Split between solo material and the Knowl-Tones, Knowlton Road captures some early classics.

Steve remembers: This is only half a Knowl-Tones album.  I had been recording material for my next solo album (I usually overdubbed all the parts) since the summer of ’98, but didn’t have enough songs completed to put it together.  During the first months of the Knowl-Tones, I still worked on some solo songs, with the intention of keeping them separate from group material.  However, some of those tunes also migrated into the Knowl-Tones’ set list.  As the summer of ’99 stretched on, I wanted to 1) tidy up all those old solo songs and 2) have an album ready for the audiences I hoped would attend our debut show.  I figured that I could meld the two types of material into one album and accomplish both goals.
 As a three-piece, we did a couple recording sessions earlier in the summer which produced several Knowl-Tones songs on which I overdubbed the bass.  As the end-of-August deadline approached with Mike only recently on-board, I figured we couldn’t get Mike up to speed on the material in time to do recordings that would be ready for release on time.  So, one week when he missed rehearsal to go on vacation, we recorded several other songs in our repertoire, and I played bass on those as well.  A couple overdub sessions with Jason finished the job.
 The album package consisted of photos from various times and places.  In the summer of ’98, we took a vacation to California and Jessica took a funny picture of me on the beach, so I stuck that on the inside of the tape liner under the notes.  The cover photo is a real road sign in Roaming Shores, Ohio.  It was the existence of this photo that dictated that album title.  For the band photos, Jason (who formerly worked as a professional portrait photographer) had taken some pictures for us to use in flyers, and I merely re-used them.  There’s also a nice picture of me relaxing in the sun at my parents’ vacation cottage (Ken accused me of using a “ringer” photo to make me look better than the rest of the band).  I included Mike in the credits and photos because he was a member of the band, and would have played on the album had he had more time to rehearse.

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The "classic line-up" Knowl-Tones hit their stride, with a no-overdubs-spared production approach.

 Steve remembers: It was my policy to do some recording every few months as we accumulated enough tunes to make it worthwhile.  So, after Knowlton Road was released, we laid down a few tracks in December 1999 with Mike on bass.  This was my first attempt at recording with all four pieces, and I’m afraid I botched them.  We had both the bass and keyboards playing live in the room with the drums, so each bled onto the drum mics, and the drums bled onto the bass tracks.  There’s a lot of “room sound” in the tracks as well, and it’s not a particularly good sounding room.  Nonetheless, we went ahead and completed the tracks with overdubs.
 After Jason Bickford joined, we did some recording in June 2000, and some more in July.  The recordings with him were much improved; we used a mixer to put the drum mics and a direct line from the bass onto one tracks, and recorded the keyboards direct as well.  I simply played a guide guitar line direct, too; everyone had a headphone line from the recorder and the drums got a clean sound.  Overdubs took up most of the summer.  For all the tracks with piano, Jason and I went to my church and used a real piano.
The plan was not to “cherry pick” our best numbers, but rather, get all the numbers that we had decided to keep in our set together, using the first fourteen that had been completed after Knowlton Road.  (I got this philosophy from the Ramones, who had several dozen songs written before their debut album, but chose the first fourteen for that record, and kept using them in the order they were written, so that the appearance of musical progress would be evident throughout their first four albums.)  The other songs which we had worked out but not yet recorded would be on the Knowl-Tones next album.
Instead of mixing to tape and transferring that to digital files as I did on Knowlton Road, I mixed the four-track tapes directly to the computer.  I also, for the first time ever, applied some post-production effects, mostly reverb on the vocals.  The digital mixing was nice, because I could make edits easily, where before it was very much a “press pause at the right time and hope it works” affair.
 The title of the album originates in a remark of Jason Bickford’s.  When he was introduced to the group, he said, “So we’re half Jasons.”  Not particularly profound, but I thought it had a nice ring to it.  I had the idea for the cover art inspired by a similar picture on the cover of Queen’s The Miracle.  I brought out a white t-shirt for everyone to wear to make coordinating the halves easier, and posed everyone in front of a blank piece of drywall.  The inside photos of the hands on instruments were taken at the same session (at Ken’s house, before rehearsal).  The back photo was one we used for a flyer, but I liked the idea of identifying everyone.  The liner notes by Jason were my idea as well; I thought it would be nice to get someone else’s views about the album.

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With a stripped-down production and adventurous songwriting and arrangements, this EP captures the Knowl-Tones in a daring attitude.

Steve remembers: After Half Jasons was put together, we had no immediate plans for recording, but I did plan to continue to make occasional recordings as we developed enough songs.  In the meantime, we did have a title for the next album: There’s Nothing Nerdy About Snake Paprakash.  This came about one night in rehearsals when we were talking about a story we had heard on National Public Radio (a network of non-profit radio stations devoted to independent news coverage), and I said, “We must be the nerdiest rock and roll band ever,” to which Ken replied, “There’s nothing nerdy about Snake Paprakash.”  NPR’s business reporter is a no-nonsense Indian woman whose name sounds something like Snake Paprakash.  It turns out her name is Snigdha Prakash, and we wrote her a letter asking if she’d tape an introduction for our album.  She declined (citing conflict of interest rules) but replied that she was very excited to hear from us, because her husband was from Ypsilanti.  I took the idea of a reporter named Snake (as in, a very tough character) Paprakash (as in the Eastern European dish made with sour cream and paprika, a Hungarian spice) and wrote “Snake Paprakash.”  Since the whole NPR affair didn’t pan out, we had to arrive at a different title.
 Events intervened, however, with the announced resignation of Jason Justian.  I knew we had a backlog of eight titles yet unrecorded, and persuaded him to come out to one last rehearsal and record them.  We got everything in one evening.  The recording set up was the same as before, but I believe I didn’t get enough bass into the mix.  Overdubs were fewer this time, as Jason Bickford had suggested that he thought the Half Jasons tracks were overproduced.  The sound on “Spackle and Grout” is more like the live sound of our group.
 I had thought we might just mingle these tracks with future recordings (like we had on Half Jasons), but as talk turned toward acquiring a guitar player, I thought that mixing keyboards and guitars would sound disjointed.  With the blessing of Ken and Jason Bickford, I put together the songs as an EP instead.  I chose “Spackle and Grout” for the title, as it seemed like a good catchphrase from the lead track.  The packaging was nothing elaborate, just some old photos I cobbled together.

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III

Rock and Roll Machine Billions of Bacteria Ford Exploder Blues Oar to Oar Pizza Boys Alumni Club Road Hog

Dry Clean Only Grass Skirt Love is Calling Debt Upwardly Mobile I Stand Corrected

A "new phase" Knowl-Tones, featuring double guitars and a funky bottom, round out the group's recordings.

Steve remembers: After the Knowl-Tones Mark IV played our only gig at the Solid Rock Café, I decided the time was ripe to do some recording, so we laid down some tracks in April 2001.  I had asked Joe if he would produce the album, since he had a lot of experience working with recordings and I was interested to try working in a different fashion, letting someone else be in charge.  Joe brought out his mixing board (16 channels) and what seemed like 10 microphones, and spent nearly an hour setting up to record the drums; he placed mics all around the kit.  Joe and Charlie played direct into the four-track while I sang a guide vocal.  Since I couldn't hear the guitars, a couple of these were waaay off key.
 The next week I had decided to leave the band, so I announced that at the rehearsal, but everyone agreed we should go ahead and finish the recordings.  We did another session to complete our eight “regular” songs, and agreed to get together one last time.  The last week, we first got together in a park in Ypsilanti to have some photos taken for the album cover, then convened at Ken’s to do some final recording.  Because eight songs were not enough for the album, and because Joe and Charlie both had led our band in considerable amounts of jamming, I thought a few jams on the CD would reflect the band’s nature.  In fact, the jams were recorded with everyone playing live in the room; separation wasn’t important because there weren’t going to be overdubs.  I stayed out of the way with my guitar, instead playing percussion.
 The plan for recording the overdubs was pretty complicated.  Joe wanted to redo all his bass parts, so I brought my four-track over to his house and we did that.  Then, I went home, recorded the bass and drums together in mono on the computer, and burnt a CD.  Joe recorded from the CD to his four-track, thus giving us a “bounce” and leaving three tracks open, but without adding a layer of hiss.
 Charlie came to Joe’s a few times to overdub some of his lead guitar parts, and I did some vocals and guitars, but then Abe was born and we hadn’t yet finished the tracks.  As time went on, we got together once in October, then spent a whole day together in December to finish up.  Joe laid down a few guitar solos just to get the album done.  Joe was a painstaking producer.  Instead of adding effects after recording, he ran everything through his effects boxes (and he had a whole rack full) at the time of recording.  And he didn’t let anything sloppy pass; we did lots and lots of takes.  It took longer than I’m used to, partly because of the efforts Joe took, and partly because I had to go to his house, instead of slipping into the next room whenever I had a few spare moments.
 The packaging was assembled from the photos Jessica took of the band in the park.  I had no particular ideas in mind, I just wanted some good photos in nice settings.  The one that graced the cover was taken with us standing at the railing of a dock on the river, and Jessica standing below us, and the back panel shot was the four of us sitting on bleachers in a vertical row.
 Originally I had a joke title in mind, like Last Gasp or Going Down for the Third Time, to reflect that it was the band’s last album.  In the end, I decided to choose a dignified name that had no significance whatsoever, so III seemed like a natural choice, simply describing the number of albums we had (I calculated it like this: Knowlton Road = 0.5, Half Jasons = 1.0, Spackle and Grout = 0.5, III = 1.0).

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B-sides

That's What Moms Are For The My-Old-Lady's-Two-Weeks-Late Blues Down Under The Onion Schizophonic Rock Solid

Occasionally, we recorded an item that wasn't deemed good enough to issue on an album, so we stuck them on the b-sides of our singles.  Dedicated followers of the group may wish to seek out these hidden gems.

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Covers

While the group's recordings consist of entirely original material, we sometimes threw in a cover version or two to spice up (and fill out) our live sets.  Here are a few of the songs we performed regularly:

Kung Fu Fighting
Why Don't We Do It In the Road?
Build Me Up Buttercup
Hey Good Lookin'
It's a Shame About Ray
There's No Business Like Show Business

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