I engineered this show at the Klondike Cafe in Boone, NC on February 1st, 1995. It was recorded to both dat and cassette during the show. Unfortunately, I only have the cassettes to work from. There are a couple of DATS of this show floating around out there somewhere. I think I gave the original to one of the guys in/with the band. There were a couple of guys that patched off the board to dat. This tape of the show has survived 12 years with 3 moves and spending time degrading in my closet. I forgot I had the tapes. It must be some kind of fate from the Salmon gods as I cannot find any other recordings I made from the Klondike Cafe.

I have fond memories of the Klondike as I ran sound for many bands over a 2 year period. The owner of the Klondike at the time (Steve Caparosi) knew these guys from partying with them in Colorado from my recolection. They played at this very small bar as a favor. We got a lot of up and coming jam bands at the Klondike during this period. I became an instant LOS-er convert after this show. A fun bunch of guys. I knew then this group of guys had a good thing going on. I'm sorry to hear about Mark passing on. Too bad I had to go to my day job the next morning or I would have spent an all nighter waking and baking with them. They went on to the Cat's Cradle the next evening in Carboro, NC.

Off the top of my head:

The bar was small. I think a capacity of around 50-100 people would fill it up. There were probably 400 or so people inside and outside that night as the band was smoking in more ways than one :) I believe the fire marshall came by eventually and warned the owner not to let any more people in the building. It was a cold and rainy/icy Wednesday night in the mountains of Boone, NC. A good mix of folks in the crowd. Lot's of dancing, beer drinking, and love that night. An overall crazy FESTIVAL kind of night.

This was a tough bar to run sound since the interior was wooden, but with the right bands the sound was beautiful. LOS was one of those bands. The drums and bass were hard to control with most bands. Thank goodness "Woo" actually listened to his fellow musicians and did not try to overpower them. The drums were typically loud enough in the room without mics. I believe the bass was patched directly into the board and is not as prevelant in the mix as I would like.

I had "too much fun" running sound for this band and we all had fun with the sound effects in "Ask the Fish". Man, these guys had a butt-load of instruments for me to keep up with. Some didn't get added into the mix - oops. It didn't effect the room mix, but you will not hear some instruments in the board mix. It was very cozy to see the band squezed on stage between their instruments and the very eclectic crowd. Lots of folks "on the bridge" that night.

It was funny to me at the time the band didn't know my name and would ask the owner who stood with me at the board (best seat in the house) to turn something up in the monitors. Steve got that "oh crap" what do I do look in his eyes, I just pointed to the button for him to turn up and he smiled and gave a thumbs up to the band. Nothing like letting the boss feel like he accomplished something - TOAST :) I miss you and the good times Steve.

I think the band just heard the word "meatskin" for the first time as they used it throughout the night in their songs and banter. I'm not sure they knew what it meant, but it is a funny word. By the way, meatskin historically was an ol' timey slang for a woman on the side. I believe the band used it in the context of it being a male appendage :)

The mics used for the show were sure sm57's on the instruments and sure sm58's on the vocals. Not the greatest sounding mics, but are indestructible and give an honest sound. AKD Kick Drum Mic, and mini clip on AKG C418 mics for the rest of the drum kit. All were run though a TASCAM M1600 24track / 8 bus studio board (contrary to popular belief it's an awsome board for running live).

We had a TASCAM DAT studio Deck and a TASCAM studio Cassette Deck that we recorded most shows on. All channels were mixed down to one of the board's busses and then sent to the recording decks. I would have gotten a better sound normally except there was no sound check and levels were adjusted on the fly. The wooden room gave a very "live" sound. You will see what I mean when you hear the show. There were no post effects used when I transferred from analogue to digital. This is a very in your face mix and show. The tascam studio board has a crystal clear sound and the sound quality of the Klondike Cafe was great.

Once in a while I would take off to use the bathroom or get a beer or something :) and then let someone stand behind the board while I did my thing. A couple of guitars solos didn't get punched in and I think they may have juked the levels up on the output to the decks decks because the show ran hot and has analogue distortion in areas which is mostly recognizable in the vocal sections. Forgive me, lot's of beer flowing through me that night. The Zeitgeist of 1995, LOS, and the klondike. The distortion is not too annoying - that is what I love about analogue distortion - it's warm instead of the annoying clipping with digital recordings.

The cassettes were in bad shape. You get the typical abrupt stop and starts of songs due to tape flip, a few stop and starts, tape hiss. I could have easily enough removed the hiss, but I would rather keep the sonic quality. If you want to remove the hiss go for it. You can notch out @ 7900 hz. There is also noticible dropout in certain areas. I've worked 20 hrs on this show cleaning up these tapes as much as I could on post production. If someone has the Stereo DAT please drop me a line. Overall, the show is in tact.


source info:

All instruments mic'ed or ran live through a Studio Tascam M1600 24 track SBD -> Tascam 112MKIII Recording Cassette Deck -> Recorded on Maxell XLII Chrome Cassettes.


Transfer:

Tascam 112MKII Deck -> Dumped into SoundForge 8.0 recorded @ 48,000 Hz, 24 bit -> BBE Mastering to clean up the mudiness -> 2db eq boost on bottom end ending at 250hz -> A smidgen of L3 Ultramaximizer very, very, very lightly used just enough to knock off some over the top vocals and mandolin levels with no dither or noise shaping conversion used (I don't like the artifacts that either leaves) -> CD WAV Editor to split tracs and save in various formats.


Joe Cox
joe@mullismelange.com


This Show ROCKS!!!

FESTIVAL!!!



**Disk 1**

Set I

01 Eclipse
02 Big Bamboo
03 Hey Joe
04 Tu N'as Pas Aller
05 4:20 Polka
06 Sneakin' Chickens
07 Paint It Black
08 Iron City Beer
09 Gone So Long
10 Flying Cloud Cotillion
11 Zombie Jamboree (tape flip, first part of song cut off)
12 Voodoo Queen Marie
13 Valley Of The Full Moon
14 Danger Man
15 Madame Rosin
16 White Freightliner Blues

**Disk 2**

Set II

01 Intro (Cajun Rap / Put Your Meatskin On)
02 Boo Boo **(recording was accidently stopped and started again)
03 Ask The Fish
04 Ain't Gonna Work
05 Boogie
06 Blue Night
07 Rueben's Train
08 Jokester
09 Sittin' On Top Of The World
10 Big Chief **(tape flip, beginning of song has tape drop out)
11 The Shit Rag / We're Fucked Up
12 Kolinda

**Disk 3**

01 Stop All Your Worryin
02 Hot Corn Cold Corn
03 Wheel Hoss
04 Cash On The Barrelhead
05 6 Days On The Road
06 The Bridge (later named "This Is The Time")
07 Hot Burrito Breakdown
08 Bosco Stumble
09 Rise Up - Wake And Bake (tape stops and starts)


Musicians:

Drew Emmitt (Fiddle, Guitar, Mandolin, Vocals)
Vince Herman (Guitar,Vocals, Voices, Rubboard)
Tye North (Bass, 5-string Bass)
Mark Vann (Banjo, Vocals, Electric Banjo)
Michael Wooten (Drums, Percussion)

