Water Shed 5tet: Live at Mr. Small's

1. Baragon (Opie)
2. Flightless Bird Waltz (WS5)
3. Raspberry (Fleming)
4. Vague (Opie)
5. Hex Wrench (Opie)
6. Excavation (Opie)/Voodoo (Sonny Clark)
7. Alchemy (Opie)

with Diego Pokropowicz: tenor & baritone saxophones (tracks 2, 3, 6)

Recorded November 23 & 24, 1999, at Mr. Small's Funhouse (Millvale PA). Engineered by Peter Beckerman.

Some notes:

Since we basically played live in the studio for our previous recordings, it made sense to actually record a live performance. Even though we recorded two sets each for two days, everything except "Vague" was performed on the 23rd, and even then most of it during the first set.

I'm glad that some of the sorts of things we would try live wound up recorded. "Excavation"/"Voodoo" is an example of leading one tune into another. That's how "Flightless Bird Waltz" was created, as an improvisation between two other works. In that case, we didn't want to use the other performaces but liked this coherent improvisation.

On the "Excavation" performance, we went so long (about twenty minutes) that the master tapes ran out just under a minute before we were done. Peter Beckerman had the foresight to have a DAT tape running, and was able to successfully edit the tapes together. Thanks Peter!

"Vague" is an open-ended work, with really only the saxophone and cello melodies defined. I think it's our best recorded group performance.

We sometimes had guests sit in with the band, Diego being someone who popped up during our later years. Roger Dannenberg was our most frequent guest and played on these sessions, but unfortunately we were unable to use any of those performances.

Though this CDR is listed as an edition of 200, I really only made closer to 150-160. There are still copies left as I write this.