My address over there is www.twitter.com/kyrion

John and Kim, originally uploaded by Kyrion.

I really like this one. It was before the music started, in the kitchen.

Hobo Thanksgiving, 2008.

Dobro close-up, originally uploaded by Kyrion.

Andy playing the dobro, Hobo Thanksgiving. Shockenaw Mountain Boys added Adrienne Young for the day out in Ringoes. It rocked.

Todd Sheaffer & Friends - 11/26/2008
Historic Blairstown Theatre,
Blairstown, NJ

Source: Neumann AK40/20 (M/S)>LC3>KM100>Apogee MiniMe>MT
Transfer: CF>SanDisk card reader>USB2.0>HD>(SF7.0,cdWAV)>FLACFrontend
Tape/Transfer by: Smark

Disc 01 - Set I
01 - … Long Walk Hone
02 - Wayfaring Stranger
03 - Banging Out A Melody
04 - Goat
05 - Passing Through
06 - In The Basement
07 - Broken Road

Disc 02 - Set II
01 - … Boulevard of Dreams
02 - If The Wind Blows
03 - The Giving Tree
04 - Said What You Mean
05 - I Only Want
06 - Skinny Man
07 - Pretty Boy Floyd +
08 - Susana Walker
09 - Arms Around The World
Encores:
10 - Trouble +
11 - Grandma’s Apple Dumplings

Notes:
Todd Sheaffer - vocals, guitar
John Skehan - mandolin, bouzouki, piano
Dan Myers - sax, melodica, backing vocals
+ Mark Clifford - banjo

This past weekend saw the yearly gathering of hobos in Stroudsburg, PA, as Railroad Earth pitched its tent in the Sherman Theater for two nights. Since the New Years Eve run of three nights is out in Portland, OR, this year, a lot of folks seemed to be thinking this would be the East Coast NYE celebration. And man, was it ever, even if the recently announced Penn’s Peak show is January 3rd. This was about planting yourselves in one place for a couple days and letting loose.

Friday

We got to Stroudsburg and the Pocono Town Inn (about two blocks from the Sherman) around 4 PM, checked in, and promptly had visitors in our room. PJ from tooboard, Barbara and Carl, and later Michael and Mike H. shared libations with us — we turned the Michaels onto Southern Tier’s Old Man Winter – and then around…oh, 6:30 PM or thereabouts, we headed across the street to Siamsa, an Irish bar conveniently located between the hotel and the theater.

At that point, we ran into, well, just about everyone. Probably thirty to forty hobos were there, all in various states of inebriation, whereupon we joined in. Hugs were given liberally and everyone was in a great mood. Bear in mind, I’d already consumed more than a fair amount of alcohol in a short couple of hours. A couple more hours here and several more drinks and some food found us grabbing our donations for the food drive and heading over to the venue. Life was good — friends and family, and the coming show — and I was starting to really get excited. I’d had a low-level anticipatory buzz since the morning as the coming together of everyone and the band was going to rock. I could feel it in the cool air as we made our way down to the Sherman with Bob and Aline. And maybe Barbara and Carl…it gets fuzzy.

Once inside the Sherman, we got our wristbands, dropped off our cans, and began another round of hugs with Stacy, Gayle, MamaLo and more people than I can recall.  Natural Breakdown, the supporting band, was just wrapping up its set when we made our way into the theater proper, beers in hand. We dropped off our sweaters and scarves in some seats and made a bee-line for the rail once the music stopped. Under Skehan’s side, stage right, where we always setup. We ran into even more people and everyone was in a fantastic mood, ready for a night of magic. The crowd was large, too, I might add — both nights, there were more people at the Sherman than I’ve seen in years prior. And boy, did the band deliver a fine night of music.

Here’s the setlist for the night and this is the link to the tape — excellent job, Jamie!

Railroad Earth
11-28-2008
Sherman Theater
Stroudsburg, PA

Gefell M210> GraceV2> SD722(24/48)

722>soundforge8 (resample, redither, adjust levels)>CDWave (tracking)>
FLACFrontend (level 8 )

Recorded from center of the 7th row

Set 1

01 Came Up Smilin’
02 Cold Water
03 Walk Beside Me
04 Cuckoo’s Medley
05 Crossing The Gap
06 Colorado
07 Been Down This Road

Set 2

08 Little Bit O’ Me
09 Waggin’ the Dog
10 Saddle of the Sun
11 Shockenaw Mountain Breakdown
12 Warhead Boogie –>
13 Seven Story Mountain –>
14 The Wheel –>
15 Seven Story Mountain
16 Right in Tune
17 Bringin’ My Baby Back Home
18 Audience

Encore:

19 Acadian Driftwood

There were a lot of magical moments this night. Came Up Smilin’ is a great opener, in my opinion, as it gets the crowd involved immediately with the chorus. Everything in the first set was spot on, but for me, the highlight was Walk Beside Me and The Cuckoo’s Medley. Grubb’s bass on Walk Beside Me was especially booming, which I always love. It was also a very short set — maybe forty five minutes. Everyone was surprised it ended so quickly.

During the first set break, I went outside and bummed a smoke off someone, whereupon Allan started chasing away a guy trying to sell bootleg Railroad Earth t-shirts to people outside. This guy was a real douchebag and seemed to think people standing around outside were leaving the show and hence fair game, despite a large crowd of us all saying the show was only at the set break. Several of us jumped in saying we worked merch for the band and that he was stealing from them. Allan disappeared in a crowd chasing the guy and then I saw theater security come outside, too, so it appears Allan was successful.

We all filtered back into the theater with plenty of time for some drink refills before the band came out for the second set. Finding my place back at the rail, the second set — which started out with the lovely Little Bit O’ Me became something memorable. After a round of Waggin’ the Dog and Timmy on the electric guitar, we were treated to a great Saddle of the Sun. Something about this song gets me every time I hear it — definitely one of my (many) favorites. A quick Shockenaw Mountain Breakdown, and then the magic kicked in. I’ve gone on before about how this band can so artfully blend bluegrass, rock, jazz, Celtic, psychedelic more into their music, and how they can transport me places.

Well, I’m hear to tell you, my sisters and brothers, that what came next was Magic. Warhead Boogie started out growly, which is always a good sign.  Johnny’s bass was thumping away deeply and I was grooving to it. The jams became so intense that Todd actually never returned to the lyrics he improvises after the first set of breaks. The music was building around the crowd, taking us to those deep and dark places where the band thrives. I then noticed that Andy was swapping out instruments and strapping on his dobro. And with a subtle shift of rhythm thanks to Carey and Johnny, we were ascending the Seven Story Mountain in a seemless transition. After the initial lyrics and the normal instrumental breaks, the band altered the song, not returning to the “Oh Lord…” lyrics. Rather, Johnny started picking out the bass line to The Wheel, and the crowd was roaring. I turned to Kim and said, “I bet they go back to Seven Story after this,” which turned out to be prescient, but first we had the rare thrill of a really fine Wheel. The band was really playing at a high level, weaving their alchemical spell over all of us. As the song wound down, the crowd roared as Timmy began the fiddle line again for Seven Story Mountain, picking up where the band had left off.

Magic, my friends, pure and simple. More than forty minutes passed from the time they started Warhead, until the closing strains of Seven Story faded. It was bliss, and one of the many reasons I follow this band. Was it perfect? No, some of the transitions were iffy, but that’s okay — they didn’t even know they were going to be playing this until a few hours before the show. It was the passion with which they offered up to us this gift of music that made it so memorable. Considering I’d had no small amount of beer, it had to be good for me to remember it so intensely five days later.

The rest of the set was good, and then they hit us again with the encore. I saw Andy had his banjo on and was reaching for his tin whistle. John was on mando, so it wasn’t Hunting Song coming up — it had to be Acadian Driftwood.

It was. The power of the music washed over me as I sang along with hundreds upon hundreds of people, everyone feeling the same thing I was feeling. We were being presented a gift, with this encore to a beautiful night of music. I honestly can’t think of a more perfect song to cap the night we’d experienced.

With that, the show was over. We hung around for a bit, chatting with folks, when John jumped down from the stage and came over to say hi. We chatted for a few minutes, then slowly headed out into the lobby and then the night. Back at the hotel, there was supposed to be a party room, but the day manager forgot to tell the night manager, so we ended up in a hotel room, chatting with folks and drinking until about 3 AM. I will always remember the elevator taking us downstairs for a smoke around 3 AM, and its door opening to reveal Mikey P and J-Ro with a large fresh pizza. It just seemed the perfect image to end the night.

…Saturday will be written about in the next post.

Andy & Todd, originally uploaded by Kyrion.

At the Tabernacle, Sunday, November 23rd, 2008.

IOWA CITY — The ultimate compliment for a jam band is a comparison to the Grateful Dead.

Members of Railroad Earth, a bluegrass-leaning jam band from Stillwater, N.J., are getting used to popping up in the same sentence as Jerry Garcia’s celebrated group.

In 2006, following the release of Railroad Earth’s “Elko” live album, Rolling Stone magazine said the band combines “the genre purity of Garcia’s 1975 mountain-music project, Old and in the Way, with the elastic instrumental alchemy of the Grateful Dead.”

“We’re big fans of the Grateful Dead, and in some ways I think the comparison is justified,” says John Skehan, Railroad Earth’s mandolin player. “The Grateful Dead always had a strange and haunting quality to its music, and I think we have that, too.”