So, what do you do when you buy out a recording studio from a retiring sound engineer? Learn to use the equipment, of course! CW and business partners Steve Hudspeth and Ray Yenzer set up a 16-track recording studio in the 8x10 bedroom of CW's 480-square-foot rental house, and recorded two albums there. The first, Steve's Winter Wonderland, was a collection of synthesizer-based instrumental holiday tunes. The second was CW's South Of Dakota. CW's fiancée, Donna Jo Wallace, married him later that year, despite the crowded and noisy goings-on.
The title comes from two stories from CW's stay in New York state in 1991. Every weekend CW and his friend Ernest had off from work, they'd drive into NYC and "camp out" on the edge of Central Park, across the corner from John Lennon's apartment building, The Dakota. They even saw a shadowy figure one evening in a window of the Lennon apartment -- was that Yoko waving to them?
The other story derives from New Yorkers' famous ineptitude when it comes to US geography. "I'd tell people I'm from Iowa," CW says, "and they'd have no idea where Iowa was. I'd tell them it's west of Chicago, or 'over by the Dakotas.' They'd nod, with that look that told me they had no clue what I was talking about. I might as well have told them I was from Paraguay, or Sumatra, or the planet Neptune."
Highlights include "Misunderstanding You," originally intended for a Smith & Straughn project; the bluesy acoustic "Long Way;" re-recordings of "Say Tonight" and "10 February / Helix" that more than do justice to the originals; and "It Happened One Night," a remembrance of John Lennon.
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Track listing
1 Misunderstanding You
2 Say Tonight
3 All I Can Do
4 It Takes Two
5 Long Way
6 Living At the Savery
7 A Slap-Dash Affair
8 10 February / Helix
9 It Happened One Night
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