Twothousandyardstare - 7”
Label - Highwater Records
This record was produced by Kris Youmans for his Highwater Records label. Youmans was the booking agent for RGRS for a while. Fir a while, he played cello for Sarah Jaffe. Actually, he’s been the cello player for just about every denton band that’s had one. and Clinic, too.
Members of Twothousandyardstare were also in Kodiak, Jeweled Handles, J Church, Severed Head of State, Signal Lost, & Ghost Knife.
2kYS were great live. All the passion of hardcore, but without the rage. Post-hardcore was the missing link between furious 80’s punk and curious turn-of-the-century emo. Twothousandyardstare fell on the better end of that spectrum, IMHO.
This little 7” took FOREVER to record. The guys loved to experiment with different mics and mic placement and they chose to master it themselves, which took forever because they’d never done it before. They made Chris Pfeffer crawl under the house they were recording in to set up a few different mics. “Down below, Pfeffer,” Dave Wofford would say, and he’d go change the plug from the ribbon mic to the shotgun or whatever. He must have been furious later, when they decided not to use any takes from that session. Of course, that may have been far enough into the recording that he was used to it. The band had set out to record a full-length, but most of the songs went completely unrecorded. This was not because of the bands discerning taste & discretion, but rather exhaustion.
Even back then in the late ’90s, the guys were concerned about conservation and their carbon footprint. (That wasn’t even a thing back then!) The energy for the recording sessions was produced by three members riding bicycles hooked up to generators while the other lucky dude played his part. Kraftwerk recorded “Tour de France” the same way, but that was just machines. These guys had to do a lot more pedaling to power their huge amps & all the recording gear. In light of that (absolutely true) fact, it’s quite remarkable how much energy can still be felt in the songs. Maybe they had pedaled hard enough to get a “cyclists” high.” Anyway, by the time they had recorded these songs, the idea of a big 12” debut record was starting to look less appealing.
I never actually saw them here in denton, but i was lucky enough to catch their performance at the Punk Rock Picnic down at Moontunes. They weren’t “punk” by the strictest definition, but Daniel Hicks was known for his 7-layer dip, so they made an exception. As a matter of fact, the reputation of that dip was responsible for getting them more gigs than their demo tape.
I had never been to denton before and the dude at the place gave me some WHACK directions. Less whack maybe, if you knew that the venue was actually in Dallas. What should have been an hour & a half trip became an 8 hour drive, but it was worth it, even if all the food (save for some unidentifiable dishes on the vegan table) was gone. I peed off of the roof there; it was awesome.
