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CD LINER NOTES Produced by
Brian Burns The
American Junkyard Full Gospel Choir is: Trout
Fishing In America is: The 33rd
Degree Gypsy String Ensemble is: Cover photo by
Tony Mennite American Junkyard is my 6th studio album and “The American Junkyard” is America herself, from sea to shining sea. Maybe more to the point, it is those parts of her that we’ve swept under the rug, discarded, forgotten, forsaken, or otherwise dismissed. It is the people we no longer pay attention to because they’re not wealthy, pretty, cool, loud, black, white, or possessing of whatever trait we value in any given month. It is the music we no longer hear over the white noise: yesterday’s singer, yesterday’s song - irrelevant. It is the merchandise we purchased some time ago; we wanted it at the time, but now the neighbors have better merchandise, and we must strive to keep up. We live in a different nation now than we did just a decade ago. Some would say it is fundamental generational change, and that I’m just getting older… and crotchety. That much is true, but there’s more to it than that; much more. While technology has brought us many comforts, conveniences, and shortcuts, it has also allowed us to start yelling at each other from behind a veil of networks and broadband lines, sometimes with complete anonymity. It has also allowed the casual, chronic spread of complex untruths, urban myths and legends, endless disparaging and distortion of anything that doesn’t fall in line with what we wish to believe, and ultimately, the rampant dissemination of misdirected angers and seething hatreds – political, racial, you name it. Don Henley wrote, “Have you noticed that an angry man can only get so far until he reconciles the way he thinks things ought to be with the way things are?” I try to recall that line whenever I start getting caught up in the white noise. When I’m on the road I listen to a lot of music, most of it written and recorded before America’s “changing of the guard” (9/11?). When I come home off the road, I find escape in the mystical glow of my wife’s deep emerald eyes, underneath the playfields of antique electro-mechanical pinball machines, on DVD recordings of old TV shows, or in books or other media that portray our nation in another time… a time before everyone wanted everyone else to go away… a time when we recognized that we needed each other… when truth rang like the music of a mockingbird… and a man was still as worthy as his word. American Junkyard has taken a couple of years of labor to develop and complete. I hope you will deem it worth the wait. The slow part is me… by the time I’m finished, it may be deemed technically sufficient, but it is only after folks like Tommy Alverson, Davin James, Cletus, Keith & Ezra, Carpenter on steel, Grammer, Mike Cross, Andrea, all those angel voices, and the (un)usual cast of characters have dropped by and put the icing on the cake… that it truly becomes a RECORD. This record is dedicated to my friend Marc Thompson, who has kept on believing in me, even when others didn’t. I could never ask for a better friend than that. I’ve shared many a drink with Marc, but then on other days, he’s taken my kids fishing. Anyone who has the honor of knowing Marc is in for a good time and a genuine celebration of life itself – that’s the money-back guarantee. Although you may not hear his voice here, Marc is all over these songs. Also, a big lifelong thanks to Rusty Wier – better to shoot for a star and hit a stump… than to shoot for a stump and miss. I can’t begin to describe how much I’ve learned from you, and I will carry your music and your inimitable spirit in my heart always, striving to pull myself up to your example. In my cherished little corner of The American Junkyard, Rusty will live forever and ever. Amen. God Bless You, my sweet old friend. And finally, I wish my mama could hear these songs - she liked everything I ever did; obviously a woman of impeccable musical taste. Thanks for visiting me on the web… be sure to sign up for my newsletter while you’re here… and, as always, thanks for listenin’! |
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EXTENDED LINER NOTES It was sometime in 2008, and I don't remember exactly when now because this recording project has erased some of the memory banks. Anyway, Tommy Alverson, Bob Livingston, and I had rendezvoused in Washington DC to have one last productive musical fling at the XM Satellite Radio studios there. Sirius had acquired XM. The DJs and PDs who were playing our music knew the axe was about to fall on XM and they had invited us up for a last series of live on-air performances, interviews, and a prerecorded special called Outside The Woodshed. While we were there we also got to open for Kinky Friedman at The Birchmere in Alexandria. I had recently written the song American Junkyard and felt it provided a perfect title for the collection of songs I was working on in the studio. By this time I had been developing the new project for several months and had toyed with several working album titles: Along Old Fence Lines, Forgotten America, Lost America... One day while surfing The Net I had discovered a chromatically "punked" photo of an old car in a junkyard, and the epiphany - the title for my next CD - struck me. I first contacted the photographer/artist, Tony Mennite, for permission to license his photo for the front cover of the CD, then I sat down and wrote the song - American Junkyard. Now, here I was in our nation's capital... in a heated election year... watching the economy freefall... listening to two sides yell at each other... feeling my own line of work (the music business) rip apart at every seam. Backstage at The Birchmere, Kinky Friedman offered me a shot of Mexican Mouthwash (Cuervo Gold) and proceeded to engage Bob Livingston and me in a friendly political discussion, which quickly turned into a spirited (but still friendly) debate between Kinky and Bob, at which time I decided to just sit back and absorb. Which side of the fence was the junkyard really on? Welcome my friend, won't you step through the gate... It was during this visit to DC that the junk really started to gel. I had written State Of The Art and Burnin' Gasoline as personal observations on a changing music industry. Then there were songs like Rattlesnake Tequila, Upside Down, and The King Is In His Castle, fleshing out characters who might be found - or at least, whose vehicles might be found - in a junkyard (or at Marc Thompson's house during a crawfish boil). Closer To The Truth opens with an anchor on a mountain, symbolic junk... you can't be too careful. Then there's the relationship refuse in To Make A Long Story Short, and a dusty but revealing box of souvenirs lost in an attic in Postcard From Jamaica. The metaphorical task becomes the separation of the trash from the treasure; that's where J.D.'s Junk City, Believe In You, Along Old Fence Lines and the rest come in. I've done a lot of Texas-flavored records, and I wanted to broaden the horizon on this one a bit and give it more of a sweet, southern, soulful, surreal at times, pseudo-gospel feel. In all, 16 songs were completed for American Junkyard. Another 16 songs lie in various stages of incompletion on hard drives in my studio. None were omitted because they didn't make the grade or fit the theme but, rather, because they didn't work into the flow, they didn't make their final arrangements readily apparent, or they were going to add considerable time to the completion of the project. If things go well, I will be revisiting some of those incomplete songs. I can't think of a better way to pass the time of day. All in all, I hope you enjoy all this... junk. --BB
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TECHNICAL NOTES American Junkyard was recorded at Rush Creek Recording, which is a fancy (and occasionally changing) name for my home project studio. Of all my musical achievements, one that I'm especially proud of is having produced a nationally charting record, I've Been Everywhere (In Texas) in a home project studio on a shoestring budget. The studio has grown, the technology has improved, and this project, in my opinion, has produced the best sounding recordings I've ever made. With only a couple of exceptions*, these tracks were captured using Steinberg's Cubase (versions 4 and 5) digital audio workstation software on a custom Dell XPS PC running Windows XP (because Vista sucks). The audio interface was a Tascam FW-1884 until it crashed and burned about two-thirds of the way into the project, at which time it was replaced by a PreSonus Firebox audio interface, along with a Frontier AlphaTrack transport control surface. All acoustic stringed instruments (guitars, mandolin) were captured with a pair of Shure SM-81 condenser microphones, sometimes in mono, but usually stereo, configuration. The acoustic guitars were captured in stereo to give them some "breathing" space. Hoping to capture a more strident lead vocal sound, I purchased an AKG C414B XL-II microphone at the beginning of the project, but as I started recording my lead vocals I realized something was terribly wrong. The AKG mic was being extremely unflattering to my voice (which was, at the same time, being extremely unflattering to me). So I went back to my trusty BLUE (Baltic Latvian Universal Electronics) Baby Bottle mic (Bob Dylan's favorite studio vocal mic) and started over. Vocals were routed through a Focusrite Voicemaster Pro mic preamp. Harmonicas were recorded using the standard workhorse Shure SM-57 mic. Acoustic guitars used were: Alvarez Yairi DY64C, Alvarez PF90 SC, and a José Ramirez 2CWE classical guitarra. Electric guitars used were: my fire engine red Fender American Standard Stratocaster, and my black Gibson Les Paul Studio model. Tommy Alverson played a Fender Telecaster from a bygone age, and Davin James played a hot-wired Fender Stratocaster (in his underwear... he insisted on playing it in his underwear). All electric guitars, along with Gary Carpenter's pedal steel guitar, were processed through Native Instruments Guitar Rig versions 1, 2, & 3. Gary Carpenter plays Rains pedal steel guitars, which he builds himself - he owns the company... http://www.rainssteelguitars.com. Gary asked me to make his pedal steel sound "big & wet" on this recording. That may actually become the title of my next CD. *The American Junkyard Full-Gospel Choir was recorded at Patrick McGuire Recording in Arlington, TX. Trout Fishing In America was recorded at The Trout House in Prairie Grove, AR (hey, the place is easy to find, once you get there). My hats off to Ezra, Karen, Keith, and the rest of the crew for their hospitality and patience. The remaining performances were whacked on pads, electronic drum triggers, and keyboards to generate the sounds of the following VST instruments: Bass: Spectrasonics Trilogy,
Yellow Tools Majestic, M-Audio Drum & Bass Rig Effects & Processing were done with the following plugins: The Universal Audio Powered Plugins, Waves Native Plugins, Cubase Plugins The first stage of mastering was
rendered across Cubase's stereo output buss by Waves Ultramaximizer
Plus, It was all brought together with a combination of cool, cutting edge software, good old-fashioned Karma, a wardrobe of Hawaiian shirts of questionable style, many late-night or early-morning bouts of insomnia, synchronous dead-reckoning, a plethora of worry and uncertainty, a big room full of pinball machines to give my voice frequent rests, an unhealthy modicum of Red Bull and Lunesta, and finally, a veritable shitload (metric) of cough syrup and enchiladas. Of course, at the end of the day, the question comes down to: how much is all this gonna cost me? (Jeez!) That's a wrap. --BB |
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