I abbreviated some of the scope and wanted bass marimba to give it kind of an exotic feel. So, you get the note and you get that kind of a tall wood clang with the attack. That's Victor Feldman on bass marimba, Larry Taylor on acoustic bass, Randy Aldcroft on baritone horn, Stephen Hodges on drums and Fred Tackett on electric guitar.

I had some assistance from a gentleman by the name of Francis Thumm, who worked on the arrangements of some of these songs with me. Who plays gramolodium with the Harry Partch Ensemble headed up by Daniel Mitchell. So he worked closely on most of these songs.

But I originally saw this... the theme for some late night activity in the steam tunnels beneath New York City. Where allegedly there are entire communities of ladies and gentleman living under difficult circumstances beneath the subways. When I was a kid I used to stare in the gopherholes for hours and hours sometimes. I tried to think my way down through the gopherhole and imagine this kind of a 'journey to the center of the earth'-kind of thing.

I worked in a restaurant in a sailor town for a long time. It's Porkcola National City. So, it was something I saw every night. It was next to tattoo parlour and country&western dance hall and a Mexican movie theatre.

So I imagined this Chinese pinwheel in a fireworks display spinning, spinning and turning and then slowing down. As it slowed down it dislodged into a windmill in Illinois. That same of... and then looked down on us. A home. Where a woman is sitting in the living room sleeping on chairs with the television on. When his having eggs at some grumulant joint, you know, thousands of miles away.

It was originally inspired by a gentleman who did tremondous amounts of religious things in his house and worked at a slaughter house. I was trying to imagine what was going in his head while he cut up load of pork loin and got completely out of his mind with a meat cleaver. I don't think it's going to get a lot of airplay. Unless we put a nice vocal on it.

It's real short. Somehow I wanted just to get it all said in one verse. There are times when you work on a song and end up repeating in the second verse what you already said in the first. So I thought I would be more appropiate if it's just like a feeling of a sailor somewhere in a cafe, who opens his wallet and turns to the guy next to him and shows him the picture while he's talking about something else and says: "Oh, here. That's her." and then closes his wallet and puts it back in his pants.

It relates in some way to "Shore Leave" in the sense that it talks about Illinois. So thematically I was trying to tie it into "Shore Leave".

So, I wanted to have that kind of a sledgehammer coming down on anvil. Originally I saw the story as a guy and a mule going off looking for this crow. He has a washburn guitar strapped on the side of his mule and when he gets the crow he pulls the strings back and shoves this bird inside the guitar and then the strings make like a jail. Then he bangs the on the strings and the bird goes out of his mind as he is riding off over the hill.

So I tried to make the story a bit impressionistic but at the same time adding some very specific images in there. I worked a long time on this. The feel of it was really critical. I added snare and we pulled the snare off 'cause it made it shuffle too much. I liked the holes in it as much as I liked what was in them. It was a matter of trying to get that feeling of a train going. Originally I tried it just with organ and bass. Then I was afraid to add too much to it 'cause sometimes you get a feel that's appropiate. If you try to heap too much on it then it crumbles into the strain.

It's about a miserable old town in Australia that made the news when they shut down the only watering hole. We found an article about it in a newspaper when we were over there and hung on to it for a year. So I said: "Ah, I'm going to write something about that someday." and finally got around to it.

That's a freedom bell upfront just trying to get a feel of a ghost town, tumbleweeds and that kind of thing. It's basically a folk song.

I was trying to bring the music outdoors with tuba, trombone, trumpets, snare, symbals, accordian. So it had that feeling of fliniesque type of marching band going down the dirt road. And with glockenspiel to give it a feeling of a kind of a demented little parade band.

And.. Alright. I tried to picture two Italian brothers in small circus arguing on the trapeze. One of them with a bottle of ten high and it's litard. Doing the dozens on each other and throwing insults as they cross each other in the mid air.

Or the feel of a band on the deck of Titanic as it slowly goes under.

The title is really kind of a lyric to it, it's like you know... Actually I originally planned to write a lyric called: "It's more than rain that falls on our parade tonight". But I thought it was more effective as an instrumental and it also sets up "Frank's wild years".

Ronnie Barren alias Rev. Eather from New Orleans, Lousiana, on Hammond organ and Larry Taylor, originally with Canned Heat, on dog house.

I think there is a little bit of Frank in everybody.

Tenkiller Lake, that's in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So, "He came home from the war with a party in his head and an idea for fireworks display."

When I woke up in the morning there was a pentecostal church right over the road. I walked over there with leaves in my hair and sand on the side of my face. This woman named Mrs. Anderson came. It was like New years eve... Yeah, it was New years eve. She said: "We're having services here and you are welcome to join us." So I sat at the back pew in this tiny little church.

And this mutant rock'n'roll band got up and started playing these old hymns in such a broken sort of way. They were preaching, and everytime they said something about the devil or evil or going down the wrong path she gestured in the back of the church to me. And everyone would turn around and look and shake their heads and then turn back to the preacher. It gave me a complex that I grew up with.

On Sunday evening they have these religious programs where the preachers they are all bankers. They get on with these firering glasses and 700 $ suits. Shake their finger at America. So this is kind of my own little opportunity at the lectern.

Sometimes you go to a garage sale or you go to a pawn shop or anywhere and look through other peoples things. Shoes in particular, that have walked around with somebody else inside them for a long time, seem to have...Seem to be able to almost talk. So, it's just trying to string together different items that... Instruments are always like that. After you come home from...This guy comes home from service and "everything's a dollar in that box", you know.

Tried to get that 'rrrrr'-thing. Tried to get the vocal sit way back to recreate the recording conditions that existed prior to advanced technical capabilities. We had it recorded by one round microphone. So, your dominance on the track depended entirely on your distance from the microphone. Also get a room-feel. So Biff Dawes miked the room with several of these contact mikes on the glassnet type on thing. So it got a real sense of the air of the place. It has a bit of an old feel to it.

Try to get the image of trouble being this little girl. Pull on trouble's braids. He should chases you around and about a guy who's in trouble. Our hero is at this point being pursued by blood hounds. So he stays away from the main roads.

It's kind of an epiloque to the story. After he floats down the stream on an old dead tree. It's kind of... you know...It's a morning you hear the birds and it starts to rain and he's off on another adventure somewhere.

I wanted to close the side with an instrumental to give the hero room to breath.

Yeah, that's all...the end.