Dan Bern
The Bottom Line
New York, NY
1/2/1999

Original master recording Neumann TLM-170 (subcardiods FOB) -> Sonosax SX-M1 -> Tascam DA-P1 DAT (master @ 16/48)

DAT playback:  Sony R-500 -> Sound Devices 722 digital input (@24/48)

Mastered: Soundforge Pro 10.0c - *All file manipulation in Soundforge done at 24 bits*.  Volume normalization, lots of clap removal.  Sample rate conversion 48khz to 44.1khz using iZotope 64-Bit SRC set higher than "Highest Quality" setting w/anti-alias filter.  Then dithered to 16 bits using using iZotope MBIT+ with Ultra noise shaping, with high dither settings.  Tracked in CDWav.

Early Show
1.  intro
2.  Lightning Jazz
3.  Most American Men
4.  Jerusalem
5.  banter - a confession
6.  Oh Sister
7.  Chelsea Hotel
8.  Dictator
9.  Tiger Woods
10. One Dance
11. Einstein Was Wrong
12. Lithuanina
13. thanks
50:52


Late Show
1.  intro
2.  Tiger Woods *
3.  banter - who was that
4.  Rolling Away
5.  batner - people get upset at this song
6.  Hannibal
7.  Joe Van Gogh
8.  Famous Painter
9.  Jew From Kentucky
10. banter - inviting out Moxy Fruvous +
11. Marilyn ^
12. banter - new song
13. Thanksgiving Day Parade ^
14. Monuments -> ^
15. Yellow Star ^
16. encore break
17. banter - a heavy one / contact lens issues
18. Wasteland
65:45

19. bonus track:  Jerusalem (final encore from Moxy Fruvous' set on this night) ^


* = performed by 12 year old Matt Bair
+ = there is an abrupt cut at the end of this track -- probably due to the need to put new batteries into my pre-amp and seeing the time while Moxy Fruvous was setting up as a good opportunity to do this (and apparently it was, since I got up and running again well before they started the next song!)
^ = w/all of Moxy Fruvous backing Dan on these tracks

Taper Notes:
This is BARN110, another classic Dan Bern show from the strongly loved and hated (but now long departed) Bottom Line here in NYC.  The seeds for this BARN series were planted over a year ago when fellow Neumann TLM-170 owner and all around nice guy Alex Prestin mentioned that he was at this show (apparently for the Moxy Fruvous set) and recalled seeing a pair of TLM-170s at the show and figured they must have been mine.  And of course he was right!  So after a few other requests for some more classic Dan Bern (over Twitter, and in person from a fan of the BARN series at the Phish show in Bethel this summer), I transferred this DAT in July and am finally getting around to posting it now.

Dan and Moxy Fruvous we co-billed for a New Years' Eve run, which this was a part of.  I seem to recall that the run was 12/31, 1/1, and 1/2 (2 shows each night -- an early show and a late show) and that they traded off who opened and who closed over the course of the 3 nights.  On this night, Dan played first and Moxy Fruvous played after in each show.  I believe that Dan also sat in with Moxy Fruvous during their set for a performance of his "Marilyn" (which will be forthcoming but I have not started working on yet), so that will appear in the Moxy Fruvous archive (and I'll append it to this show on archive.org) once I'm done.

Placing this in my own personal musical history -- I recall almost completely blowing this show off.  I mean, after seeing Phish on 12/31/98, I then trekked down to Wetlands for another 2 1/2 sets of Deep Banana Blackout that ran into the very early morning hours of 1/1/99, sleeping most of the day on 1/1/99 away, and still feeling very sluggish on 1/2, but managed  to get my butt down to The Bottom Line for this show.

Dan's solo shows (and generally any acoustic act) often become very time consuming projects for me.  If I want to master them properly, I wind up going song by song removing potentially hundreds of loud claps that overpower the music, raising the levels of the music while attenuating the levels of the crowd noise (cheers in the middle of songs and before/after songs) to keep the music listenable (i.e. so you don't have to hurriedly reach for the remote control when the explosion of crowd cheering comes when a quiet song ends).  All of this is challenging to do gently so it's not jarring and doesn't ruin the dynamics of the listening experience.  So if you have any previous recording of this show, feel free to get rid of it, as this version should be far more listenable (not that my original version didn't sound pretty great on its own -- but I've polished this thing into a near-professional release).

Anyway, I spent about 3 weeks (off and on) working on this recording.  So I hope you love listening to it as much as I did and appreciate the love I have for this music!

This is a truly awesome show.  Yes, many of the tunes are "Dan Bern 101" greatest hits-type songs, but you can hear that he was in a great mood, chose some great ones ("Chelsea Hotel", "One Dance" including some rarer lyrics, "Wasteland") and played them really well.  But balancing out the crowd pleasers with rarer songs like the tongue-in-cheek "Most American Men", "Dictator", "Einstein Was Wrong", "Famous Painter", and "Jew From Kentucky"; the dead-serious and deep as can be raw-nerved "Lithuania" [which could easily be the highlight of this show -- maybe the best performance of this song ever?] and "Yellow Star" [which really benefits from the backing band]; and the hilarious sight of Matt Baird, the 12 year old kid starting out the 2nd set belting out "I got big balls" ("Tiger Woods") opening the late set.  And then there is the mini set of Dan being backed by Moxy in the late show, which worked out pretty great.  You can just hear the mutual admiration and fun the 2 acts were having playing together -- the version of the then-new "Thanksgiving Day Parade" (one of my favorite Dan songs ever) is positively ebullient (including all of the many verses, some of which did not always get performed), and "Monuments" which I do not believe I ever heard Dan perform before or since.

Look for the Moxy set soon.  :)

Enjoy!

Scott

Here's a rundown of all of my previous BARN archival releases (all can be found on archive.org except as noted):
BARN1 - Col Bruce Hampton and the Code Talkers at Bret & Joyce's wedding 9/17/2005
BARN2 - Col Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit (w/guest Warren Haynes for all of set 2) Wetlands 11/20/1993
BARN3 - moe. Wetlands 7/8/1995
BARN4 - Dan Bern Bottom Line 7/31/1998 (late show)
BARN5 - moe. Birch Hill 10/31/1996
BARN6 - moe. Maxwells 1/20/1996
BARN7 - Dan Bern Central Park Summerstage 9/19/1997
BARN8 - Dan Bern, Bottom Line 8/1/1998
BARN9 - moe. Bayou 4/5/1997
BARN10 - moe. Irving Plaza 4/4/1997
BARN11 - moe. AKA 9/7/1995
BARN12 - Yolk AKA 9/7/1995
BARN13 - Robert Walter/Johnny Vidacovich/James Singleton/Donald Harrison Preservation Hall 4/30/08
BARN14 - Phish Las Vegas, NV 10/31/1998 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN15 - Phish Great Went @ Loring AFB, Limestone, ME 8/16/1997 (on bt.etree.org) - by request
BARN16 - Phish Great Went @ Loring AFB, Limestone, ME 8/17/1997 (on bt.etree.org), includes orchestra set - by request
BARN17 - Phish Red Rocks Amphitheater, Morrison, CO, 8/4/1996 (on bt.etree.org) - by request
BARN18 - Phish Red Rocks Amphitheater, Morrison, CO, 8/6/1996 (on bt.etree.org) - by request
BARN19 - Phish Red Rocks Amphitheater, Morrison, CO, 8/7/1996 (on bt.etree.org) - by request
BARN20 - Phish Red Rocks Amphitheater, Morrison, CO, 8/5/1996 (on bt.etree.org) - by request
BARN21 - God Street Wine, Irving Plaza, NYC 6/24/1993
BARN22 - Leftover Salmon, Wetlands, NYC 10/1/1994
BARN23 - Anders Osborne, Manny's Carwash, NYC 11/5/1997
BARN24 - Anders Osborne, Manny's Carwash, NYC 11/6/1997
BARN25 - moe. Pool Party, Morganville, NJ 6/2/1996
BARN26 - Widespread Panic, Stone Pony, Asbury Park, NJ 11/7/1992 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN27 - Stew ["Passing Strange"], The Turning Point, Piermont, NY 4/6/2003 (on bt.etree.org. dimeadozen.org)
BARN28 - Stew ["Passing Strange"], Joe's Pub, New York, NY 5/22/2003 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN29 - Percy Hill, Lion's Den, NYC 3/16/1996
BARN30 - Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Irving Plaza, 8/3/1995
BARN31 - Percy Hill, Wetlands, NYC 6/8/1996
BARN32 - Bad Livers, Mercury Lounge, NYC, 11/15/1999 (opening for Leftover Salmon)
BARN33 - Bad Livers, Mercury Lounge, NYC, 11/16/1999 (opening for Leftover Salmon)
BARN34 - G. Love And Special Sauce, Central Park Summerstage, NYC 6/18/1995
BARN35 - The Band, The Great Lawn, Central Park, NYC 5/16/1993 (on dimeadozen.org)
BARN36 - The Band, Mountain Stage Radio broadcast, Charleston, WV, recorded 4/4/1996 (on dimeadozen.org)
*** Start of New Orleans Jazzfest Appreciation mini-series (note that BARN13 technically belongs in this series) ***
BARN37 - Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk, Tipitina's, New Orleans, LA, 5/5/2008
BARN38 - Steve Kimock Band, Tipitina's, New Orleans, LA, 5/6/2001 (2AM show)
BARN39 - The Funky Meters, Tipitina's, New Orleans, LA, 5/6/2001 (11PM show) (on bt.etree.org)
BARN40 - Anders Osborne, Tower Records instore, New Orleans, LA, 5/7/2001 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN41 - Joe Krown Trio w/Walter "Wolfman" Washington, Russell Batiste + special guest Mike Gordon, Tipitina's, New Orleans, 5/5/2008
BARN42 - Russell Batiste and Friends, The Howlin' Wolf, New Orleans, 5/1/2008 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN43 - Global Noize, The Howlin' Wolf, New Orleans, 5/1/2008 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN44 - Deep Banana Blackout, The Howlin' Wolf, New Orleans, LA 5/6/2000
BARN45 - Bela Fleck And The Flecktones, The Saenger Theater, New Orleans, LA 5/5/2000
BARN46 - Medeski Martin And Wood, The Saenger Theater, New Orleans, LA 5/6/2000 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN47 - String Cheese Incident, The Saenger Theater, New Orleans, LA 5/5/2000
BARN48 - Soulive, House Of Blues Parish, New Orleans, LA 5/5/2001
BARN49 - String Cheese Incident, Cajun Queen Riverboat, New Orleans, LA 5/3/2000
BARN50 - New Mastersounds, House Of Blues Parish, New Orleans, LA 5/2/2008
BARN51 - Funky Meters, Bonnaroo, Manchester, TN 6/13/2003 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN52 - George Porter And The Runnin' Pardners, Village Underground, NYC, 5/19/2001
BARN53 - Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Tramps, NYC 10/29/1993 late show
BARN54 - The Meters, Tramps, NYC 5/15/93 late show (on dimeadozen)
BARN55 - The Meters, Tramps, NYC 10/29/93 late show (on dimeadozen)
BARN56 - Wild Magnolias, Wetlands, NYC 2/10/2000 (on bt.etree.org)
*** end of New Orleans Jazzfest Appreciation mini-series ***
BARN57 - Blues Traveler, Livingston Gym @ Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 4/17/1993
BARN58 - Phish, Greek Theatre, Los Angeles, CA, 10/29/1998 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN59 - Jazz Is Dead, Bottom Line, NYC 2/7/1998 (late show only) (on bt.etree.org)
BARN60 - Grateful Dead, Cal Expo Amphitheatre, Sacramento, CA 5/27/1993
BARN61 - The Dude Of Life (w/Trey Anastasio and Jon Fishman for entire show, plus Page McConnell for a bunch), Wetlands, NYC 2/5/1994 - on bt.etree.org
BARN62 - ALO, High Sierra Music Festival Main Stage, Quincy, CA 7/3/2005
BARN63 - Leo Kottke & Mike Gordon, High Sierra Music Festival Main Stage, Quincy, CA 7/3/2005 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN64 - Dan Bern, The Bottom Line, NYC 11/11/1998
BARN65 - Galactic, Knitting Factory, NYC 10/18/1997 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN66 - Bruce Hornsby, Paramount Theater, NYC 12/7/1993 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN67 - God Street Wine, Irving Plaza, NYC 8/26/1993
BARN68 - Warren Haynes Midnight Southern Jam - Wetlands, NYC 8/5/1993 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN69 - Dave Matthews And Friends (Trey Anastasio, Tim Reynolds, Tony Hall, Brady Blade, Ray Paczkowski) Bonnaroo 6/11/2004 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN70 - Rana at Bret & Joyce's wedding, Whitehall, NY 9/17/2005
BARN71 - Soulive - Baby Jupiter, NYC 6/11/1999
BARN72 - Chris Barron, Nightingale Bar, NYC 7/14/1997
BARN73 - Chris Barron, Nightingale Bar, NYC 11/17/1997
BARN74 - George Porter's 60th Birthday w/PBS and friends, Blender Theater, NYC 12/29/2007
BARN75 - Jennifer Hartswick Band with special guest Trey Anastasio, Lion's Den, NYC 11/7/2003 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN76 - moe., Gathering Of The Vibes, Seaside Park, Bridgeport, CT 6/20/1999
BARN77 - Project Logic, Gathering Of The Vibes, Seaside Park, Bridgeport, CT 6/20/1999
BARN78 - Phish - Beacon Theater, NYC 4/13/1994 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN79 - Phish - Beacon Theater, NYC 4/14/1994 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN80 - Phish - Beacon Theater, NYC 4/15/1994 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN81 - The Recipe, Wetlands, NYC 11/12/1999
BARN82 - Ominous Seapods, Wetlands, NYC 6/4/1999
BARN83 - Coby Brown Group, Wetlands, NYC 11/12/1999 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN84 - The Big Wu, Wetlands, NYC 11/12/1999
BARN85 - Moon Boot Lover, Wetlands, NYC 6/5/1999
BARN86 - Percy Hill, Wetlands, NYC 6/5/1999
BARN87 - Miracle Orchestra, Wetlands Lounge, NYC 6/5/1999
BARN88 - Jiggle The Handle, Wetlands, NYC 6/5/1999
BARN89 - Jiggle The Handle, Wetlands, NYC 10/2/1998
BARN90 - Lake Trout, Wetlands Lounge, NYC 6/5/1999
BARN91 - Olu Dara, Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival, South Street Seaport Atrium, NYC 6/6/1999 (on bt.etree.org / www.dimeadozen.org)
BARN92 - Donna The Buffalo, Wetlands, NYC 11/12/1999
BARN93 - Radiators (w/Merl Saunders sit-in), Irving Plaza 10/8/1998
BARN94 - Tiny Lights, Wetlands, NYC 8/18/1993
BARN95 - Tiny Lights, Wetlands, NYC 1/5/1994
BARN96 - Radiators, Irving Plaza, NYC 11/14/1997
BARN97 - Radiators, Manny's Carwash, NYC 5/30/1998
BARN98 - The Wood Brothers (w/Medeski, Wolleson, and special guest Amos Lee), Bowery Ballroom, NYC 5/17/2008 - on bt.etree.org
BARN99 - Pieta Brown, Bowery Ballroom, NYC 5/17/2008 - on bt.etree.org
BARN100 - Jeff Buckley, CBGB's 313 Gallery, NYC 12/18/1993 - on dimeadozen
BARN101 - Tiny Lights, CBGB's 313 Gallery, NYC 12/18/1993
BARN102 - Tiny Lights, The Lion's Den, NYC 2/18/1994
BARN103 - Tiny Lights, Club Sine', NYC 2/3/1994
BARN104 - Ha Ha The Moose, BB Kings, NYC 11/23/2001
BARN105 - Medeski Martin & Wood, Hilton Hotel Ballroom, NYC, 4/29/2005 - on bt.etree.org
BARN106 - Tiny Lights, The Court Tavern, New Brunswick, NJ 11/24/1993
BARN107 - Tiny Lights, Knitting Factory, NYC 10/26/1994
BARN108 - Tiny Lights, Mercury Lounge, NYC 7/13/1994
BARN109 - All God's Children, The Lion's Den, NYC 2/18/1994
BARN110 - Dan Bern, Bottom Line 1/2/1999 (w/Moxy Fruvous guesting in the late show)

Recorded, transferred (July 2011), mastered (11/15/2011-12/4/2011), and posted (12/6/2011) by Scott Bernstein.