Willy Porter
January 25, 1992
The Cabin - UWEC
Eau Clarie, WI

Source: Audio Technica 831r mics run through a Harman/Kardon CD231 cassette deck onto Maxell XLIIS tapes, without Dolby
Lineage: Cass (0) -> Cass(1) -> CDR -> EAC -> SHN
Taped by: Paul Perrone

The mics were placed approximately 6.5 feet high, in the center of the room, about 20 feet in front of the stage.

Disc 1 (Set 1):
1. Leaving Tomah Home
2. Here We Go Again
3. Draw The Time
4. Superstition
5. Rita
6. Liberal
7. "Cabin" Song
8. Vaya Con Dios/More Of The Same
9. Beggar's Cup
10. Moonbeam
11. Deep Elem Blues

Disc 2 (Set 2):
1. Nobody In My Neighborhood
2. Lima Bean
3. Pee-Wee Herman Blues
4. Cool Water
5. Watercolor
6. Used Car Salesman
7. I Thought That You Thought
8. Vegetable Chaos (bailout)
9. The Trees Have Soul
10. Lines Of Age

* Paul Perrone's Last Show

Band:
Willy Porter: Acoustic Guitar/Vocals
Paul Perrone:  Percussion
Mike Kashou:  Acoustic Bass Guitar

Tiit Raid (Percussion) was a guest for the whole show.

Notes (directly from Paul Perrone):
Subject: Willy Porter Trio, The Cabin, UWEC, Eau Claire, WI, 1-25-92
First, a big 'thank you!' to whoever converted this recording to the digital domain and made it available on etree. It was a nice surprise to find an online show back from the days when I was performing with Willy. Our sound was very acoustic but also bigger than what you'd expect given just a couple-three guys with (mostly) acoustic instruments. Sort of like an 'MTV Unplugged' approach, but before that was around to be compared to  the rock idiom interpreted through the use of more dynamic and 'earthy' instrumentation. Or something like that. Anyhow, Willy went on from here to play solo for awhile and then formed an electric, jam-band type of lineup for the Dog Eared Dream album. Meanwhile, I followed a lifelong dream by moving to Hawaii, where I still reside. Willy and I have kind of lost touch since he got married and his child was born a couple of years ago, but he?s one of the best friends I?ve ever known.


Second, I have a number of comments and corrections pertaining to the.txt file that accompanies the song files. Primary among these is that this is actually an audience, and not a soundboard recording, apparently converted to digital from a second-generation cassette dub of my master tapes. I can confirm that this came from my original recordings as the sound is identical (albeit with a great deal more hiss and distortion), the flips/cuts are in the same place, and the text information closely parallels what's written on my masters (with the exception of few typos; see next paragraph). From my notes, the show was recorded with Audio Technica 831r mics run through a Harman/Kardon CD231 cassette deck onto Maxell XLIIS tapes, without Dolby. The mics were placed approximately 6.5 feet high, in the center of the room, about 20 feet in front of the stage.


The aforementioned typos in the .txt file include "Eau Claire" being mispelled; a miswording of what I believe we called "Pee Wee's Herman Blues" for the few months we played it; and a missing final "t" in the song title, "I Thought That You Thought," which is a tune written by Chuck LeMonds, one of the pillars of Eau Claire's acoustic music scene during the 1980s.


The .txt file also omits that Tiit Raid, a recently retired University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire art professor and percussionist extraordinaire, sat in with us for the entire show (check out his cool vocal effects on "Moonbeam"). The rest of the band includes the standard 1991-92 trio lineup of Willy on acoustic guitars and vocals, myself on percussion, and Mike Kashou on acoustic bass guitar.


This was the final show of a three-night run at UWEC?s fantastic coffeehouse-style performance venue, The Cabin. My first performance with Willy was on this very stage in 1988, during my senior year and Willy?s first post-college year as a fulltime performer. With over 100,000 miles of gigs together after that first night, it only seemed fitting to end this era back where it all began. The audiences were enormous by Cabin standards, with people spilling way back into the hallways outside both entrances. The unidirectional mics only picked up the first few rows, however, and make it sound like a much smaller crowd than was actually there.


Unfortunately, this final show of the run doesn't match the first two in a number of ways. The mix wasn't nearly as good (our usual soundman couldn?t make the last gig), and after a couple of l-o-n-g nights hanging out with old friends at The Joynt, Eau Claire?s best Guinness pub, the band was pretty worn out. Also, the audience was much noisier for the third show (a typical Saturday night crowd), as opposed to the "we came to listen!" audiences that The Cabin is famed for and that attended the first two shows. Between the mix, the semi-obnoxious crowd, and our own exhaustion, this final show strikes me as somewhat sloppy and lackluster. So, if you ever run across recordings of the other two shows (particularly the first one), give?em a listen. But overall, I suppose this performance is a fairly representative sample of Willy's music during the 1988-1992 period. [Note: etree.org is requiring me to give the recording a star-rating in order to post this review, so I guess I'll give it a "3". I'd rate the first night a "5" and the second a "4". Successive alma mater-inspired hangovers can really have a negative impact on one's performance...]


Thanks to a friend in Minneapolis, I do have three other songs from the first two nights converted to digital files from my master tapes, and a ton of other master cassettes to share if I ever figure out how and find the time to do analog-to-digital conversions. I think I even have some jpeg images from this last run of shows. Feel free to contact me at perrone@hawaii.rr.com if you have any suggestions or questions.


Aloha,


Paul Perrone
Honolulu, Hawaii
November 7, 2002 