the 1st LP, on Texas Hotel, has "Living with a Dreaming Body" and "Pulling Touch"
I even took this foto, notice Frank Orrall is not on the front cover!
Busking on the Dam, Amsterdam 1996?
LINKS
Everybody's Trying (memphis).mp3
I put a lot of time and energy into this band.... they were so good. I even managed them for 4 years, trying to help the world see what I saw. They sold a lot of records and the revolving group of musicians who played in Poi Dog is a pretty eclectic large group. The legendary first Texas Hotel record (yes, it first came out on vinyl & casstte) I recorded in Austin at Arlyn Studio. We did this record totally at night after the studio's day work was done so we could get cheap time.. we did the whole record including mixing in 5 days. Every morning I was sitting there mixing at about 9:00 when the cleaning people came to make the studio ready for the days work. This record has magical things on it..... Bruce Hughes is one of the greatest living bass players and singers....Adam Sultan on Guitar....Susan Voelz on Violin....Dave "Crawfish" on Trumpet...Mark Williams on cello....Ted Cho guitar and mandolin...Abra Moore sang with the band on this CD, but never really went out on the road with them after this. The recording sold 47,000 copies and got the major labels coming around for a bidding war. In the end Frank Orrall really was not major label material...wanting to do things too much on his own terms and at a critical point, after 2 major label releases, disassembled the band and reformed it in Chicago with new musicans, though included Dave Crawford and Susan Voelz, who moved to Chicago with Frank and still live there.
Frank was a brilliant musician and band leader for the most part. He could play drums with a perfect groove and sound, and was an excellent melodica player and a very rythmical acoustic guitar player. The band played alot of different styles, which was their biggest draw to their fans, but always bothered Frank abit.
One of my best stories about Poi Dog is when I sat down on an airplane one time next to an obviously nervous woman who wanted to chat away with me to help settle herself down for take off. In our chatting and finding out about each others lives, she discovered I was the guy who produced Poi Dog. Looking at me astonishedly she confessed to me that her husband had just died and she was leaving to go on a holiday to heal her wounds and to grieve, but during her husband's dying days he had only wanted to listen to one record...the POI DOG first recording.....he told her that somehow it made him more peaceful about approaching death...The universe had somehow guided us to sit in these seats on this airplane for me to hear this from her. life is full of synchronicity if we will stop and notice. I was blessed to hear this from her and still believe this is one of the most special recordings ever made. Kim Fowley told me one time that the kick drum on Pulling Touch was the best kick drum ever recorded. This session was all about setting up some good mics, moving them around until they sounded real and pushing the record button.
We were ahead of our time on this one, musically and spiritually, I think.