ANTIETAM

After setting course for all things three, again Tim and Tara raided the Louisville talent pool to entice old friend Charles Schultz, drummer for the Dickbrains, Your Food and the Bulls, to move to NY and join us. As with every member of Antietam to this point, he quickly found employment at Columbia University in the libraries. Almost immediately we found ourselves recording a track, "Stanley," at Kramer's Noise New York for inclusion on Homestead's second label compilation Human Music.
When our team at Homestead departed for Matador and Spin, we found ourselves label-less. An old friend, Charley Brown (at that time Jane's Addiction's manager), put us in touch with his partners at Triple X Records in LA, and we signed a deal that would last through three releases. Meanwhile, we toured the eastern half of the country with tour manager Tim Merello, gigged around town, and wrote the songs for our next album.

At the same time, a local scene was brewing that would come to approximate our old Louisville scene in terms of building a musical family. Gigs at the Space at Chase (where one night TK returned from a quick spin around the block to find a nonchalant TH saying "Tara meet Dee Dee" as a cane-leaning Ramone was in her face), the Spiral, the Pyramid and Brownies with the likes of Sleepyhead, Fish and Roses, Love Child, Flying Saucer and others would lead to lifelong partnerships and inter-band collaborations. One such seminal moment occurred as Antietam played a party on the roof of NYU's Brittany Hall where we met Chris O'Rourke, Rachael McNally, and Mike Galinsky of Sleepyhead, and future TH Special Pillow bandmates Dan Cuddy and Peter Walsh (soon after that in Hypnolovewheel). Sue Garner and Ira Kaplan appeared for a sizable portion of the set in what were probably the first guest appearances with us for both of them.

Finally ready to record for Triple X, in 1989 we hit Wharton Tiers's Fun City Studios for the first of many sessions recorded there over the years. YLT's Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan produced. The YLT pair made a gorgeous record out of Burgoo and helped us, for the first time, to realize pop and vocal potential without losing our roar. Wharton finally captured TK's blood and guts guitar -- the linchpin MesaBoogie amp TK still leans on made its first appearance here. After contributing his jangly rhythms and beautiful harmonies to Burgoo, completing a tour for the record, and solidifying Antietam's new idenity as a trio, Charles left the band in the fall of 1990.