Go To Blazes …and other crimes

Out now.

First time on vinyl!
Limited to 500 copies!
All multicolored!
All handnumbered!

Originally released in 1995 as Mailorder Only CD on Glitterhouse Records, this album is a fan favorite. Recorded in two days live at Coyote Records and produced by Eric “Roscoe” Ambel, the Philly 4-piece played a few of their own songs as well as tunes by Gordon Lightfoot, Kinky Friedman, Lou Reed, Lee Hazlewood, Gene Clark, Cary Hudson, Hank Williams and others. All in a semi-acoustic mode.

Side A.
1. Got It Made (Warren/Heyman) 3:36
2. OD’d In Denver (Hank Williams) 3:00
3. Stone Mountain (Bruce Langfeld) 4:46
4. Waste Of Time (Warren/Heyman) 2:34
5. Out On The Side (Gene Clark) 4:02
6. Love And Other Crimes (Lee Hazlewood) 1:15
7. She Comes Running (Lee Hazlewood) 2:04
Total time: 21:20

Side B.
1. Sold American (Kinky Friedman) 3:29
2. Underneath The Bottle (Lou Reed) 2:19
3. Jimmy Carter (Cary Hudson) 3:49
4. Casa Diablo (Warren) 1:54
5. The Watchman’s Gone (Gorden Lightfoot) 4:56
6. Cathouse (Warren) 4:33
Total time: 22:01

“After years of hard rocking, the band finally unplugged in 1995 with …And Other Crimes, for the German Glitterhouse label. This live-in-the-studio date is filled with smarter-than-bar-band covers, each one given a half-reverent, half-sneering spin. And if rollicking, slide-guitar-tinged treatments of Gene Clark’s Out on the Side or Kinky Friedman’s Sold American aren’t twisted enough, check the downwardly mobile originals Got It Made and Waste of Time to hear just how closely the band’s sense of rebellion mirrors that of anti-heroes Hank Williams Jr. and Lee Hazlewood.”
(Tom Moon) (Rolling Stone/NY Times critic)

Linernotes:

By the time we got around to making “and other crimes” we were in our 8th year as a band, on our 3rd bass player, and finally had a deal with a decent sized independent label, that had more than 2 employees and semblance of an infrastructure. We had released our 3rd full length record, “Anytime, Anywhere” in late 1994, toured the country from coast to coast, played at SXSW, for the second time, securing a European record deal. We were as tight as we had ever been as a band. Our new German friends at Glitterhouse asked us to make a record for their highly regarded mail order only catalog. Since we had just put out a record, we did not have a ton of original material lying around and we kind of wondered how to go about things. (Tom Heyman)

With the tiny budget offered by the label we could barely afford to buy the 2” multi-track tape to record 13 songs let alone record and mix in the professional recording environment we’d gotten used to. My suggestion was to record “Live To 2 Track”. That means that everything has to go down at once. All the playing, the singing even the mixing would be done live to a stereo tape. No editing, no punching in, no overdubs. This method of recording was pretty much abandoned as soon multi-track options were available.

Go To Blazes was in a position to be able to do this as they were a very tight band and had a great singer in Ted Warren and bass player Ted Pappadopoulos was also a very good harmony singer. (Eric “Roscoe” Ambel)

We came from a particularly proud, bar band tradition, of having a very deep quiver of somewhat obscure cover songs that we could draw from (having come up doing 3 set nights) which is how Gene Clark, and Lou Reed wind up sharing space with Hank Jr and Lee Hazlewood, and Gordon Lightfoot bumps up against Kinky Friedman. (TH)

On their previous record we’d used some additional players so the idea was to have those same players at Coyote to record ‘live in the studio’ with the band. Jim Duffy played organ and did some percussion, Joe Flood played a bunch of instruments including violin, mandolin and 12 String acoustic guitar. (ERA)

We were casual friends with the Mississippi band Blue Mountain (Roscoe being the connection there) and we loved their tune Jimmy Carter, and playing it as a ballad, was the only was we could see to put our own stamp on it. (TH)

We worked out the arrangements musically and Coyote Studios engineer Albert Caiati and I worked out the sounds in the control room. I doing moves on the vocals and the solos live as the songs were performed and recorded. For the Blue Mountain song “Jimmy Carter” I wanted to play the organ so Albert had to cover the mix for that one. Compared to multi-tracking with all the editing capabilities and mixing options, it really was a daunting task to get everything right on the fly, but everyone in the studio was excited about it and the results were both immediate and lasting. (ERA)

Bruce Langfeld, from the Philadelphia band Bag of Hammers was a very close associate of GTB. We were unabashed fans of his incisive, impressionistic songwriting as well as his slightly wild, Neil Young, crossed with Pete Townsend guitar playing. His song “Stone Mountain” seems more deeply prescient than ever given what is currently going on in the US at the time of this writing. Bruce died, unexpectedly in 2007, and this reissue is dedicated to his memory. (TH)