released January 1, 2010

Notes on a Bottle -
I started singing (legally) in cocktail lounges, bars, clubs and the occaisional them park in July of 1967 and continued on a more or less regular basis until the early months of 1985, when I finally quit beating the dead horse. It had been an interesting cavalcade of dives and fancy dinner houses, local bars and ostentatious imitation riverboats, Irish and Scottish pubs, a strip club, a lesbian bar, and cable TV at its most primitive. The most secure gigs were with chains of dinner houses with lounges. There were several of these, some of them with as many as fifty locations. It was like vaudeville - you got on a circuit and could work that chain for years, moving from place to place.

I worked primarily with what would today be termed "cover bands" - we played songs written and popularized by other people. This was not a sin at the time. Even big name club acts relied on someone else's music: that was the only way to get through a five hour a night gig without repeating numbers. And besides, no lounge audience really gave a rat's ass about original songs, except in very small doses. Club owners and managers would say things like "knock off the unknown crap" and "I'm not gonna tell you again, knock off the unknown crap". If you wanted to survive on the circuits, you followed the old boss's orders and Proud Mary-ed and Sweet Carolined the audiences to death! To keep from going nuts, and to subtly annoy management, I took to writing new lyrics for old songs- not all of the lyrics, but a line here or a verse there, just enough to confuse the more astute audience members. We loved to see that perplexed look in their eyes. I also wrote extra verses for songs that were too short, e.g. Solitary Man and Delta Dawn. One of the highlights of my band years was walking into a club one night and hearing the group do my lyrics for Solitary Man.

We did do some original stuff - usually two songs a night. We'd do more if we were pushing a 45 rpm, which we did on a couple of occasions. If I'd come up with something really worthwhile, it would stay in our reperatory for six months or so, although "Sweet Little Baby" (which was only marginally by me) managed to hang on for more than two years!

- Darrell Baker, Portland, Oregon, 2009

The Band -
In a perfect universe, I would have loved to be able to record each of these songs with the bands for which they were originally written. However, my amazing erstwhile partners are long-scattered; in fact, two key players are no longer among the living. I had the amazing good luck (with a little help from Craigslist) to encounter a group of 20-something musical savants at Sound Ghost Studios, and they have provided me with a wealth of instrumental, vocal, and engineering experience far beyond my wildest dreams. Mike, Ben and Jon - Thanks!!!


Darrell Baker: vocals
Michael Alston: steel guitar, Korg MS2000, synthesizer, backup vocals
Ben Michel: guitar, bass guitar, banjo, keyboards, Jew's harp, Mellotron, glockenspiel, tubular bells, tambourine, vibraphone, drums, shakers, sistrum, backup vocals
Jonathan Moore: guitar, drums, glockenspiel, Mellotron, vibraphone, sleigh bells, keyboards, tubular bells, shakers, backup vocals
Wes Luttrell: horns

Songs 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 14, 16 produced by Ben Michel
Songs 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 13, 15 produced by Jonathan Moore
Recording engineer: Michael Alston

All songs (except bonus tracks) recorded 7/09 - 11/09 at Sound Ghost Studios. www.soundghoststudios.com

Album graphic design by Darcy Dziedzic at Avalon Arts Studio