Blues Traveler
Barnard Springfest
New York, NY
1989-04-14

Source:   Nak CM-100 ("flat") + SBD (see notes) > D5 by Luke McCormick
Transfer: MC (XLIIS-90) > Nak Dragon > Tascam DA-3000 (DSF 1-bit/5.6 MHz) > Tascam HRE > PCM @ 2496
Master:   Wavelab 11 (split tracks, correct phase shift, reimage to stereo, tracking, DDI Codec (Dolby B @ -29.6 dBFS), levels / Ozone Vintage Limiter, resample, Lin dither) > FLAC 1644

Thanks to Luke McCormick for taping and loaning his cassette to be digitized

Set I
01. Set I intro
02. Rock Me Baby
03. Out Of My Hands * >
04. Should I Stay Or Should I Go
05. banter
06. 100 Years *
07. Alone
08. Set I outro

Set II
09. Cleopatra's Cat #$% >
10. Gotta Get Mean $% >
11. Gloria $% >
12. Gotta Get Mean $%
13. But Anyway $%
14. Hard To Exist $%
15. stage announcement
16. Mother Funker

* with Roger Fox on flute
# with Chris Barron (Spin Doctors) on vocals
$ with Avram Lavinsky (Dreamspeak) on keys
% with Gordon Clay (Dreamspeak; Groove Collective) on percussion

These files are a direct transfer from the master cassette made by Luke McCormick at Barnard Springfest on Friday, April 14, 1989.  This is a significant improvement over SHNID # 13921, which is a C(2) version of the same recording.

The tape captures Blues Traveler as its career was taking off.  The band had been playing for a while with members of Dreamspeak and the Spin Doctors at a Columbia fraternity, Delta Phi, and was playing local clubs like Nightingales, Mondo Perso, 712 Club, and Wetlands (opened February 1989), as well as free concerts in Prospect Park and at local colleges (RealityFest at SUNY Albany was the following day, the 15th).

The taper, a member of the Phi and friend of the band, decided to "matrix" the SBD and AUD feeds by recording each to a separate channels, but this resulted in a 12 ms delay between channels.  This delay is audible and present in all other circulating recordings.  Here, the delay has been removed and each mono feed mixed to stereo.  (From the start through Rock Me Baby, the SBD feed was barely present and thus the first two tracks are mostly AUD.)

The master cassette is marked 04/13, which is incorrect.  All circulating copies come from it and some are also misdated as April 13, which some folks stubbornly cling to.  The correct date is April 14, because...

1) April 14 is confirmed by the taper here: https://web.archive.org/web/19990224185129/http://www.sgi.net/bluestraveler/gig.html

2) The date is confirmed in the Columbia Spectator.  See the article accompanying these files.

3) Barnard and Columbia had classes on Thursday, and the college administration would never have allowed a rock concert on Lehman Lawn while classes were in session.

4) Dreamspeak, which also played, dates the performance as April 14, and provides photographs:  https://www.dreamspeak.com/gig/1989-barnard-springfest-wjohn-popper

This is a significant improvement over existing sources and sounds great.  Play it loud!

-- mhg :: 2022-10-15

