OLD 97s
The Brewery, Raleigh, NC
February 7, 1996

Source: CSB mics (battery box, low-end roll-off) clipped on ceiling, 18" apart, centered 20 feet from the stage > Denon DTR-80P (DAT, 16/48)
Transfer: Master DAT > Tascam DA-20 > M-Audio Audiophile USB > PC > Audacity > iZotope RX7 (de-hummed, rebalanced (vocals raised), minor edits, light EQ, normalizing) > CD Wave Editor (tracking) > FLAC (level 8)
taped and transferred by mrpember, live sound by Jac Cain

This is a 16/48 recording

01- introduction
02- Eyes for You
03- Hands Off
04- The Other Shoe
05- You Belong to My Heart [Bing Crosby cover]
06- Bel Air
07- Let the Train Blow the Whistle [Johnny Cash cover]
08- Big Brown Eyes
09- Por Favor
10- Wish the Worst
11- My Sweet Blue-Eyed Darling [Bill Monroe cover]
12- Victoria
13- Stoned
14- Miss Molly [Bob Wills cover]
15- Mama Tried [Merle Haggard cover]
16- Doreen
17- Four Leaf Clover

Total time:

Rhett Miller: guitar, vocals
Murray Hammond: bass, vocals
Ken Bethea: electric guitar
Philip Peeples: drums

On a bill with the Two Dollar Pistols and Freightwhaler on a Wednesday night. All three bands had played the Honky-Tonk-A-Rama at Local 506 in Chapel Hill the previous weekend, and the Old 97s would play at 506 again two nights later opening for the Grandsons of the Pioneers (I attended that show but didn't tape). This was a minor moment in the history of the great "alt-country scare" of the '90s in that these shows were the first time that members of Whiskeytown and the Old 97s met, they would soon join up on the nationwide NO DEPRESSION tour and not long afterwards start one of the more notable alt.country feuds. On this recording you can hear Ryan Adams and Phil Wandscher yelling out requests and razzing them from the audience.

On this night I clipped the little CSB microphones to the ceiling and ran a cable back to my DAT deck at the soundboard. I was still experimenting with this and used a cheap, unshielded Radio Shack cable and as a result there was very noticeable hum that I was able to reduce (but not eliminate) in iZotope. The original recording has really nice stereo separation but was very bass-heavy (legendary Raleigh sound engineer Jac Cain wanted everyone to feel the bass drum thump deep within their chest), and to my ears was improved quite a bit with some light EQ. Sample provided.

mrpember, April 2021