As of Fall 2015, we've started digging into our archives and preparing to release three classic Cuppa Joe albums on iTunes and other digital distribution and streaming services.
The first album to be released will be The Short Rains, originally available in 1997 only on cassette and only in very low quantities. A low-fi record by necessity, The Short Rains features sixteen original songs written by Doug at the start of his Peace Corps duty in Kenya. Doug recorded the songs in his one-room hut in Africa, playing acoustic guitar and singing directly into a boombox. The cassette was then sent to Steve, who added found object percussion (Tupperware, a coffee tin, cardboard boxes) and backing vocals at S.S. Sound Studios in Trenton, completing each song.
Next is
Casualties of Exploration and Growth, another barely-released sixteen song Cuppa Joe collection. This album was actually recorded before The Short Rains, just prior to Doug leaving for the Peace Corps.
Casualties was a "proper" studio recording and the first to feature outside-the-band musicians (Jamie White and Hema Subramanian on violin and Michael Wurst on trombone). Doug played mandolin on some songs, our original bass player Diz returned for backing vocals, and Steve played a bottle of iced tea for percussion – but somehow it all came together.
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Following Lights Into the Forest is now available as a four-song EP. The original CD was an odds-and-ends recording put together in 1999. We reformed the band for a couple years back in 1998 when Doug had returned from his Peace Corps stint in Kenya. By that time, our bass player Rick (Doug's brother) had gone off to college and new bass player/singer/songwriter Craig Frame had joined us. Doug and Craig each wrote two new songs that we recorded in the studio that year. Doug then headed off to Papua New Guinea for his next Peace Corps duty with his new wife, and Following was created as a kind of going away present to longtime fans. Filled with a selection of the band's favorite live tracks, demos, and songs from the above two recording sessions (Casualties and The Short Rains), the original Following became a "hand-burned" CD given out in even smaller quantities than the two cassette releases that preceded it. This digital release of Following contains the four original tunes written for the original release.
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