Mark Nowlin's video: The Gland Rovers - Ledge of Love ft The Keltones

Ledge Of Love: By far the most supportive person of my songwriting hobby has been my brother, Michael. He glommed onto the original, feedback-laden Fostex recording of this song that I made on Labor Day Weekend 1987, and decided that his band, The Keltones, should restyle it with a traditional Celtic arrangement (and some killer tremolo guitar, as well) and record it professionally. Thus commenced something of a journey that almost never ended and possibly broke up The Keltones. I traveled to the U.P. and recorded the basic tracks in a studio, including my bass, Michael’s guitar, and I can’t remember who on drums. I also recorded a scratch vocal which was agreed by all present to be replaced by a better one by a better singer at a later date. But whose? Michael tried two sets of female singers. His vocal coaching instructions to them were something like “long and sweet and slow and sad.” My future wife even recorded a version for consideration. The Keltones’ Steve Sleight played fiddle and Tim Clancy the concertina. Michael also overdubbed the drums I think two or three times with different drummers, who were put in the awkward position of having to play in sync to the existing tracks. Jim Simmons, whose studio we were using, sneaked an overdub of tremolo guitar over Michael’s tremolo guitar, inciting Michael. Michael’s obsession with the track was beginning to alienate the other members of the band. I think the entire project lasted maybe three years. In the end, Michael and the other Keltones decided that my lead vocal laid down at the very outset of the ordeal was the best, and so that’s the one they released on their last CD, “Ledge Of Love.” Without their permission, I am including it on this collection. Instead of being possibly the weakest track on The Keltones’ CD, it might be the strongest on The Gland Rovers’. Composed: Summer 1987. Recorded: circa 1994-1997, Marquette, MI ----- The Gland Rovers - For Collectors Only Liner Notes The songs in this volume all were recorded on a Fostex X-15 four-track multitrack cassette deck between 1990 and 2002. The bulk, however, were recorded between early 1993 and early 1996, a period of substantive personal upheaval and loss for The Gland Rovers. This three-year period saw a marriage end, one serious, live-in relationship dissolve, and my mother die. The material was recorded in five different locales, three of which were my homes over this period. Needless to say, the personal turmoil and coming to grips with mid-life changes are central themes in nearly all of the original songs. In the early 2010s, I decided to transfer the analog cassette master tapes containing these songs to a digital format using Audacity. I transcribed each of the four tracks in each master sources separately, and then manually synched the audio tracks together. I cleaned up some tape hiss and tried carefully to overcome areas of degradation of the source material. My guiding principle when starting out was to stay true to the intentions of the original production, while taking only prudent liberties to use the newer digital technology to overcome certain technical limitations of the original four-track cassette format. As such, throughout the album there are instrumental tracks in some songs that are doubled and slightly delayed, to provide more richness and depth. Guitar breaks that had been dubbed onto the same track as the lead vocal were extracted and placed on their own digital track, to be able to mix them more effectively within the entire song. However it must be admitted that, once knuckles deep in the source material, I couldn’t resist using a few more of the available tools to enhance certain aspects of a few songs. “Radio Dedication” was doctored the most. Some extremely annoying closed high hat fills were painstakingly eliminated and effects applied to the lead vocal. Pitch correction was used sparingly in certain places in that song and some others, although it could be argued that it could have been used wholesale. There are other similar augmentations and fixes that will probably be obvious upon listening. All of the latest technological advancements cannot step around the fact that these tracks were recorded on a cassette recorder with non-professional grade equipment. The knobs on the “mixing board” were tweaked by non-professionals, and in the original masters some of the choices of performances to “bounce” together to a single track (such as lead vocal together with bass) were regrettably impossible to do much with during the digital remastering. In all, it is pretty obvious that this is not professional output. With some background about the production out of the way, a few words about the musicianship and songcraft. The Gland Rovers were amateur but enthusiastic musicians. The playing was very much inspired and a pa