Music

Audible Sigh (Pre-Release) Year: 1999 | Run Time: 52:08

Track List

About Audible Sigh (Pre-Release)

Recorded in a day and a half in December of 1998 at Dogtown Studio (Buddy Miller's house) and produced by Buddy Miller, this album features a duet with Emmylou Harris, and a number of beautiful harmonies by Buddy's wife (and recording artist), Julie Miller. Recording took place right before Kevin Heuer joined the band, so Steve Earle's drummer was used for the sessions. There are four versions of Audible Sigh floating around. The first, very rare, was a limited release by Pioneer Music Group. The second was a pre-release via TrueTunes. The first official release had a number of revisions from the pre-release and features a blue duotone of Bill on the cover. The fourth release again has a slightly different song line up, and 5,000 copies contain the bonus disc entitled Room Despair, a short collection of outtakes and demos. On the slow birth of Audible Sigh, Bill has said, "It was like a small child got stuck in the birth canal... so long it asks for the car keys."

Arguably the band's most fully realized work, Audible Sigh is a deeply satisfying exploration of the lives of touring musicians who "stumble in here under a different name almost every night," "though the furniture's rearranged," away from family long enough for the leaves to pile up around the front door, tossing wishes at the sky only to watch them hover below the ceiling, and harboring starry-eyed aspirations only to watch them fail. It's a lonely but ultimately poignant road trip, never whiny, never sentimental, never straying from the honesty of the situation. A farmer hit hard by the Oklahoma dust bowl of the 1930s asks "how much of this was meant to be" or, on the other hand, how much of this did I cause with my "failing flesh?" The affair with fans is, in its own way, a "part of the curse," not because friends will let you down, but because "friends are not the refuge"â€”their support feels like the phone number of the coat-check girl scrawled on "that lipstick-stained napkin." One of the conclusions drawn by the album is beautifully simple: despite everything, "it's all just gift that we're living with." Producer Buddy Miller, fresh from producing Emmylou Harris's Grammy-nominated live album, had the advantage of knowing the Vigilantes personally, and it shows. The production is clean and polished, the roots rock fits like a glove, and the sound is full but not overpoweringâ€”this band is a firecracker. Julie Miller and Harris provide background vocals, Buddy plays some mando guitar and 12-string, and Phil Madiera lays a whirring B-3 under most of the tracks. It's a seamless rock and roll album that feels like the culmination of Bill's "seven-odd years" of "mapping the caverns of our little skulls."

Did you know?

Yes, there is actually a fourth version of Audible Sigh that has a grayscale "school kids" cover, which few people own. It was an advance version released by Pioneer Music Group. Future versions contain a historic train wreck photo, which Everlast also used on the cover of his Today import EP. With help from Garth Brooks' former PR person and many others, Audible Sigh received significant airplay on AAA stations like XPN and was featured on the World Cafe in June of 2000 where three songs were played: "Starry Eyed," "Resplendent" and "Nothing Like a Train." Audible Sigh was going to be coming out on Q Label that Bob Harris was setting in the UK, but due to circumstances beyond his control, he had to shelve his plans. Audible Sigh won an Addy award for package design. This was for the Compass release with the train wreck cover (single disc version). The package was designed by Paul Soupiset/Toolbox Studios. Also, look carefully at the star illustration featured on the cover art. It's more than just a star with a halo. The lines and circle at the top spell out "VoL." On the back cover is a photo of Schuba's, a frequent Chicago stop for the VoL tours. Based on pre-release and first week numbers, Audible Sigh charted at number 5 on the Billboard Internet chart, between Santana and N'Sync. It also reached #35 on Gavin's AAA 2000, debuting at #48 and spending 7 weeks in the top 30.

Quotes from Bill Mallonee

DATE UNKNOWN: Emmylou is just amazing. She has just got the most seductive voice—and I mean that in the best way. It is just a beautiful atmospheric breathy kind of thing that is just full of yearning and intensity. We knew that if we gave her the right song it was going to work pretty well.

Sep 25, 2000: It's been a master stroke of marketing genius. Some of you folks have probably bought [Audible Sigh] three or four times.

Jul 6, 2001: You've seen a separation of commercial Triple-A and non-commercial Triple-A. We think, unfortunately for us, where Audible Sigh ended up falling was in the non-commercial Triple-A, which is NPR, which is forty-somethings. Which is people who don't buy a lot of records, or go to a lot of shows.

Oct 11, 2003: No radio ever touched that one... we couldn't buy our way into the pages of No Depression for two years... why? You've heard no doubt that we we were told by No depression, the then reigning country-alt magazine and gatekeepers of all that's cool there that we were "a band that didn't count." That's hard stuff to hear in light of such a good record... anybody with an album that has involvement of Buddy Miller and Julie Miller and Emmylou Harris and such cast should at least get some notice... nope... they NEVER reviewed it.... Of course we went on 'cause we believed in what we do and what we did.

Dec 19, 2003: I agree that Audible Sigh is heavily compressed... it's the extra-crispy side of mixing... it also had a budget that was literally 25 times that of Locket...we made the record in a month...so we had LOT's of time to micro-manage it... sometimes I think that is a mistake and can destroy the "life" inside a track.... Buddy is one of the best producers/engineers ever... and he did a great job of capturing the raw energy of the performances... and just out-right cheering us on!

Jul 23, 2004: The fact is this: Jake and I "downsized" the whole operation... it was either that or go away... a band of four (discouraged) guys on the road was killing us... and we played some of the coolest rock and roll I've ever been involved in... Audible Sigh was great... and yes, a good band going through its paces every night whether there were 2 people there or 200, we played like there were 2,000... I will forever love that "era."

Sep 24, 2004: Buddy's musical contributions were the 12-string riff at the top of "Your Part of the Story"... and the mando-guitar parts on "Resplendent" and "Solar System"... you must understand (and this is taking nothing away from Buddy) that I DID co-produce the record... and it was material we'd played almost every night for a year before we ever rolled tape... Buddy was great at enginnering, getting remarkable tones for us... and generally making positive environment for us to be ourselves... he's always been the big fan of "let it be live" kinda sound... it was, as many have said here, a good fit.

Jun 24, 2005: It is a great record... and it was one of the easiest to do... because it was pre-produced same as you hear on the record for two year before we cut it... call it commitment to the art form... about 250 bar shows went into that record.

Credits

Bill Mallonee: lead vocals, guitars, harmonica, percussion

Jacob Bradley: bass

Kevin Heuer: drums

Kenny Hutson: guitar, mandolin, pedal steel, background vocals

Buddy Miller: mando guitar, 12 string guitar, background vocals

Julie Miller: background vocals on "She Walks on Roses," "Starry Eyed," and "Nothing Like a Train"

Brady Blade: drums

Phil Madeira: hammond b-3 organ

Emmylou Harris: background vocals on "Resplendent"

Tammy Rogers: fiddle

Produced by Buddy Miller and Bill Mallonee. Art Direction/Concept/Design by Paul Soupiset for Toolbox Studios, Inc. Front cover photograph under license Â©1999 Archive Photos. Back cover photograph Â©1999 Dinah K. Bauer.

Liner Notes

Fellow VOL Fans,

I first saw The Vigilantes Of Love play at the Cornerstone Festival in 1992. I knew, as front man Bill Mallonee tore through a blistering set of heartfelt and challenging roots rock, that this was something special. Through the years the band has been featured in our pages over half a dozen times, they played numerous concerts at our store and club (RIP) and never failed to make us proud. Thus it is with great excitement that i present you with this very limited pre-release version of Audible Sigh. This album was recorded for Pioneer Records and was scheduled to be released in April 1999. Unfortunately that label closed its doors and our heroes were left, as has been the case far too often for them, scratching their heads. .Thanks to the generosity of Pioneer, the band has been freed up to pursue a new record label to release this amazing album.

Prior to closing their doors, Pioneer shipped a limited number of pre-release copies of this album to various industry types. When the news came down that the album was to be delayed, anxious fans ran to the internet to try and score one of the precious pre-release copies. Some fans actually began bootlegging copies to sell. Though their intentions are good, this practice of bootlegging is illegal and wrong, no matter how they may try to justify it. A major incentive for this limited release is to curb the bootlegging and offer an actual, legal, pre-release to the fans. Only 2,000 copies of this have been made, so it will be considered a collector's item practically as soon as it is released. Please do not copy this CD. Honor the efforts of the band and the companies involved and discourage bootlegging wherever you can.

On another note, there is a good chance Audible Sigh will grow and change before it is officially released. There will likely be new songs on the final version. There may also be songs on this pre-release that don't end up on it. In considering this project, Bill, the band's management and I were concerned about his diluting the impact of the official release. It will be important for those lucky few who have this little gem to still rush out and get the end product. Regarding that Bill says, "Unfortunately, record companiesâ€”if we do sign and release through a labelâ€”tend to listen with their math [in the form of Soundscan numbers] as opposed to their ears. But for the moment this seems a good way to let folks know we appreciate them. The grassroots following this band has is, by far and away, its greatest treasure."

Of course you can get the final version through True Tunes, but wherever you choose to purchase it, let's all get out and buy it the first week it is released. Our hope is that this special release will fuel the underground fire of enthusiasm for this amazing band, not to take away from the sales of the "official" version. If we all buy the final version upon its release, and we use these advance copies to get even more people on the train, the band will get on the "radar" at radio, retail and other media If any band deserves a larger international audience than it has been given, it is this band. The Vigilantes are simply one of the most important bands I have ever heard.

Thanks again for your support of The Vigilantes Of Love and True Tunes! Enjoy Audible Sigh, and spread the word...

- JJT