Big Mon | 1999-10-12 | Yonder Mountain String Band

2:38:12
Rating:
10.00 / 2 ratings
Taper:
Tom Reid
Transferrer:
Pastor Tim
SHNID:
ymsb1999-10-12.flac16
Source:
Audio Technica AT-851 mics (hypercardioid) > Sony SBM-1 > D8
Lineage:
DATm > Tascam DA-20mkII > Audiophile 2496/HD > Sound Forge 6.0 (edits, fades, level adjusts, norm'd to -16dB) > CD Wave Editor (track splits) > flac frontend
Taper Notes:
View Notes* unplugged and offstage 
Scheduled to open for Smokin'Grass.  When they didn't show up, YMSB played non-stop for about 2.5 hours. 

There was a DAT tape change between "Keep On Going" & "Blue Moon of KY," but no music was lost.

"Just say no to crack." 
              -- Jeff, on the intermittent PA problems

SUPPORT THESE FINE MUSICIANS BY GOING OUT & BUYING A FEW OF THEIR CD'S!  It's the least you can do for the people who support your taping & trading habits.  Besides, all their releases ROCK!   ; ^{ ) } =>+
http://www.yondermountain.com

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THE STORY BEHIND THE TAPE
Tom Reid writes of the night:
     Wilbert's used to be the best club in Cleveland.  It was an odd little blues joint squeezed between the old bricks of a narrow factory basement atop the hill leading into the Flats, with exactly three tables facing the front of the stage.  Along with weekly gigs by Robert Lockwood Jr. (Robert Johnson's stepson and Cleveland's pipeline to the delta), bluegrass and jambands would periodically turn up.  Zero played a legendary show in the room, and the Austin Lounge Lizards twice displayed their full comic genius there.  But sometime last summer promoter Mike Miller ran afoul of the landlord in a dispute about whether he needed to pay the rent for several consecutive months and, just in time to escape eviction, Miller moved the operation to a more spacious room on the third floor of a trendy brewpub across from the baseball diamond.  
     One of the first acts he booked there was Smokin' Grass.  But they didn't show up.
     I think the opener was given a choice of whether to play their hour for the sparse crowd.  Some outfit called the Yonder Mountain String Band.  Never heard of 'em, but with a name like that they've gotta be good, right?  The very title seemed to imply both a sense of humor about, and a healthy respect for, traditional hillbilly music of the Appalachians.  A pretty apt moniker, as it turned out.
     They played.  Oh, how they played!  
     Non-stop for nearly three hours they laid it out for about fifty of us gathered around.  YMSB showed themselves to be first and foremost a bluegrass band, pure as a mountain stream and steeped in tradition without so much as an electric bass.  But they jam pretty hard.  Most bluegrass bands don't play 'Little Maggie' for 20 minutes or bop through a Peter Tosh number in the middle of one of their own.  Or cover an Ozzy Osborne song at all.  The group played the last half-hour off-stage amidst the tables without amplification "to let you hear what the music is supposed to sound like."  We came home and listened to the tapes for days, trying to get a grip on this curious new and different sound that yet somehow harkened back to something old and familiar.

Tom's final note to tapers:
     Always tape a band if they'll let you, even if you've never heard of them, because they might be brilliant like these guys.

See Tom's complete Jambands.com review at:
http://www.jambands.com/apr00/monthly/cdreviews.html#cd13

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"Thank you for taping tonight.  It means so much to have folks come to these shows and tape this stuff.  It's like the biggest flattery... it just means a lot.  It's very neat.  I have a very young strong childhood connection with seeing a sea-full of tape-stands at many, many, many, many  Grateful Dead shows.  So, to think that someone would actually come and tape our music is very, very flattering... a great compliment to give to any group of musicians.  So spread it around!"
                        -- Jeff Austin, during the off-stage portion

HUG YOUR LOCAL TAPER!!!
(Tom, thanks for your great patience in loaning these masters...)

"Ah never mind, just erase that part..."  (chuckle...)