & Jackson, for mine)

Banjo

Viola

Ukulele

Baritone ukulele (“Polynesian Folk Tune”)

Bowed psaltry (“Map of the Heavens”)

Bowed acoustic guitar (“Cattle Wisdom”)

Balalaika (“Poseidon Called Love,” “Blessings Upon You”)

Half-size guitar (solo in “For All of My Life”)

Electric keyboard

Baby grand piano (“Gliding”)

Casio mini keyboard (“Cattle Wisdom,” “Cried Like a Baby,” “Gliding”)

Harmonicas

Recorder

Toy accordion

Tambourine

Egg shaker (thanks Jackson)

Indian drum & assorted percussion (“You Can't Fight Fashion”)

Uboh (African thumb piano on “Border”)

Tibetan Singing Bowl ("English Breath")

Trombones (on “World War II Veteran,” but edited out as presented here)

And all the tricks I could think of including open tuning, selective miking and amplification,

tape speed manipulation, digital delay, and backward-tracking.

What else you got? Here are some of the songs and recordings that, for various reasons, were not included in the track listing.

Flotsam (songs not used)

The Adoration Line

Anything GW

Betrayers of the Revolution

Blessings Upon You John Jackson

Border

Broken Buildings

For All of My Life (Lyric: Grogg/Music: Webbe/Hastings, c. 1888)

Gliding

Gold in the Furnace

Greenhouse Farmer

Have You Seen My Keys?

Hero in Defeat

I Am Not Doing What I Said I Would

I Cannot Let You Go

The Jonah Booth GW

Letters from the Wars

Lost Roadman

Love Songs in Your Margins

No Tortured Artists

Not Holding On

Poseidon Called Love

So This Is Oxford

Statement #2 GW

The Struggle Part One with John Jackson

Sunshine Way Too Long

Survive

Take Your Best Shot

There Is No Time

The Starboard Side

Too Young to Remember Guthrie

Trash in the Line

Waterhouse

You Can’t Fight Fashion

Covers & Traditional songs

Maps and Legends (REM) GW

Michael (trad.)

The River is Wide (trad.)/Though I May Speak (Hopson) w/Phil Lloyd-Sidle

Sourwood Mountain (trad.)

This Land Is Your Land (Woody Guthrie)

Wendell Gee (REM) The Midnight Stations

Were You There? (trad.)

Not by Me

Come and Go/Live and Die (Kurt Wolter) 2004 GW

If Your Love Is Real (Bob Parker) GW

Morning Takes the Sky (Wilkinson/Grogg) Signs Following

Own Days Rhyme (K. Wolter/K. Grogg) GW

Sweet Water (Kurt Wolter) GW

Waiting on a Vision (Peter Haskins)

What It Takes (John Jackson) John Jackson

Jetsam (alternate versions &c.)

Arctic Circle original draft

Betrayers of the Revolution

Blessings Upon You

Cried Like a Baby (2011 mix)

If You Should Die (demo)

Jesus Christ (Woody Guthrie) 04 tape The Stations

Little Losses (early tape recording, Bedford)

On My Leaving (early tape recording, Bedford)

So Little to You (demo)

Stand P’seidon

Statement #2 orig. demo

Treat You So Kind demo

instrumentals

12-String Overture

Antrim Anthem

Coughin’ Wheezin’ Blues (Stipe/Grogg) w/Jim Stipe

The Courier (Buckingham Palace Mix)

Crazy Young Floyd & Neil the Pink Horse

Early Fall, Illinois John Jackson & Keith Grogg

Louisville Story

Mockin’ Funk

Pilgrimage Music

Polynesian Folk Tune Part 2 (trad.)

Thumbnail Sketch #1

fragments & spoken word outtakes

Grace before Breakfast (fragment)

Map of the Heavens attempts

Sea of Reality (Jackson) - KG solo, 2001 fragment

“Has the Electric Coffee…?”

“Here I am back at the farm…”

“So sick of sucking”

“You guys did great at the wedding”