A Story of Sham Wedding / Hoax Funeral.
Sham Wedding / Hoax Funeral is our clever little title for a tour-only split CD between Okkervil River and
Shearwater, the other band I play in with Jonathan. The Shearwater songs on this CD come from many different sources -
unreleased album tracks, unused demos, and studio one-offs. The Okkervil River songs come mostly from a weekend session
of recording at Thor Harris’s
house in the middle of the winter, with all of us shivering and the house filled with smoke
from a not-quite-working-yet stove. Having just come back from the West Coast leg of our American tour, we were mainly
just recording for fun and played a lot of old-time covers and a handful of new songs composed when we were in Europe.
One of these, “Murderess,” appears on this CD. Really, most of the stuff on this CD was done in the spirit of fun and
intended never to be released - hence all the old-time covers - but we think that that quality is what makes the disc
a nice, refreshing little album. Below find the tracklisting:
Sham Wedding/
Okkervil River
1. See See Rider
2. Murderess
3. Moonshiner
4. Willow Tree
5. Unravel
Hoax Funeral/
Shearwater
6. All the Pretty Horses
7. Happy Song for My Friends
8. Cool My Blood
9. Mountain Laurel
10. Trouble in Mind
11. Never Come Again
Enormous thanks this time around go out to Andrew Schmidt - who recorded the lion’s share of this stuff for fun and for almost no remuneration - and Ryan Nole at the wonderful Kangaroo Press for his elegant packaging design and quick turnaround. And our ex-drummer Mark Pedini for the album art.
Available only at shows Spring 2004.