dang, we've been doing this a long time now...

We had to crack open the only physical copy of our first album "Dog Years" to be able to upload the music to this website. It was still in the shrink wrap. I forgot what the inside liner notes and art looked like! Jeff and I were 24 and 22 years old in this picture!  We are *ahem* a little fluffier, I've got a lot more hair now and its silver, no longer auburn. I think about all the effort we put in to the production of that cd, writing the liner notes, gathering the pictures. Recording, marketing, and selling music is VERY different today than when we put "Dog Years" out 18 years ago. Those were our dogs in the pictures; Hank, Guinness, and Pixie. They have all passed on from old age.

Some things remain though. The back cover was taken at the former Roy's Record Shop. That building is now the home of Barleys Maryville, its where we do our live radio broadcast "Behind the Barn" every week. The broadcast is kicked off every week by the radio station (WFIV 105.3 FM) with a live cut recorded at "Behind the Barn" in the late 90's when the show was done at Barleys in Knoxville with WDVX.  That song appears on our first album, "Dog Years". What goes around is still going around!

Jeff and I are gonna be experimenting with some different creative projects this summer. We have some plans to shoot a video for "Goodnight to Mom & Pop" from our most recent recorded project.  Jeff will be producing a podcast, having conversations with people in our region, there are some interesting folks here! I have been writing a kids story about a tiny troll that lives inside a little girls violin, I'm thinking about recording that as a serial style podcast with me reading it and doing all the sound effects. We are gonna record some new music, one song at a time and releasing them directly here, skipping the album concept and physical cd production all together.

Jeff and I created our tiny cottage industry beginning with this photo taken for a local newspaper article 25 years ago. In a way, we are a "Mom & Pop" business. We homebrew music from scratch, served up in small venues near our home, at weddings and other events, live on local radio. It ain't a bad gig, yall! Come see us soon at Barleys, and next weekend we are at the Lavender Festival in Oak Ridge.

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