Album Notes

"...These songs are beautiful, fragile comforts. They're not joycore, no. They're just things to lean up against on these long midwinter days. Or in the nights. Trifles, I guess, in the same way that streetlamps are trifles. Or cherry trees. Or stars.

Voices fall across each-other, whispers blossoming into smiling song, folk that's crisscrossed just enough with foreign sound, shadows of accordion or clarinet, horns and drone. Hear a bit of Iron & Wine, but better. Maybe Sufjan circa Seven Swans. Grizzly Bear without the fear, Elliott Smith with a gang of kindly friends. Like Mt. Eerie, maybe, or The Robot Ate Me. But different.
Oh fuck it - just listen."

Sean from Said the Gramophone, January 5, 2006


"The Speakers are a lo-fi, new-folk duo from California. Their latest CD is a collection of songs with lyrics by William Butler Yeats. Brian Miller and Peter Musselman say they were inspired by the Irish poet's turn-of-the-century work because it sounded like country songs.

Miller and Musselman have been playing together since they were in middle school in Lancaster, Pa. They continued to play into college and later moved to California where they formed The Speakers in 1999.

For their new CD they sang and played accordion, guitar, bass, banjo, drums, violins, piano, organ, spaced-out keyboards and threw in some whistling.

Miller has also been the guitarist for Jolie Holland for the last five years and has appeared on her last two albums, Catalpa and Escondida, and her upcoming third album, Springtime Can Kill You."

--NPR Open Mic, November 9, 2005


Special guests on Yeats is Greats are:

Chris Arnold - claves, Keyboard & co-producer (4)
Dave Mihaly - drums & percussion (1, 13, 15)
Jolie Holland - fiddle (4) co-composer (13)
Nancy Mitchell - voice, whistling (4)
David Kovenetsky - spiritual advisor
Phoebe Wayne - hand claps (13)
Ara Anderson - trumpet (13)
Nicole Russo - clarinet (4)
Polly Stone - voice (10)

and all the artwork was done by New York artist Lisa Sanditz