Freddie - Along with the aforementioned Big Star cover, we did things like "Cigarettes and Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women" and some really odd stuff too, like Ivor Cutler's song "Bugs." (I'm going to attach a long list here of cover songs that Aaron Rice recently compiled and posted on the HBs Facebook page.)
Colin - Did you guys get along personally while touring?
Freddie - We did all generally get along pretty well on the road, at least until we did our longest and most intense tour in 1994, when we spent a good part of that summer playing just about every club, pub and/or hole in the wall that the South of England, to some degree unwittingly, had to offer. The cracks began to show there, but I should also point out that was also the tour that made us into a "real" rock 'n' roll band, a band ready to make a solid first album a year or so down the road. When we came back to Ohio off that tour, we were a completely different animal, and ready to take on just about anything that would stand in the way.
Colin - Who did most of the driving?
Freddie - Jovan did almost ALL of the driving, most notably on the gruelingly-long English tour, where he was apparently the only one capable of driving consistently on the "wrong side of the road." as you do over there. That, however, did not prevent us from being pulled over once or twice by a curious Bobby or two, who wondered aloud what the hand-rolled cigarette in Jovan's shirt-front pocket really might be. "What's all this, then...?"
Colin - What music would you guys listen to while traveling?
Freddie - We would listen to all manner of music in the touring van or car, but one memorable, if otherwise uncharacteristic, ritual we developed specifically for that English trip was that, as a way of remembering our American roots and "grounding" ourselves to some extent, we took to listening to Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town and Nebraska albums back to back, and in their entirety every morning, over our usual Weetabix and tea breakfasts.
Colin - What shows/cities do you remember fondly?
Freddie - There are many memorable shows, but, among the most notable are: the first show we played at Stache's right after returning from England as, essentially, a whole "new" band compared to what we were before that tour; a show we played in Austin for SXSW in 1995 which more or less landed us a record deal; and a show we played in D.C. while on tour with Cracker, sometime around '97 or '98, which probably showed us at about the peak of our live performing capabilities.
Colin - Where did you guys stay while recording in Nashville?
Freddie - The recording studio there is Alex The Great, owned and operated by Brad Jones and Robin Eaton, who co-produced the record with the band. The studio had a large apartment attached to it, as well as, now, a large mastering facility, Club Roar, and other very useful spaces, like the big room with the ping-pong table where Club Roar is now. So we basically lived in the studio during those frantic seven days in which we recorded all the basic tracks and overdubs, and oversaw the mixing for what would become our debut record.
Colin - Did you tinker with the arrangements in the studio or pretty much lay them down as you had been performing them live?
Freddie - We had the arrangements before going in, and we worked closely with Brad Jones and Robin Eaton to see that the songs were basically recorded the way we were envisioned them, but we also incorporated some of their ideas too. It was a shotgun wedding that seemed to work.
Colin - What guitars and amps were you using to record?
Freddie - I'd fallen in love with Vox AC 30 amps, and it just so happened that they had a really sweet one at Alex The Great. I remember that Brad had a cool way of routing the Vox's amp signal back into itself in a loop from one in-jack to the other channel.
I played my trusty old 1972 Fender Telecaster and a mid-60s Fender Mustang I'd recently got. Tim, I believe, plugged his electric guitars into mostly Fender amps, or maybe a few odds and ends they had around. We may have occasionally amped an acoustic guitar as well, but Tim used a clean acoustic guitar on several songs.
Colin - Do you have an idea how many people are already familiar with the record or does it feel like a new release?
Freddie - There were a good number of people that liked the record when it first came out, and more so after we toured it for some time and were starting some radio airplay, particularly on the East Coast. Some people, like Joe Carver at Re-Vinyl records, obviously held it close enough that the record is coming out again now and is available on vinyl for first time also.
The remastering for vinyl and iTunes, plus the corrected sleeve art make it much closer to our original vision, so that does make it feel a little bit like a new record to me.
Colin Gawel's band Watershed played many shows with the Haynes Boys. He would also often show up at their gigs loaded and scream "Play Maryhaven Family!" He founded Pencilstorm.com and owns Colin's Coffee in Columbus, OH.
