Here’s another early Tangleweed clip, from our days of slogging through our Sunday sets at the Metropolis Coffee House in Chicago back in the halcyon days of 2004.

The song is ‘Spoonful’, about a month before we recorded it for our debut CD. We still hadn’t figured out what to do with it — it’s zipping along at about 142 beats a minute, while we pass around solos and sing the chorus until we meander to an ending. The album version is about 108 beats a minute, and, even by our meager standards back then, tightly arranged by comparison.

We hadn’t yet hooked on to the unison riff (borrowed from the Texas fiddle tune version of ‘Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down’) that we used for the intro and instrumental break. Slowing the tempo down–way down–was Ryan’s idea, and it turned out to have been a good one.

For more about our early Sunday shows, and another clip from the same set, see my previous post.

Download: tangleweed-just_a_spoonful_metropolis_10_10_04 (MP3)

Four years ago this month, Tangleweed got our start at a little coffee shop way up in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. In between blasts of steam from the espresso machine, we would play two sets each Sunday to largely disinterested onlookers who would occasionally look up from their Powerbooks to ask us if we were through yet.

We did the gigs without mics or amplification of any kind. We would just shout over the din when we had to sing, and beat our instruments a little harder when we had to take a solo. This set us up well for our first CD, which we recorded live to two-track tape using three microphones and vintage gear. For worse or worser, that’s what we sounded like at the time. This was recorded a little over a month before we recorded Just a Spoonful.

For reasons known only to himself, Scott taped a lot of these early shows for posterity. Many of the early shows are agony to listen to, but there were occasional bursts of competence, such as this here. The tune is the Earl Scruggs classic ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’, with a wee bit of an insert borrowed from John Williams. We’re joined by our pal, the Mayor of Bucktown, some dude whose name escapes me on harmonica for this one.

If’n you feel like downloading it, you can fetch the file here: MP3 Download

We’ve been having a good time playing at the Metroplis on Sundays. It’s a laid-back family-run place with friendly staff. We play every Sunday from 6-8PM.

We’ve got some cool new tunes and arrangements that we’re anxious to play. Come on by this Sunday and stay for a while.