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The Inland Sea Session '97

by THE DAMES

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1.
Have to Say? 03:29
2.
3.
Let You Go 01:57
4.
Orifice 02:11
5.
Bully Song 03:07
6.
7.
Times Ten 02:47
8.
Transparent 03:31
9.
Devil Flu 04:20
10.
11.
Unharmed 03:23
12.
13.
Wet Bread 02:33
14.
15.
L.D. 03:40
16.
Been Had 03:05
17.
18.
Off the Hook 03:29
19.
Lum Song 02:25

about

This session was supposed to produce the songs for the first Dames album. So was the next one. And the one after that. In any event, this was the first time the band called "The Dames" had recorded something. And they recorded everything they had in one go.

The Dames had started the previous fall. Tony Bennett and Scott Litwin had become fast friends and started the band Relapse as teens at Denfeld High School. Relapse went under in late '95 or early '96, and, by then, Tony had joined forces with fellow Denfeld grad Rusty Johnson, who also had the itch to play rock music. Weirdly, the three came together in a Misfits cover-band project headed up by a guy named Ryan Becken. At some point, the decision to keep playing original music as a trio after the Misfits band ended was made, only Tony went back to guitar after playing bass in the Misfits band, and Rusty decided to pick up the bass for the first time, because, well, someone had to do it.

Quickly, the band began learning tons of songs and playing tons of shows at local venues like Le Petit in Superior and the Norshor in Duluth. It wasn't long before the trio felt as if they were building a name for themselves. At one Recyclabell show, the band caught wind of a rumor going around that they were "from California." To them, this meant that they must be pretty good to make people think they just couldn't be from Duluth.

Things were rolling and plans to break into the Minneapolis scene were being made around the time of this recording.

It's tough to pinpoint exactly why none of this material ever came out on an album, but a few things were at play, here. One is that the band -- all aged 21 -- still were very green and immature, and they didn't have a lot of guidance or a basic understanding of how to record properly. So, what you end up with is a collection of songs with blown lyrics, missed beats, out-of-tune parts and so on. For some reason, the guitar had a kind of chorus effect put on it. These things happened without the band really knowing how to address them, and then, later, when listening to the tape of the sessions, it seemed every track had something wrong with it that couldn't be fixed due to the fact that it had all been recorded live to stereo. Minor errors became major ones when they couldn't be fixed.

The other factor was that Scott had been fighting a years-long battle with alcoholism, and he eventually had to be let go. Rusty and Tony loved Scott, but he wasn't able to be there as a bandmember in the way they needed him to be. The plan was to get out on the road, to record albums, to do all the things that bands have to do to try to make it, and Scott was struggling to just make it to practice, at times. It was a bummer.

Towards the end of 1997, the band played Minneapolis' 7th St. Entry with a fill-in drummer named Mat Milinkovich, and he would eventually join the band full-time in 1998. Scott Litwin passed away in 2014.

As for this recording, it had been lost for years. The band had gotten reference tapes at the time, and, somehow, everyone seemed to lose their copy. In 2013, Tony reached out to Dave Hill at Inland Sea to ask if he still had the master. Dave encouraged Tony to come by and dig around in his attic to find out. It then took Tony six years to prioritize this and make it happen. In 2019, Tony and local engineering genius Jake Larson went and hunched over in Hill's attic/crawlspace and dug through every box of reels, all of it valuable artifacts of local-music history. (Seriously, the guy's got a goldmine, up there.) Eventually, this session finally popped out of one of the boxes, and there it was. Still in existence, more than two decades later.

Dave told Tony he'd have to bake the tapes in an oven to revive them correctly, and this took some time. And then, there was a pandemic. But eventually, in 2021, Jake and Tony went to Inland Sea to sit with Dave in the control room of his fantastic studio hidden in a nondescript building in Superior and Dave put the music on the big speakers. Dave had kind things to say about the songwriting and playing, which was a little surprising since it was all so old and immature and Dave wasn't always the most outwardly complimentary. As always, he also played snippets of what he was working on at the moment. He was always into sharing what he was up to. And he only charged fifty measly bucks to bring the past back.

And now, Dave's left us, too, also before his time. He was there for the first three or four recordings by Relapse and The Dames. Going to his studio was a thrilling experience for some young, dumb guys who fantasized about doing things like hanging out in recording studios. He achieved worldwide notoriety due to the recording gear he invented and sold, but, to these dudes who were barely old enough to drink, he was just a skilled, weird dude with a ponytail and leather shorts who had the most awesome clubhouse around.

So, fuck it, here we go. This is the first thing ever recorded by The Dames. It's unedited and unchanged. All songs are in the running order they were played in, and there's been no sonic changes to the files that Dave handed off a couple years ago. It's how he thought it should sound, as far as we know.

There's cool stuff, here. Scott's playing deserves to be heard, and he's in good form, even though you can hear him being hard on himself between tracks. But his "yee-haw!" kicks things off grandly. His spirit lives on, here.

Look, some of these lyrics are stupid edgelord shit written by a kid just trying to break through. Be forewarned. And some of the playing is sloppy. The singing is overly-mannered and derivative. And some of this obviously was screaming for vocal-harmony overdubs or extra parts or this or that. But this is the truth. This is what The Dames sounded like on this day in 1997, just before their first era came to a close and stayed there for about a year. This is what these guys sounded like being recorded by that guy. And now, two of those guys are gone, and it sucks, and hopefully, this can stand as a bit of a tribute to both.

As much as the band didn't care for this now and especially then, there is a lot here that is worth saving. And Dave saved it for us. The sensible thing to do, then, is to just pass it along. Maybe you were there at Le Petit or the Norshor back in '96 or '97. Maybe you recorded at Inland Sea. Maybe this means something to you like it does to us. Hopefully, it brings you a bit of enjoyment. We're all here such a short time, it seemed dumb to hoard this for ourselves any longer. Share it, if you are so inclined.

Many of these songs are completely unreleased, but a few ended up on proper Dames albums in different versions. But nothing here has been released before. And much of it shouldn't be, as it's kinda stupid and bad. But it's also kinda beautiful and true, and Dave Hill recorded it, and Scott Litwin played his heart out on it. So it kinda rules, too.

Thanks for being there then and now and hopefully at some point in the future. Making music for people was always the best thing we could do with our time.

Long live Scott Litwin and long live Dave Hill!

(NOTE: this collection is attainable for free, as we thought it probably should be due to its primordial nature. But, if you were so inclined, you could pay what you like for it, and that will go to the current Dames, who still hope to make a record and play some more shows before they are too infirm to do so anymore. Thank you regardless!)

(ANOTHER NOTE: there is one brief dropout around the one-minute mark in "Bully Song.")

x

credits

released March 15, 2023

Recorded live to two-track stereo on May 30, 1997 by Dave Hill at Inland Sea in Superior, Wisconsin. Rescued from Inland Sea's attic by Tony Bennett and Jake Larson in spring '19. Baked in an oven and run through magical doodads to make it listenable again by Dave Hill in spring '21. Thanks for doing that, Dave. We'll miss you.

Scott Litwin: drums
Tony Bennett: guitar/vocal
Rusty Johnson: bass

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THE DAMES Duluth, Minnesota

The Dames have shared stages with Melvins, Queens of the Stone Age, Mastodon, Nebula, High On Fire, Altamont, Jucifer, Acid King, Skeleton Key, The Atomic Bitchwax, Qui, Dillinger Four, Crowbar, Low, House of Large Sizes, Hank Williams III, Atmosphere and Brother Ali, among others. ... more

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