Album Notes

A Southern rock band—veterans of three major label releases, of touring with the HORDE festival, with the Allman Brothers, with ZZ Top, with about everybody, through the nineties and into the new century—came back from the 2004 festival in Azkena, Spain, where they had been the surprise sensation, to break up for good. They had developed a fanatic following who flew across the country and sometimes across the ocean to make their shows and bought out their independent releases. Venues across the country
knew they would not fail to draw a crowd. But they ended. And when they ended there remained a number of tracks the band had recorded for their singer to write words over--loud, virtuoso, precision rock and roll Tracks--treasure going unused.

Meanwhile the poet Klyd Watkins had built a recording studio in his back yard. That studio, still unfinished, was where the Wheelies rehearsed for their last gigs. Klyd Watkins had spent most of the seventies making experimental poetry. Rather than writing, he had worked on audio tape, with his wife Linda and other like minded poets. With Peter and Patricia (Bebe) Harleman, they created the Poetry Out Loud movement and released ten lps. Though Poetry Out Loud set out to address an audience as poets, over the years it would be the experimental music audience and vinyl collectors who would continue to listen to Poetry Out Loud. (volcanic tongue’s website—http://www.volcanictongue.com/, there search for Poetry Out Loud—contains information on Poetry Out Loud.)

Klyd says, “Poetry Out Loud had insisted on improvisation alone—no use of text, and scant use of musical instruments,
other than percussion. But it came to pass the muse said it was time for me to record from text and use more instruments. Loath to ignore her, I took the text of my poem JACK CHAPTER ONE and got in the vocal booth and declaimed to wonderful tracks by Steve and Rick and Bob and Terry in my earphones . The first cut was effective enough that it got Bob interested in the project, and from the moment Bob wanted to produce it and pulled Brodie in too, there was no way it could be anything but a wonderful recording.” Bob Watkins was gutarist with The Screamin’
Cheetan Wheelies. And he is Klyd’s son. Brodie Hutcheson was sound man for the Wheelies (and before that for Gov’t Mule). Together they produced the independent Wheelie releases Lamanamanumi and Ten Miles High.

Tracks for HARP ALL MADE OF GOLD were developed according to the content, with a couple stripped down to Poetry Out Loud austerity. Two of the unused Wheelie tracks are here. Other tracks draw on a wonderful pool of Nashville rock and roll talent. Where does experimental poetry and Southern rock with a streak of blue grass overlap? At HARP ALL MADE OF GOLD. If it’s a previously unprojected overlap, you’d be surprised how many folk want to hear it.