There was a time…
Knots and Crosses was a major part of my musical life - my first total commitment to a band, first record production credit, first (and last) brush with fame. And yet, the music we made vanished before the advent of internet streaming. I am pleased to say we have finally entered the 21st century.
Listen to the full album now: https://bit.ly/3PNvYQM
Knots and Crosses began in the fall of 1986 with three conservatory-trained musicians struggling to discover or reclaim their musical identities both individually and collectively. Rick’s love of blues rock and the Rolling Stones, my infatuation with the Beatles and all things pop, and Carol’s immersion in folk music, particularly the death-obsessed ballads of the British Isles. In the early stages of our attempts to find a common ground, we were treated to a life-altering performance by Richard Thompson’s band during the Daring Adventures tour. By the time he had finished “Calvary Cross,” we had a blueprint laid out before us of just what could be done with a folk song, electric guitar, and wonderfully loud drums. During the course of our career, we would explore other musical styles, but we never found ourselves far from the territory that Mr. Thompason had staked out, and our cover of “Walking on a Wire” would appear in nearly every live show we did.
The early years were spent struggling to define our sound and find an audience. We made an endless series of demos, which garnered us sporadic airplay on Boston rock radio stations and tiny nibbles of interest from record companies. Simultaneously, we were working our way through the weeknight schedules at T.T. the Bears, but we never really made sense to the crowd of rabid moshers or tattooed cool.
After spending much too much money on demo tapes, we began recording new material on a little eight track that I had. We recorded drums and bass for six songs in one afternoon, calling the session a few songs short because we didn’t the twenty-five bucks for the next hour. Included in this group was a song built around a riff that Rick had brought to the previous day’s rehearsal. Having only a handful of lyrics, we arranged the song with the tape rolling, while Carol formulated a chorus with each successive take. After completing overdubs, it became apparent that our little demo was turning out rather well, and that the unfinished song, now completed, seemed to have a life of its own. Since nobody else was interested, we put the CD out on our own. The title song, “Creatures of Habit,” became a massive, left-field success on Boston triple-A radio, and before we knew it, we were assembling CDs in our living room as fast as we could. Our naiveté had a certain charm, and the honesty of the music came through the low budget technology. After years of trying too hard to fit the norm, our audience had found us.
We sold a fair number of records and concert tickets, but despite the best efforts of our lawyer, not a single record company could be convinced of our potential worth. Not knowing where to turn, we embarked on a second self-made recording. This time we were a bit less naïve, a bit more calculated. To complicate matters further (much further), the marriage between Carol and myself had disintegrated a month before the first sessions. The winter air was tense (and chilled) in the shed in my backyard as we recorded our vocals with faithful engineer Coleman Rogers (God love him). The Fleetwood Mac comparisons were obvious and annoying, and the difficult second album Curve of the Earth came out that spring. This time flirtations with several record companies finally led to signing with Island Records in the fall. A truly bizarre set of recording sessions in the South, and the inevitable corporate restructuring found us dropped by the label, before any serious work on a third album had begun.
Exhausted and at a total loss, the band decided to call it quits. Some people have since told me that we were ahead of our time, that we were behind the times, that we were in the wrong place at the right time (and vice versa), but it was clear to us that we were simply out of time. But times change, and several years later we were back in a rehearsal room working up two unrecorded songs from our past. After fifteen minutes, we were transported back to a simpler, warmer, happier time. A time that in reality never was, but in some ways felt as if it always was.
There was a time.
Alan Williams
May ‘99
