Banjo track snipped from Bascom Lamar Lunsford's recording Minstrel of the Appalachians (1956) (Riverside: RLP 12-645).

Repeated clunk sound from Alan Lomax field recording of Texas chain gang workers in 1947 and 1948.

Singing Voices were all one man, variously transposed, played forward and reversed, layered together in various combinations. The singer was Bama, also from the Alan Lomax field recordings. These were released on an album called Murderous Home under Lomax's direction. 

The voice that repeats the words "Went down in the woods a huntin'" and "Dog caught a hog and he squealed" came from another old Lomax recording, this time from the Deep River of Song series. This is storyteller Richard Amerson of Alabama, recording called Hog Hunt sometime between 1936 and 1942.

The long bass notes were a train horn that I played with a little bit, transposing it to be in key and stretching it out a bit, setting it off in the distance. I wanted it to be a train, as opposed to a synthesizer, but not to literally sound like a train. 

dog caught a hog

This has a layer of street noises, a snip of piano from Nina Simone playing Cotton Eye Joe, two layers of singers from Alan Lomax's field recordings of singers on the Texas chain gang from 1938-1942, two layers of an orchestra tuning up (played forward and backward and stretched out), my brother Matt playing fiddle notes which were then stretched out, transposed and layered upon themselves. 

Layers include a rain storm, peeper frogs, some urban street corner drummers, a passing freight train, restaurant noise, and lonely trumpet shots. 

Miles and the Coal Train

Eastern European singers, an antique pedal-powered lathe, a political diatribe, and some farm animals.

ward s