Tangleweed had a chance to record a tune on an early 20th century Edison wax cylinder recording rig. Martin Fisher, audio archivist at Middle Tennessee State University, set up the acoustic recording studio at last week’s Folk Alliance conference in Memphis

This being a pre-electric recording studio, the band was gathered around a single horn, which was connected directly to a lathe that etched the sounds into a blank wax cylinder. Each cylinder blank could hold two minutes, so we had to tweak the arrangement and push the tempo a bit to get it in under the maximum time. We recorded two takes. It’s all live to mono, so there’s no ‘fixing in the mix’, as it were.

The tune is a Tangleweed medley called ‘The Logan Square Dance’.

We will have audio of the cylinder itself soon.

One of Tangleweed’s sets at the 2010 Folk Alliance  Conference in Memphis is available for download. One of our first sets was at the Steam Powered Preservation Society, who had a multi-mic recording setup for capturing the performances.

You can download it here as a zip file:

http://thespps.org/mp3s/partners/sppsshowcases/fa2010/mp3/tangleweed2010-02-18.mp3f.zip

If you’re attending the 2010 Folk Alliance conference in Memphis, please take a moment to visit us during one of our showcase sets. Tangleweed will be an official Performance Alley Showcase Artist at this year’s conference. We will also be performing a number of private showcases during the conference.

Our official showcase is scheduled for Friday, 7:30PM in the Chattanooga room.

Thursday:
10:30PM First Timers Showcase     Rm Hootenanny Hall
11:15PM Steam Powered Prsv. Soc   Rm 1721                 
11:45PM Concerts in your home     Rm 1926
 1:00AM Pie-Hole                  Rm 1706

Friday:
 2:30PM LilFest II                Rm 1724
 7:30PM Performance Alley         Rm Chattanooga
 1:45AM LilFest II                Rm 1724

Saturday:
 2:00PM LilFest II                Rm 1724
11:00PM Omega Delta Psi           Rm 1709
12:45AM LilFest II                Rm 1724

CDBaby has just announced that they will contribute $1 to Haitian earthquake relief for each CD or album download sold, starting Monday, January 25, and continuing through Monday, February 8. We have always sold our CDs on CDBaby, and have nothing but good things to say about them as a company. From the announcement they sent artists today:

The earthquake and its aftermath in Haiti have touched all of our lives. Many in the CD Baby family have already contributed as individuals, but we wanted to do more to help the victims of the horrible earthquake tragedy. Starting on Monday, January 25th and continuing for two weeks, we will donate $1 of our cut from every CD sale through our website, and $1 from every download sale over $8.99 on our site, to the American Red Cross and to Mercy Corps, a Portland-based relief organization with a large presence in Haiti. With your help, we hope to raise tens of thousands of dollars.

This is a repost of a post I wrote three years ago. Enjoy, while I take the rest of the day off.

Santa is Real, the Christmas record my old band the Kennett Brothers put together, is long out-of-print, and, thanks to the efforts of obsessive Wilco completists, prohibitively expensive on the second-hand market. In the spirit of the season, I’m posting an MP3 of one of the tracks, our cover of the Louvin Brothers song ‘A Shutin at Christmas‘.

(download link below the jump)

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We look forward to playing the Bucktown Apple Pie Contest every October. In anticipation of this year’s contest, we offer this footage of last year’s event, with some fine Tangleweed and pie-related footage.

Scott was a finalist the first year of the contest. Since then, though, the band members have only baked loser pies, bringing shame upon us all. For information on this year’s Apple Pie Contest, visit BucktownApplePieContest.com.

Thursday night’s (8/20/2009) pig roast is sold out. If you were unable to get tickets, why not come see us Friday night at The Hideout. Three bands: Tangleweed, Majors Junction, and the Lawrence Peters Outfit. We play first, so come early. Eight bucks at the door. Come early–we play first.

This is the maiden voyage of our version of the warhorse fiddle tune Cherokee Shuffle, from last week’s show at Fitzgerald’s in Berwyn. You can download the whole show at Archive.org.

We tried to mix up the textures and dynamics to keep it interesting. We also play the ‘A’ strain as a round at the end.

Thanks to Joe Steffen for recording the show and making it available on the interwebs.