Lonesome Highway by Rance Garrison

These songs were written and recorded between mid-2003 and late 2004. Looking back now, ten years later, I realize what an innocent time it was. I was only a teenager!

I wanted very badly to record a full length album. Unfortunately, being a bit of a poor kid, all I had to work with was a PC that was still running Windows '98, a computer microphone, and a copy of Sony Soundforge, I had managed to get a hold of from my high school's AV department. Production wise, you could say that these songs are lacking. As the recording process went on, I did manage to get better, and get some slightly better equipment. (Including a used electric guitar amp and a real condenser microphone, which is proudly used on "The Hitch Hiker" and "Choking on the Ladder.")

As for songwriting quality I still feel that some of these songs are, well, pretty damn good. When I play a live acoustic set to this day, it still doesn't feel right without the title track of this album, and "Light Up Ahead" and "Heaterswitch Sunrise Blues" are still songs that I'm pretty fond of. Another track on this album I still enjoy is "Choking on the Ladder." My good friend Keaton had written and recorded this song a few weeks earlier as a simple acoustic piece. Something about it really struck me, and the two of us ended up recording a version together in which I ended up singing his lyrics to a reworked chord progression and a heavier arrangement. I played the guitars and harmonica and did all the vocal parts. He played the set of pots and pans we used a drum set, played the bass, and supplied the lyrics. It was a fun night, though no doubt we kept up a few neighbors in the apartment building.

Speaking of that apartment building. About half of these songs were recorded in my bedroom at my mom's old trailer. When I graduated, my great Aunt Sue offered to let me live in an apartment that was in a building that she owned. That little apartment was in the basement, smelled faintly of mildew, had no air conditioning, and not a single window. If you didn't have a clock, you wouldn't a known what time it was. But to Aunt Sue's credit, she never kicked me outta there even when she probably should have looking back on it ten years later.

This was a great time in my life. My first taste of adulthood and the beginning of the end of my childhood. Good times, with my good friends and my girlfriend at the time always dropping by for reasons musical and otherwise. Joe Fultz used to break in at 3 AM even though my job as an "assistant" in the butcher's department at Food City required me to up by 5 AM to get to work by 6 every morning. Stole all my toothpaste and soap one night. I had to go to work stinkin'.

I know this is the section where I'm supposed to talk about my music and all. But I can't really tell you about that without telling you about the time that it came from. Think on those things, and let the music do its own damn talkin'.

Tracklist

1.	Saint Charles	2:22

2.	County Line	3:11

3.	To Find Love	7:02

4.	Oh Honey	3:53

5.	Light Up Ahead	4:24

6.	Lonesome Highway	5:40

7.	Transmissions	4:26

8.	Everything is Political	3:01

9.	These Old Days	6:07

10.	The Hitch Hiker	7:44

11.	Heaterswitch Sunrise Blues	4:25

12.	Choking on the Ladder	3:32

13.	In the Rain	3:46

14.	Domestic Trouble	0:54

15.	Hard Times	5:50

16.	Interstate 81	9:25

Credits

released October 1, 2004

Produced by Rance Garrison.

All songs written by Rance Garrison except "Choking on the Ladder," lyrics by Keaton Lawson, music by Rance Garrison and Keaton Lawson.

Cover photo by Gretchen Cope

Recorded in Apartment 10 of the Cedar Towers Villa in Pennington Gap, Virginia, and in the back bedroom of my mom's old trailer in Jonesville, Virginia.

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