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Living Large in San G. live EP featuring The CasualTees in La Honda style splendor, March 2007. High energy, lots of kinetic everything between the band members. Recorded live in the San Gregorio General Store, Hwy 1 & Woodside Road, California. Thanks to all in the room for the chance to play straight from the

Download as FLAC (16/44.1k)

Living Large in San G. live EP featuring The CasualTees in La Honda style splendor, March 2007. High energy, lots of kinetic everything between the band members. Recorded live in the San Gregorio General Store, Hwy 1 & Woodside Road, California. Thanks to all in the room for the chance to play straight from the heart.

Why An EP?

While there may be a full LP version of this particular show with The CasualTees, I chose to release these 4 tracks at this time, with these ideas in mind:

First, I love the "Before Those Winter Nights" performance. It's hard to ever capture that kind of raw energy in a studio even if it's all live which nearly all my studio recordings are. The crowd is a huge factor and big part of the whole chemistry and performance.

A similar huge wave of energy is encapsulated in the next track "I'll Never Know Tomorrow". But to me the 2nd track has a lot more subtle messages going on between the band members. In fact I can't hear much of it without headphones. When you are performing you don't get to hear all of the subtleties going on. Over time, these hard-to-hear artistic commentaries going on, not just as notes played, but visceral rhythmic and percussive sounds from guitars, horns, bass and voice get assembled for me at least, into a bigger picture about what the given song has momentarily become. It's purely temporal.

The last 2 songs take almost an about-face approach and hit some of the very open, subtle ways the band could perform. Hugely anti-climatic in some ways, yet not so (assuming Less is More) in others. That bipolar contrast wasn't my intention exactly (at first I had the song order different). Trying to present the full dynamics of a band in 4 songs is tough. But that's the "record" I wanted to leave of this particular period with this particular band. In fact the ending trail of the 4th song "If I Had My Way" is barely above a whisper across the entire band. Decrescendo to the limit.

Over some time and many listens I began to hear more and more of the subtle messages between band members in these last 2 songs. While both songs have particular meaning for me as far as songwriting, this goes beyond that as far as choosing them for the EP. If someone (let's say me) were to carefully analyze the chemistry and mechanics of the band with just these 4 songs, I think they (again, me in my example) would come away with a realization that there were no limits to this type of band.

The CasualTees could spontaneously create a mood and an environment to express the mood. All through the song that will and did sound a hundred different ways in a hundred different performances.

This is the essence of the band that came to be known as The CasualTees.

• David Elias, 5/12/2023