Live at Last cover

Live at Last

Dry Branch Fire Squad

Album · 1996 · Rounder C 0339

Live! At Last was recorded in front of an audience at the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton, Massachusetts, on 13 and 14 April 1995, with additional recording at Wellspring Sound in Concord, Massachusetts, and was released by Rounder in 1996 (C 0339). The band and Ken Irwin produced it, and Charles Wolfe wrote the liner notes. Ron Thomason plays mandolin and sings lead, with Bill Evans on banjo, Mary Jo Leet and Suzanne Thomas on guitars, and Charlie Leet on bass; Thomason also plays guitar on one track, and Suzanne Thomas takes a clawhammer banjo on “Red Rocking Chair” and sings lead on it and on Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times.”

Country Standard Time described the album as “almost an even split of music and monologues.” Eight of the 21 tracks are Thomason speaking: “True Historia,” “Economical Talk,” “A Pitiful Thing,” “Housework Is My Life,” “Cultural Exchange,” “Testosterone Poisoning,” “Banjo Jokes” and “World’s Greatest Folksinger,” all credited to him as writer. The songs include Si Kahn’s “Aragon Mill,” Bill Monroe’s “Blue Grass Breakdown,” “Someone Play Dixie for Me” by Pete Roy, and the a cappella “Walk the Streets of Glory.”

Thomason, a former member of Ralph Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys, founded Dry Branch Fire Squad in October 1976. The band is named for the small southwest Virginia town where he was born, and it has recorded for Rounder since 1981.

Tracklist

  1. 1 Way Downtown alt version 2:43
  2. 2 True Historia - Live At The Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, Mass. / April 13 & 14, 1995 4:09
  3. 3 Aragon Mill alt version 2:52
  4. 4 Economical Talk - Live At The Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, Mass. / April 13 & 14, 1995 3:38
  5. 5 John Henry alt version 3:12
  6. 6 A Pitiful Thing - Live At The Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, Mass. / April 13 & 14, 1995 6:15
  7. 7 The Cowboy Song - Live At The Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, Mass. / April 13 & 14, 1995 3:06
  8. 8 Housework Is My Life - Live At The Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, Mass. / April 13 & 14, 1995 0:58
  9. 9 Red Rocking Chair alt version 2:04
  10. 10 Cultural Exchange - Live At The Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, Mass. / April 13 & 14, 1995 5:56
  11. 11 Someone Play Dixie For Me - Live At The Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, Mass. / April 13 & 14, 1995 3:24
  12. 12 Hambone / Balo's Song - Live At The Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, Mass. / April 13 & 14, 1995 3:36
  13. 13 Testosterone Poisoning - Live At The Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, Mass. / April 13 & 14, 1995 3:42
  14. 14 Midnight on the Stormy Deep alt version 4:04
  15. 15 Banjo Jokes - Live At The Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, Mass. / April 13 & 14, 1995 2:19
  16. 16 Bluegrass Breakdown alt version 2:54
  17. 17 Band Introductions - Live At The Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, Mass. / April 13 & 14, 1995 1:13
  18. 18 World's Greatest Folksinger - Live At The Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, Mass. / April 13 & 14, 1995 2:03
  19. 19 Hard Times alt version 2:47
  20. 20 Goin' Up On The Mountain - Live At The Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, Mass. / April 13 & 14, 1995 2:28
  21. 21 Walk The Streets Of Glory - Live At The Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, Mass. / April 13 & 14, 1995 2:09

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