ARTIST: Barn Burning
TITLE: Werner Ghost Truck
LABEL: Tarnished Records
GENRE: Indie
BITRATE: 171kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 51m total
RELEASE DATE: 2007-02-27
RIP DATE: 2007-02-14
Track List
----------
1. William 4:47
2. Crossing The Rubicon 4:31
3. Long Dark Room 6:02
4. October 5 1:05
5. Put The Drunk Drivers On The 5:56
Guest List
6. Friendship Fails You 4:39
7. Flailing 5:46
8. The Final Days Of Our Better 4:50
Days
9. The Send Off 6:33
10. February 28 0:59
11. Winter Palace 6:43
Release Notes:
Barn Burning has been through a lot of changes since we released Weatheredbound
(our first record). Almost no one from that first record is in the band anymore.
It was hard for them to do the touring thing and most of the members had other
things they wanted to do like attend grad school and move away to other parts of
the country. I spent about 2 and a half years touring Weatheredbound with
different players, but always with the same drummer. We went all over the
country and into Canada. I can't say its been easy. That's a long time to tour a
record, but we knew we had to do it being a band at our level.
The only original member (besides myself) who plays on the new record, Werner
Ghost Truck, is Corwin Butterworth. He played lapsteel on a few songs and lead
guitar on the song "Put the Drunk Drivers on the Guest List." He plays locally
when he can, but spends the rest of his time making furniture and raising his
two children in Wakefield, RI. We've been through a revolving door situation
with guitar players and violinists over the past three years. Right now our
longest standing lineup consists of me Anthony Loffredio (on acoustic/electric
guitars, harmonica, lead vocals), James Toomey (drums, percussion, toy piano),
and James Merida (bass, keyboards, vocals). Those guys are all over Werner Ghost
Truck. Brad Malone plays violin on a few songs, but Kate Conroy is our most
recent violin player. She's great and has a lovely voice. She's been with us for
about a year now. Robert Fisher from the Willard Grant Conspiracy also sings
some guest vocals on the song "Friendship Fails You."
Okay, the recording process for Werner Ghost Truck was interesting. We recorded
it in Leominster, MA with our friend Jim Reynolds. He's played in bands like
Milkweed, Tiger Saw and Brian Michael Roff. He's also recorded the bands Tiger
Saw, Jason Anderson (K Records), Casey Dienel (Hush Records), and Hotel Alexis
to name a few. Most of the record was recorded in a big empty house in the
middle of winter on the estate of some rich old lady that Jim worked for. Jim is
the caretaker for this estate and the woman who owns the place gives him full
run of the extra house on the property to do his recordings. We recorded all
over that house. I did a lot of my guitar parts in different empty rooms, I
also did most of the vocals at the top of the stairs. We had a lot more time to
experiment with different sounds and how we wanted the songs to take shape on
the record. I wasn't really interested in keeping with the more straight
forward "alt-country" sound of our first record. I felt like the first record
was a bit rushed due to studio costs and my lack of experience in the studio.
This time it was different. I knew almost exactly what I wanted this record to
sound like. We recorded the louder songs live, keeping the best takes despite
any mistakes that may have been present within those takes. Sometimes some
really nice things came out of those mistakes, things that I don't think I
could repeat if I had to. Both Toomey and Merida were integeral to this
recording and I couldn't have done it without them. It just would not have
sounded the same. This second record actually sounds more like a band that has
spent a lot of time on the road together rather than players just playing their
parts. It's tighter yet more disjointed, its more experimental and its also the
loudest and at the same time the quietest we've ever been. .....Does this make
sense? .......Maybe listen to the record first....It also always seemed to be
snowing and it was always cold and dark or getting dark outside when we
recorded. At least that's what I remember. The estate felt very cut off from
the rest of the world. I think that helped to effect the overall mood of the
recordings.
The piano pieces on the record were recorded by our drummer James Toomey. He
recorded them on a hand held tape recorder when he was house sitting Corwin's
dogs a few summers ago. We used them as a segue between a few of the songs. You
can actually hear the dogs walking across the floor in one of the recordings.
The final mixing and mastering was done at Makeshift Studio in Hyde Park, MA by
Darron Burke. He did some additional recording work here and there as well.
Between touring and booked up studio time, Werner Ghost Truck took almost a year
to complete. After it was done we decided to sit on it for awhile to look for a
record label. Five months turned into almost seven until Tarnished Records heard
it and agree to release it. Within that year we recorded and released an EP
ourselves entitled Choir Practice. I felt like I had to get something out there
so that people didn't think we died off. Tarnished agreed to release the record
back in mid August. They had some other releases to take care of for the fall,
so we had to wait until January before it finally came out. It was a long hard
wait.