String Cheese Incident with Peter Rowan
Austin Stage, Merlefest, Wilkesboro, NC
April 28, 2000
Source: DSBD (except first 3:45 of No Woman No Cry from Schoeps MK-4-> Reutelhuber-> SBM-1)
Transfer: Sony D8-> Delta Dio 24/96 via coax-> Soundforge 4.5 (resampled to 44.1khz)->
CDWave for track splits-> mkwACT for shnning
Transferred By: Jim Pollock (jpollock@sc.rr.com)
Disc One:
01. St. Thomas Soundcheck-> Introduction
02. Smile
03. Shenandoah Breakdown*
04. High Lonesome Sound*#
05. Walls of Time*#
06. Pullin' the Devil By the Tail*#
07. The Hobo Song*#
08. Big Mon*#
09. Dawn of Creation#
Disc Two:
01. Sweet Melinda#->
02. Midnight Moonlight*#
Encore:
03. No Woman No Cry*#
* with Billy Constable on banjo
# with Peter Rowan on guitar and vocals
A little history (for those who care):
This set was the third of three that SCI played at their first (and only to date) Merlefest.
It was played at about 5PM and was the last show on the Austin Stage for the day. Because
of this, SCI was allowed to play pretty much as long as they wanted. Rather than an hour,
they went for about 90 minutes with an encore. Unfortunately, the encore was not expected
by the maker of this DSBD as the first 3 minutes or so are missing (and have been patched
with the above mentioned source in Soundforge 4.5 using a nice crossfade).
This DSBD surfaced a little while back. Merlefest is a notoriously non-taping festival, to
the extent that when JonO extended a patch at the Main Stage on 4/27, festival authorities
made him pull it back. Unfortunately, this one is not as nice as the Sam Bush set earlier
in the day, presumably because of a lower quality board being used on this stage. A check
of the waveforms shows that there is a fair amount of clipping, even though the levels are
modest. Still, a good sounding recording. MUCH better than the audience recordings from
this stage (as evidenced from the patched portion).
The main reason for the disappointing audience tapes was the PA. For the first three tunes,
the speaker stacks were covered with tarps to prevent them from getting soaked in the rain
that had occured the better part of the day (and the night before). After a while, JonO and
company actually climbed on ladders to remove the speakers, making the remainder of the
show sound MUCH better. Luckily, this is not apparent on the DSBD (but is a fun tidbit of
info to pass along :^).
Enjoy!
Jimbo