Eleventh Dream Day - Since Grazed (2021)

It’s been a good five years since Eleventh Dream Day released their last record, Works For Tomorrow, and while good may be the wrong adjective to describe the time that has passed, tomorrow has indeed arrived with their new double album, Since Grazed (cmo051).

Where the last decade of EDD music has been defined by the work of a band honing their live roar in the studio, Since Grazed contemplates what isn’t there, and builds the songs from the bottom up, relying on long-lived friendships and trust. While Works barreled down the highway, conscious of and trying to outrace the past, Since Grazed takes the long way home, spacing out a bit, and reveling in the journey, celebrating those along for the ride. Not all have made it, but this is not a record about what is lost, it is about what is still there, however grazed it may be.

You know the story by now. Boy meets girl in 1983 Louisville, Kentucky punk rock house rendezvous, start band, learn how to play on the fly, find like-minded types to make noise and follow the Econoline dream. An EP and Prairie School Freakout record on Amoeba Records / New Rose get the word out, and next thing you know it’s Atlantic Records time times three with the orange, green, and white label spinning and the band on the run to every corner of the rock club universe. Band burns out, but doesn’t fade away. Why stop now? It’s too much fun. Put records out every once in a while as Freakwater and Tortoise forge new territory.

And that’s the way it’s gone.

Fourteen or sixteen records so far depending on how you count them.

The line-up for Since Grazed is now intact for consecutive albums, featuring Janet Bean (drums, vocals), Rick Rizzo (guitars, vocals), Douglas McCombs (acoustic and electric bass), Mark Greenberg (piano, organ, synthesizers, vocals, studio wizardry), and James Elkington (guitars, piano, synthesizers).

With Nick Macri (bowed bass) and Peggy Rizzo (flute).