Steve: Vocals
Virginia: Guitar
Michael: Vocals, Bass

The hazy, muddy moans of horse. Steve is singing gibberish. It`s not horse radish, but jabber rash. Doesn`t jibberish sound like jabber rash? He caught some jabber rash on his arm with some gibberish. You plant a horse and you get a radish. Steve was saddle-sore on his chest and it didn’t hurt. Things were riding his chest all day long. Riding it wrong, all day long.

Michael: Vocals, Guitar
Jason: Bass
Virginia: Vocals

A very mellow (creepy) acoustic tune, ending up with Michael whispering about mosquitos over only Jason`s awesome basslines and Virginia’s buzzing fly sounds. It’s a bit more serenely disquieting than that description would suggest though. Fun fact: the last five seconds is Michael`s audio interpretation of a fly being caught on a windshield with a wet rag that was in the middle of waxing the car.

Michael: Guitar, Vocals
Jason: Harmonica, Vocals
Sarah: Vocals
Virginia: Rattles, Intro Vocal
Arthur: Percussion, *Plastic*

Appalachian Valley, 1965. It was a difficult summer. I killed a man there once. There was red red blood all over the white white January snow, which was the cause of death. He knew he would take his clothes off in the whitest snow he had ever seen, amidst the hypothermia and the cocaine that hung out together like two bums on a train, doing January snow.

(This is our murder ballad soaked in heavy reverb. The incredibly apt gunshot sound at 0:16 was unplanned and came out of nowhere!)

Sarah: Vocals
Natasha: Piano
Jason: Vocals, Ukulele, Harmonica
Michael: Vocals, Bass
Virginia: Accordion
Mike P: Guitar

This was a melodramatic Tom Waits-style polka that we did, which not surprisingly turned out to be a lot of fun. Lyrics are all over the place, but basically, Michael is in a restaurant where paintings are walking around talking about him. They don`t like his belt. Jason then describes a corpse he is looking for. Sarah can`t find her Antonio. We tell her that we saw his corpse in the field yesterday. Jason says some things in Spanish, and then there are ice sculptures of dead swans. The end.

Virginia: Guitar
Michael & Steve: Vocals

Steve is our resident Canadian, and a big fans of the blues. The microphone wire kept shorting out during this recording, so there are random blasts of static going on while we sang about milkshakes.

(image courtesy of NickSS)

Jason: Lead Vocals, Guitar
Michael: Backing Vocals
Virginia: Backing Vocals, Percussion

It has become a running joke that we can not have a jam session without doing a doo-wop song, or at least a song with the I-vi-IV-V chord progression. This one started with all of us joking around that we were all lying on Michael`s bed, and Jason, pitched down an octave, then started singing about cold fronts, sleep apnea, and banana levies.

Jason: Vocals
Virginia: Vocals, Shaker
Michael: Keyboards

Michael was playing some half-sung/half-spoken Stax records like I’ll Be The Other Woman by The Soul Children and Woman to Woman by Shirley Brown and asked if Virginia and Jason could reproduce something similar, and what came out was an old married couple arguing about a 10-cent wedding ring and some soul food…

Jason: Guitar, Brief Vocal
Virginia: Vocals, Percussion
Michael: Vocals, Organ, Percussion

Michael does have this habit of walking up and down the stairs during his day job. Apparently, so does lettuce.

Jason: Guitar, Vocals
Michael: Percussion, Vocals
Debbie: Lead Vocals
Virginia: Percussion

Food is a reoccurring theme with TLE, and this song happened spontaneously after Virginia mentioned that she had just eaten some really good tamales down in Brighton.

Virginia: Vocals
Michael: Piano, Vocals

This is the first song we finished, and was pretty much the impetus for all the songs that followed. Virginia tells us all about one of her favorite places down south…