Yucca Flats

Yucca Flats, 'Garden of Weeds' featured the talents of Rich Wilkins (Electric and Acoustic Guitar),  Scott Thornton (Upright Bass, and Trumpet), Eric Helmuth (Drums), and myself (Acoustic Guitar, Harmonica, Lead Vocals, Songwriting). 

This album was recorded and released in 2006 under the 'Wildchild' sub-label of Mapleshade Records, owned and operated by Pierre Sprey.  Pierre Sprey, was  an American defense analyst who worked with the Pentagon, and helped design the F-16 and A-10 fighter jets.  Later, he started Mapleshade Records , which was devoted to producing high-quality live recordings. 

The recording sessions were done with the band playing  in one room, in single takes, with no tracking or overdubbing.   No mixing boards, EQ, or after-effects were used in these recordings.  The mix and sound quality was tempered during the live sessions, through careful positioning of the instruments, precise placement of customized microphones, and  acoustic manipulation of the environment through natural sound absorption and reflection techniques.  Having the honor of watching Pierre Sprey run a  recording session was a master class in physics and  acoustic design, and an experience I will never forget.

The result was an excellently recorded live album-  that captured the musicianship and energy and of the band's shows.

The track: 'Katie H.' refers to Katie Holmes (who was a young upcoming actress when it was written). Some people have asked if it was about Katherine Hepburn. I guess that works too.  'Alter of Broken Dreams' is about open mic night. 'Help God See' was inspired by graffiti that was sprawled across an overpass along the West Side Highway in NYC.  

These versions of Yucca Flats  songs were recorded by the band in 2005.  They featured  Rich Wilkins (Electric and Acoustic Guitar),  Scott Thornton (Upright Bass, and Trumpet), Eric Helmuth (Drums), and myself (Acoustic Guitar, Lead Vocals, Songwriting).   I no longer had a copy of this. My brother-in-law literally found this mixed in  with some other old CD's  in his car, and  I was very happy to have it, because I thought these recordings were lost forever.  This CD was used as a demo that we sent to 'Mapleshade Records', which led to our future album 'Garden of Weeds' (see above).

The songs were recorded in 2-3 sessions at a  studio that Eric Helmuth owned and operated in Port Chester, NY.   We went on to re-record most of these tracks live in 'Garden of Weeds', but I think this is still a nice studio version of what the band sounded like at that time.  There is one song, 'Something About Me' which never made it onto either one of our earlier or later CD's.  However, that  song was included in our live set whenever we performed- so it was nice to find it here.   

If you listen closely to 'Light Blue', you can hear my Rat Terrier, Ripley, barking over the 'Hey's at the end.  I remember that he was very naughty that day,  and chewed up a French Horn score  that Scott Thornton had in his bag for an orchestra that was playing with at the time. 

Yucca Flat's first album: "A Nice Place to Visit"  was recorded in 1997 with Rich Wilkins (Electric and Acoustic guitar), Eric Helmuth (drums, percussion keyboard, samples), myself (on Acoustic Guitar, lead and background vocals, percussion, keyboards, harmonica, songwriting), and John Deila (upright bass), who played beautifully on this album, but quit the band about a year later and was replaced by Scott Thornton.

At the time, Rich and Eric worked at a fully professional studio that specialized in recording  music for Karaoke machines.  The studio was fully equipped with state-of-the-art professional recording equipment (digital reel-to-reel recorders, with a Nieve flying fader board) and vintage instruments (there was a Hammond organ with leslie speakers there).  Best of all, it was only in operation from 9-5 on weekdays.  So, overnights and weekends, it was completely at our disposal.  We were a very young band, who got to spend  many long days and all-nighters getting to experiment in a multi-million dollar studio for free with no one watching.  Rich, Eric and I produced engineered and mixed the album. Eric, our drummer, was teaching at the SUNY Purchase music department, so we were able to call in some favors for the horn parts on 'Bella Bella', and the weird Theremin part on 'Lizard Man'.

A few songs on the album were re-recorded later with Mapleshade Records (above), but many of the tunes stayed in our set several years after this C.D. was recorded.  Playing this back now, it feels as young as we were then, perhaps a bit overindulgent, and maybe a little trippy and experimental at times- but  I think it still ended up being a fun record to listen to.