Dave Soyars rockin' the 2002 Kern County Highland Games with Craicmore (pic by DNL)

Scattered and
August Songs
—SAVED!

Dave Soyars painted by gita after an exhausting recording session at Mini Moose in the Sierras

DNL tracking SCATTERED circa 1997

[August 26, 2004] On August 21st and 22nd, two 'ancient' tape-recorders made their way up the mountain to deposit their ancient wisdom into the digital matrices of Clear Creek Recording studios.

The first venerable machine was my 30 year-old Teac 3340. A tank of a four-track machine, it is nevertheless beginning to show its age. Consequently, I was very happy to load the master tapes for Dave Soyars' hitherto abandoned SCATTERED BUT COMPLETE CD project onto the machine and transfer them into the digital domain. SCATTERED had been started at Mini Moose, my miniscule studio in the Southern Sierra. Once there, it was a cinch for proprietor Dave Ogden to time-composite some 'runaway' tracks and mix the five songs Soyars wished to save. I play guitar and mandolin on several of the tracks and wrote the words to one.

As the process was so fruitful, I plan to transfer the DEATH IN LOS FUMOS masters to digital soon. So I'll let you know when a DiLF remix is immanent and when Dave Soyars (AKA Dave "Ashley Planxty" Beltanovich III) plans to release his solo project.

The second venerable machine was of slightly more recent provenance. In 1992, Dave Soyars and Mike Meltzer produced the only 'studio' recording of the final lineup of David Nigel Lloyd and His Mojave Desert Ceilidh Band: Beltanovich on bass; Straitjacket on fiddle; John MacAdams on drums; and myself on guitar. Actually it was recorded in a Van Nuys, California garage baffled with furniture pads and loaded with begged, borrowed, and stolen high-end microphones. These were all connected to a Tascam 388, the world's first porta-studio. The 388 was a mixing board and 8-track recorder all-in-one unit.

The project was mixed by Soyars and Meltzer and then nixed by yours truly. John's drums especially seemed to have received short thrift, the cymbals overpowered the snare and his whole drum kit had been run through an audio filter to compensate for this; the band, consequently, sounded unbalanced and artificial. I wanted to remix but the unique Tascam 388 and its owner had disappeared. We were left with master tapes that could only be played on another 388. So the project lay dormant for 12 years while the MDCB members went their separate ways. That is until last May when visiting the MDCB's first bass player Reuben Burleson, I discovered a 388 in his living room. The rest, as they say, is history.

So the four tunes known collectively as ON THE SEVENTEENTH OF AUGUST were depositted into the ProTools environment along with an MDCB performance recorded at the 1993 Lord Buckley Memorial Celebration.

Who knows what that will yield. The possibilities are myriad.

David Nigel Lloyd and His Mojave Desert Ceilidh Band, final lineup in 1990. (pic: Chris Mierlescu)

half of Daves in the Kitchen: DNL and Dave Soyars at the 2003 Kern County Highland Games

Dave's duo, Red Felt Heart

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