In 2004, Prairie Psycho released their fourth album at their Scenefest 2 show in Lincoln, NE at Duffy's Tavern.

Someday, it will be economically feasible to release the entire album, but for now, A Prairie Psycho features only the original compositions.

For posterity's sake, here is the original tracklisting:

1. Laws Off My Libido (Stanfield)
2. Vulgar Message (Stanfield)
3. Stefan Doesn't Live Here Anymore (McClain)
4. I Found That Essence Rare (Gang of Four)
5. Better Days (McClain)
6. Gillian, You're a Flake (Stanfield)
7. All Night Drugstore (Stanfield)
8. Scorn Pole (Stanfield)
9. Black and White (Holsapple)
10. Today I Broke (Stanfield)
11. Maria Montez (Stanfield)
12. I Wanna Destroy You (Hitchcock)
13. Baby's On Fire (Eno)
14. I Wanna Be Your Dog (Stooges)
____
15. Better Days (with original guide vocal) (McClain)
16. Drug Store Drivin' Man (Channeled from the American collective unconscious by McClain)

A PRAIRIE PSYCHO COMPANION (2004)

Liner notes by Scott Stanfield (Composed April 2020)

Several fortunate circumstances combined in the making of A Prairie Psycho Companion.

In the spring of 2004, Spencer Munson, at the time an undergraduate at Nebraska Wesleyan, was taking a course in recording music, and thus (1) needed a suitable project and (2) had access to a very nice recording facility that was set up in Kimball Recital Hall on campus. Spencer knew about us and liked us, so he asked about recording a Prairie Psycho set.

The timing was fortuitous for us. We had been playing with drummer John Talbird for four years, and we had gelled nicely—we were one tight little rock ’n’ roll outfit.

We rolled into Kimball Recital Hall one night in April, nine or ten o’clock at night, I think, and set up our gear on the stage, facing each other as we typically did in practice. Spencer and Tim Scahill (also an NWU student then, and front man of one of Lincoln’s best bands of that era, Rent Money Big) set up some microphones. And then we just played the songs we had been playing lately, recording them in exactly the order that is on the CD. We did two takes of the first several songs, but once we were warmed up, we were getting everything on the first take—in fact, we only paused for a second between the last two numbers, starting up the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” while the last notes of Eno’s “Baby’s on Fire” were still reverberating. (Those songs and a few other covers are not on the Bandcamp site, I should note.) It was a great night.

A few days later, we overdubbed the lead vocals over a couple of nights, but all the basic tracks are just as we laid them down on that April night. Even the guitar solos—Larry was burning it up that night, doing things we had never heard him do before, all on the spur of the moment.

So, a track-by-track survey:

“Laws Off My Libido.” I wrote this one rather quickly—I had the little guitar riff, and the lyrics were mainly free association about some picaresque cross-country journey I took only in my imagination.

“Vulgar Message.” See above—again, I just stumbled across a riff, and wrote the lyrics as quickly as I could—as I sometimes do, so that I don’t overthink them. The second verse is about the French Revolution, the third about Daniel Clowes’s Ghost World. This has been a real evergreen for us—we still play it regularly. It was re-recorded for Yogi Nostos.

“Stefan Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” One of Larry’s, first recorded for our debut, Prairie Psycho, and a live staple for as long as Larry was in the band. With Noel on electric guitar rather than banjo, and John on drums, the song had evolved so much that we thought a re-recording was in order.

“Better Days.” Another one of Larry’s compositions.
On the first take, Larry’s boost pedal failed to engage when he got to the solo; faced with such mechanical betrayal, he spontaneously delivered the cri de coeur you can hear on “Better Days (with original guide vocal).” That’s not his normal voice, by the way—I think he suddenly started channeling Flannery Connor’s Hazel Motes. As sheer improv comedy, it’s impressive, so we decided to include it on the CD.

“Gillian, You’re a Flake.” One of mine, and not based on anyone I know, let me be clear. It’s about being in love with someone who is just plain bats, but loving them all the more for just that reason.

“All-Night Drugstore.” One of mine, and a persona song. The “I” in the song is a bad boyfriend. Some while ago, he simply took off (for Spain, he says) without a word to the girlfriend, the “you” of the song. Now he is in back in town, tracking down the girlfriend at her new job at the all-night drugstore. He would like to get back together. Let’s hope she tells him to get lost.
The story may be a bad fit for the jangle-pop tune. I like to think that the vinegar in the lyrics somehow makes an interesting blend with the chime-y sweetness of the music.

“The Scorn Pole.” I wrote this, but what was I thinking? Not sure I know. A “scorn pole” is where malefactors were brought for appropriate punishment in various Icelandic epics. The “althing,” mentioned in the last verse, was a kind of formal assembly in those epics.
I had been reading Njal’s Saga, which obviously influenced the song, but the first verse imagines Morrissey and Ian Curtis bumping into each other in Manchester. Where did that come from?
I think there was something doomed-sounding in the music (though no minor chords in it, interestingly) that made me think of Joy Division and deadly feuds between Icelandic clans.

“Today I Broke.” I wrote this back in…1990, I think. I had been listening intently to Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation and wanted to get some of the beautifully discordant sound of Thurston and Lee. I did not know at the time that they use a lot of special tunings—I did it the hard way!
The speaker in the lyrics (again, not autobiographical) has a drug-induced mental breakdown and ends up in the hospital. Cheery!
I was in a band called Head for a few months in 1994, and we used to do “Today I Broke,” but it did not occur to me to bring it to Prairie Psycho until 2003. It just did not seem like our kind of song—and it’s not our kind of song, to tell the truth, but it still wound up sounding good.

“Maria Montez.” Maria Montez was a movie star in the 1940s (e.g., Cobra Woman) and a kind of icon for gay artists who grew up in those years, like Jack Smith. I found out about her when I was reading about Jack Smith, actually. The song is about a boy of maybe 12 or 13 discovering himself by imaginative identification with Maria Montez.

“Drug Store Drivin’ Man.” Larry just started playing between a couple of takes, making it up as he went along. A mad bit of inspired improvisation.