David Bromberg Band
Tarrytown Music Hall
Tarrytown, NY
10/15/1999

Original master recording: B&K4021s (in hat, very FOB center, orchestra) -> Sonosax -> Sony D100(m)

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

Mastering: Soundforge Pro 10.0c - *All file manipulation in Soundforge done at 24 bits*. Applied volume normalization, major clap removal (some songs had constant clapping). 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.

(1st song Brown's Ferry Blues is missing)
1. banter - firing his roadie
2. I'll Take You Back
3. Dark Hollow
4. banter - requests
5. Kansas City
6. Nobody's *^
7. banter - Hugh McDonald appreciation
8. What A Wonderful World ^
9. banter - first time ever taking a request
10. Send Me To The 'Lectric Chair
11. Statesboro Blues / Church Bell Blues
12. Summer Wages
13. Midnight On The Water
14. band intros
15. Lost My Driving Wheel ^
16. Yankee's Revenge Medley
17. encore break
18. I Will Not Be Your Fool
19. encore break 2
20. Such A Night

* = w/Hugh McDonald on bass
^ = w/Mimi Hart and Nancy Josephson on vocals

David Bromberg - guitar, fiddle, mandolin(?)
Dick Fegy - guitar, mandolin
Jeff Wisor - mandolin, fiddle, harmonies
Butch Amiot - bass
Richard Crooks - drums
Curt Linberg - slide trombone
Peter Ecklund - trumpet (presumably, as David doesn't explicitly mention)
John Firmin - saxophone (presumably, as David doesn't explicitly mention)

Technical notes -- I removed hundreds and hundreds of loud, local claps in this recording, spending far more than my usual amount of time working on it, about 5 days in total.

Taper notes:
For BARN119, I present another one of my favorite musicians who I have yet to feature in the BARN series -- the amazing David Bromberg. And even more rare, this is one that I had to "go stealth" [mics hidden in hat] with -- i.e., that I was NOT allowed to tape openly (apparently he has since changed his policy to allow open taping, though I have not seen him recently enough to find out for myself). If you've heard of him, you know exactly why he's one of my favorites and why I need to get more of his stuff out.

But, if you've never heard of David Bromberg, how's this for a rundown of accomplishments: Co-wrote songs with both Bob Dylan (and subsequently produced an album for Bob which was scrapped though some tracks have only recently been released on one of Dylan's "Bootleg Series") and George Harrison, was backed by the full Grateful Dead on one of his albums, was sampled by the Beastie Boys for their song "Johnny Ryall" on Paul's Botique, quit his music career for many years to become a full-time violin-maker (and still owns a violin shop), plays guitar, fiddle, and other instruments, and has a band that is so versatile that they can play blues, folk, rock, and bluegrass efforlessly. Oh, and he's a curmudgeonly overweight Jewish guy who makes no bones about his crotchety-ness onstage (amazingly he played an audience request at this show, when his typical modus operandi is to purposefully NOT play any tune that the audience requests! He usually explains it something like this: "I'm an overweight old Jewish guy and there's not a lot I have control over in this world, but my setlist is the one thing I have total control over, and I'll be damned if I'm going to give control of that to anyone else!"). Many of his songs have a decidedly sly humor to them.

Who else loves his music, besides George Harrison, Bob Dylan, The Beastie Boys, and the Grateful Dead? How about Dr. John who has performed with him on occasion, Los Lobos who wrote a song for his last album, or Widespread Panic who often cover his original "Sharon" (which he did not play in this show) and who even had him guest onstage at one of their recent New Years' shows and returned the favor by backing him on a track on his most recent album. Or The Radiators who he sat in with for an entire show a few years back?

He has a unique ability to weave long, intricate storytelling into his songs, often (as you'll see here) stretching a pretty straightforward song out to 8 or 12 minutes! He has toured solo, with a small bluegrass ensemble, and with a big-band (horns, drums, bluegrass instruments, etc.), and this represents one of his larger bands, though I don't think this show was was explicitly billed as "David Bromberg Big Band" (as his bands are sometimes billed).

I pulled out this show in particular to pay tribute to the awesome Tarrytown Music Hall which I was lucky enough to visit for a couple of shows last year. It's about as acoustically perfect as any venue I've been to, and being there reminded me of this night, which I had the perfect orchestra seats for taping! Unfortunately I had to take the train up there after work (to meet my cousin Dawn and her husband Scott, who had procured the tickets for us), and the Metro North train was inexplicably delayed by about 15 minutes, which caused me to miss the first song. (There is another circulating Scheops recording of this show, so if anyone can get the first track to me, I will re-torrent with the 1st tune spliced in).

Special thanks go to my friend Eric Vandercar who lent me his microphone/hat set-up and portable DAT deck on this night.

Anyway, do give this a listen, as it is pretty magical -- I think you get to hear a little bit of all sides of Mr. Bromberg -- long, wry, storytelling ("I'll Take You Back", "I Will Not Be Your Fool", "Summer Wages"), the blues augmented by horns ("Kansas City", "Statesboro/Churchbell Blues medley", a spectacular "Such A Night", "Send Me To The 'Lectric Chair", a blues take of "What A Wonderful World", "Lost My Driving Wheel"), and bluegrass ("Dark Hollow", "Yankee's Revenge").

I love this guy so much I'm amazed it took me 119 entries on my BARN series to get to him, but I will have more Bromberg to release eventually, I promise!!!

Enjoy!

Scott