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[Photos by acidjack]

Part of the joy of seeing bands in a small venue is the unpredictability. Small venues, even the best ones, are always fighting hard to hold it together, and it’s often a losing battle. Gear breaks down, beverage lines go stale, some asshole from some opening band breaks your backline, the A/C goes out, the health inspector is on your case, someone’s stealing from the till, someone else called in sick, the toilet’s clogged — owning a small music venue isn’t an endeavor for the faint of heart, or someone who doesn’t want to work. But at the same time, small venues are also where bands take risks. At Madison Square Garden or something, with an enormous light system, you won’t be varying the setlist or stage diving or interacting with a crowd where the nearest people are six feet from the stage. And you don’t have the safety net of a video screen or some other gimmick to make people care. You make them care with your own sweat.

For longer than many of the people in this crowd for …And You Will Know It By the Trail of Dead‘s show had even been going to concerts, the crew at Maxwell’s worked tirelessly to make that club a place that musicians wanted to play, that real fans wanted to hang out in, and that represented the best of their home in Hoboken. And they succeeded, more than most could ever claim to, in all of that.

But you wouldn’t have blamed Trail of Dead if they’d thrown hissy fits and run offstage after the first issue with the circuit breaker shut off the entire PA. Or when a monitor malfunctioned. Or when the PA blew again. They’re a veteran band. They don’t need this shit. But if you want to be the kind of band that plays at Maxwell’s — that stays close to its audience, that remembers where it came from — then you learn to deal. And that’s exactly what the Austin band did. When “Another Morning Stoner” got cut off, they didn’t just move on to the next song. They played a shortened, stripped-down version. They also played one of the most memorable performances of theirs I’ve seen. Try to deny the power of “Will You Smile Again”, the first thing played after the gear got working again, or the searing “A Perfect Teenhood”, or the “Caterwaul” where guitarist/singer Jason Reece took the mic to the back of the room to sing, at one point doing so from inside the sound booth. (The above photo is taken from that area).

In taking a show that had its challenges — that in less cool hands could’ve been a shambolic mess — and turning into a night none of us would forget, they paid the most fitting tribute to the venue of all.

I recorded this set with a soundboard feed combined with Schoeps MK5 microphones. While the overall sound quality is excellent, I’d like to emphasize again that the equipment issues are nobody’s “fault” — not the band’s, not the Maxwell’s staff’s. Sometimes, these things happen. Enjoy!

Stream “Caterwaul”

This NYCTaper recording is being hosted on the Live Music Archive.  You can stream the entire show by clicking the song titles below or download it via the links provided.

Direct download of the entire show: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Stream the full set:

…And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead
2013-07-23
Maxwell’s
Hoboken, NJ USA

Hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Soundboard (engineers: Mitch (house) and Matt (band)) + Schoeps MK5 (PAS)>KCY>Z-PFA>>Roland R-26>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Audacity 2.03 (patch bad section of SBD)>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, tape exciter)>Audacity 2.03 (fades, tracking, amplify, balance, downsample)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time: 1:22:41]
01 [intro]
02 It Was There That I Saw You
03 How Near How Far
04 Catatonic
05 Up To Infinity [gear issues]>
06 Flower Card Games [gear issues]
07 Another Morning Stoner [false start]
08 [banter/gear issues 1]
09 Another Morning Stoner [short version]
10 Spiral Jetty>
11 Weight of the Sun
12 Homage
13 [banter2]
14 Will You Smile Again
15 [banter3]
16 Aged Dolls>
17 A Perfect Teenhood
18 Caterwaul
19 [banter4]
20 Totally Natural
21 [encore “break”]
22 Relative Ways

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Trail of Dead, visit their website, and purchase Lost Songs at your favorite retailer, including here.