Amy Ray & The Volunteers: Live From Knoxville

I love the tradition of live releases. To me, it’s a document of a time and place. Songs always morph a bit when you take them on the road and every musician brings her/his own magic to the mix. That’s what inspired this little release of Amy Ray and the Volunteers. We recorded a show in Knoxville, from top to bottom with a 4 tracks of computer magic. We would have had more tracks, but the equipment failed us at the last minute. For this reason, it’s really "live"-no fixes and barely any separation.

We skipped a few songs that are best left in the ether sphere and some babble that was probably better left unsaid. Other than that, what you hear is what we played -songs from both solo releases-Stag and Prom. It was the last show of the Rocktober 2005 tour and slimly attended. The energy was in the intimacy of the crowd and the fact that we knew we wouldn’t get to rock again for a while. After the show, we loaded the gear into the trailer and without much fanfare, celebrated at an all night Pita joint.

There’s nothing less glamorous than a college town that shuts down early. The Volunteers went on their way. The drummer Will Lochamy went back to Alabama, where he splits his time between music and managing a bar. Les Nuby, the guitar man, dropped by his home in Alabama, long enough to hang with the gang and then headed out to L.A. to do session work, playing drums. Tara Jane O’Neil went back to her life as a roving songwriter, singer, rocker, and visual artist. Our fearless tour manager Carla landed an impressive job working with the family pop/rock band, Laughing Pizza.

I am living the high life as an Indigo Girl and writing for the next Aray solo record.

Enjoy!
Aray
2006

P.S. This new Daemon release also contains two bonus tracks of Amy Ray and The Butchies, live from Slim’s in San Francisco.