New
Musical Developments from John Croslin in 2003/04:
According
to the Nov./Dec. 2002 "Tape
Op" magazine, John Croslin will be spending most of 2003
doing less producing and engineering of other artist's albums.
He'll be spending his time working on a solo album of his
own instead. Read
the interview.
In addition, he's formed a new band called Fire Marshals of
Bethlehem which may or may not be helping him out on his new
album (for all we know at this point, it could be a Fire Marshals
album instead of a solo album). They're playing around Austin
fairly regularly and reports say the music, while definitely
different than The Reivers', isn't a radical departure and
at times Croslin and Lowrey's voices recall the Croslin/Longacre
duets of the past.
The
band, March 13, 2003 at the Texas Union Theater [left -right]:
Jenny Smith (violin), Kevin Carney (guitar, vocals), Dave Mider
(drums, vocals), Julie Lowrey (vocals), Hunter Darby (bass),
John Croslin (guitar, vocals)
[Chopper (nylon string
guitar, keyboards), also a band member(?), was not at this performance.]
*See pictures from
June 20, 2003 at The Carousel Lounge in Austin, TX taken by
Rafael Rodriguez.
*See pictures from the
March 13, 2003 SXSW show at the Texas Union Theater taken by
Mark Porter.
*For
a review of the SXSW show, including the origin of the band
name, here's
a show review from the Austin Chronicle.
Saturday
and End of the Day Re-released With Bonus Tracks:
Dualtone
Records in Nashville, in cooperation
with Capitol Records, re-released Saturday and End Of The
Day, on March 19, 2002. The big plus for long-time fans is
the inclusion of two bonus tracks per album. For Saturday,
the extra tracks are Bidin' Time (formerly found only
on the DB compilation Squares Blot Out The Sun) and True
Love Will Find You, a Daniel Johnston song. For End Of
The Day, the first extra song is Tell Me So, which
finally gets released after being a regular in their live
sets and recorded for both End Of The Day and Pop Beloved.
Green Dolphin Street, the old standard popularized
by Tony Bennett, was also recorded around this time and now
sees the light of day, too.
The cd
booklets are written by Rob Thomas and Peter Blackstock. Thomas
wrote the Saturday notes. Besides having an entertaining webpage
which explains, among other things, that he is not the same
Rob Thomas as the lead singer of Matchbox 20, he is an author,
scriptwriter, and t.v. producer. In his earlier life, he was
a member of Austin band Public Bulletin, which evolved into
Hey Zeus, and Black Irish. John Croslin was the producer of
a Public Bulletin EP and Thomas used to attend many Zeitgeist/Reivers
shows with Peter Blackstock, the author of the End of the
Day liner notes. Blackstock, besides being a long-time Reivers
fan, is the co-founder and co-editor of the excellent music
magazine No
Depression.
Violet Crown 
Cindy Toth has been performing
as part of the Austin band Violet Crown, which is led by singer/songwriter
Larry Seaman (she also played on his Seaman's Quartet album
in 1999). Violet Crown released an album, These Are The Days,
in 2003 with Cindy on bass. It's available from Waterloo
Records.
Proving that it's a small world (or at least a "small
Austin"), Kim Longacre was part of Violet Crown on their
1996 EP cassette...which was produced by John Croslin.
