The Illegal Artists

Bob Giddens called Mike Stewart to ask if he would get involved with him in doing a non-Cliff Barnes recording. They came over to Texas and played SXSW and brought some tapes of already recorded songs, recorded with Manfred Schutz and Marcus at the Fear Factory. Mike proceeded to overdub with Austin players (Danny Barnes and Ralph White from the BAD LIVERS, Susan Voelz, John Nelson). The tapes were 1 inch 16 track, well before many ADATS or digital recording was really happening, so they had to find a machine that would work. They ended up working a small studio in a guy's garage they had never met and have never seen again. Marcus Praed was the guitar player. Heinz Rebellius was the bassist. They mixed in a little studio called The Cottage Studio in Spenge, Germany, near Quackenbruck. The record never got any notice. Their label was unable to fight their way through the distributer going out of business and the time it took to settle that. The Cliff Barnes fans did not really find the serious songs to be to their taste and in the end it more or less fell flat in the marketplace.