Album Notes

Compared to everyone from Tim Buckley to Deputy Dawg, Knutson racks up another choice record with the Shame Train. Gone's thirteen songs come in as varied in style as the last batch. The alt country tag still sticks but there is straight ahead pop music on this album of the variety that kept the last record from being considered a viable product at miles of music. The review in July's No Depression [though it did the album no real lip service] did comment on the variety of styles and the fact that without being cliche it hit on every note it went for.

The band and sonwriter are unwilling to limmit themselves stylisticly to a packageable, one-tag sound, and, although jazz seems to have been slapped into the discription in a lot of published reviews this writer doesn't see it. This album, Gone, is the sound of people playing music together in a room; good musicians who know how to confidently play something they may have never heard before and pull it off, and hit the mark doing so.

The success of the last record "Shame Train and the Devil's Square Quilt", in a radio and press on a national level kind of a way has not yet been fully realized (though over a hundred radio shows all over America and in Europe play the record) this doesn't stop the Shame Train from bringing another BETTER record into the world. I suppose that's the thing to do, always top yourself. And they have. Gone rocks, swings, twangs, weeps, and preaches its way into your heart without ever beating you over the head. Its a comfy listen, front to back, and deserving of greater attention.
-Jameson Fink

It is also CD of the month this month at a radiio station called KUNI. see www.KUNIRADIO.org


See also an album called M.U.S.E. (musicians united to save the englert[a local old theatre]) on trailer records @
www.trailer-records.com
The web site (WWW.SHAME-TRAIN.COM) should be up and running within the month, and there are things you can get there that you can't get here.
see reviews of the last record and this one @:
nO dEPRESSION
EAR CANDY
SING OUT
THE IOWA CITY GAZETTE
ICON
THE IOWA CITY PRESS CITIZEN
AND LOOK RIGHT HERE IN THE CDBABY SITE AT THE LOCATION FOR
"SHAME TRAIN AND THE DEVIL'S SQUARE QUILT"
THE OTHER RECORD BY THIS BAND. NEW ALBUM NEXT JULY
august 4th 2002