Barn Burning are tight and disjointed, loud and soft on Truck
By BOB GULLA | January 23, 2007
SLOW BURN: Werner Ghost Truck took a year to complete. |
Barn Burning has been through a myriad of changes since releasing its debut, Weatheredbound, in 2003. Almost no one from that first record is around anymore, save for bandleader Anthony Loffredio and intermittent string player Corwin Butterworth. According to Loffredio, it was hard for former members to log tour miles, and most had other ideas for their future like attending grad school or relocating. But Loffredio believed in the band and pieced together an act with a revolving door of musicians, staying on the road around the US and Canada for two and a half years. “I can’t say it’s been easy,” he admits. “That’s a long time to tour a record. But we knew we had to do it at our level.”
Today, Loffredio is happy that Barn Burning boasts its longest-standing lineup: James Toomey (drums, percussion, toy piano) and James Merida (bass, keyboards, vocals). The Jameses and Butterworth are on the new album, Werner Ghost Truck, which is being released this weekend at Jake’s and nationwide on Seattle’s Tarnished Records on January 30.
Werner Ghost Truck took almost a year to complete. “After it was done,” says Loffredio, “we decided to sit on it until we found a record label.” Weatheredbound was released by the Catamount imprint in Tennessee. Five months turned into almost seven until the folks at Tarnished heard it and liked it enough to release it. During that time the band recorded and released an EP, Choir Practice. “I felt like I had to get something out there so that people didn’t think we totally died off.”
Werner Ghost Truck was recorded in Lowell, Massachu¬setts, in a big empty house in the middle of last winter on an estate cared for by band friend/producer Jim Reynolds. “The woman who owns the place gives Jim full run of the extra house on the property to do his recordings,” says Loffredio. “I did a lot of my guitar parts in different empty rooms and I did most of the vocals at the top of the stairs. We had a lot more time to experiment with different sounds and how we wanted the songs to take shape on the record.”
That liberty and looseness is laid bare on Truck, a compendium of fresh, ringing, and rustic strums that resonates with warmth and feeling. “This record actually sounds more like a band that has spent a lot of time on the road together,” says Loffredio, “rather than players just playing their parts. It’s tighter, yet more disjointed. It’s more experimental and it’s also the loudest and at the same time the quietest we’ve ever been. The estate felt very cut off from the rest of the world. I think that helped to effect the overall mood of the recordings.”BARN BURNING + SHARKS COME CRUISIN’ + DOUG CHEATWOOD & THE BASTARDS OF FATE | January 27 | Jake’s Bar & Grille, 373 Richmond St, Providence | 401.453.5253
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