FREIGHTWHALER
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-clicked, de-hummed, 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

[some song titles are guesses]

01- Not In High School Anymore*
02- Daddy's Gonna Die*
03- Memphis*
04- At The Drive-In
05- Medicate Me Now Please
06- The Ghosts Are Out Tonight
07- That Waltz Song
08- This Time
09- Bar Lights
10- Sometimes That's Hard to Do

* acoustic

Total time: 

Ryan Adams: acoustic and electric guitar, vocals
Sloane Doggett: guitar
Skillet Gilmore: drums
Chris Laney: bass
Nicholas Petti: pedal steel

On a bill with the Two Dollar Pistols and the Old 97s.

Freightwhaler was a short-lived side project for Ryan Adams and some friends from North Carolina and Georgia. They played at most 4 or 5 shows, all in early 1996. Skillet and Nicholas were in Whiskeytown at the time, Sloane and Chris were in Ithica Gin (at least I think Chris was in that band). Ryan was writing a lot of songs back then, Whiskeytown fans will know "Bar Lights" but as far as I know all the other songs were were unique to this brief period.

FYI, the guy razzing them from the audience ("Play faster! Play harder!") was Phil Wandscher from Whiskeytown.

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 seperation 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