Focus 580; Preserving Early Recordings

In this part of focus 580 We will talk about preserving early sound recordings and our guests here in the studio are RICHARD MARTIN And Megan Hennessy and they are the owners of archaea phone records located in St. Joe Illinois not very far from here where we are and are Bana. And they're interested in preserving and annotating public domain recordings of the acoustic era music and entertainment industry and if you're not quite sure what that means. Well we'll talk about that what the recording technology was before we got to electric microphones the kind of things that we use now. They have brought some examples We'll play some music and we'll talk a little bit about what is involved in finding these recordings and processing them with contemporary technology to get them to sound as good as they possibly can. And of course questions are welcome. The number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Well thank you both very much for being here. Obviously here this is one of the things that you're doing is you're taking music that.

That exist but maybe it's hard to find. It's informed that people are easily going to be able to listen to now may be would sound wouldn't sound real great just because of the limitations of the technology and the condition of the disks or whatever it is that it's recorded on. So it's definitely is a way of making this kind of material accessible to people who who want you got a CD player you can play it and listen to it right. Hold on a second I for some reason we seem I'm not getting their mikes in in my headphones there Henry How about now. How's that. Oh OK there we go. Yeah I'm sorry we see. Still there are some bugs in the technology we have you know it's only two thousand four but you know what got that worked out. Yeah that's right each of our compact discs with a collection of usually 20 24 26 songs taken from original sources and.

The INR case that would be 78 rpm discs so called 78 they sometimes went faster sometimes when slower and wax and cellulite cylinders. Many of your listeners probably know all about 78 they got some of those stashed away in the in the closet still. But maybe they don't know about cylinders these are. What they are what they sound like cylinders they look like you know maybe toilet tissue rolls a little bit thicker made on wax in the earliest days it was a brown malleable soft wax that was recorded directly onto in the days before mass production so they'd have to make one at a time. And in later days they they managed to get a molding process where they could mass produce and these were done on site Lloyd. Did you start out here just because this was a particular interest of yours that you were interested in really old records. We started collecting and at some point we realized that none of this was being reissued

it was being lost and we thought we should try and preserve some of it. It is a lot of cases before mass production. There is just a few copies around. So if you don't have the copy of the record. That's right it's the interest in documenting this stuff in preserving history in getting these public domain recordings out there and educating people about America's musical past. Well I thought maybe we should definitely play some music and it might be a good thing or at least I thought of the the CDs that you sent over for us to listen to that we could start with what is the oldest thing on here. This is the Edison concert band from 1897. And as I'm assuming this was this was a set an Edison cylinder this would be a brown wax cylinder from about 1897. All right well let's hear this this is the El Capitan March. Cool.

Thanks Lou. Cool clothes Thank you. Thank you Lou. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Cool thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank Cool thanks. you. Cool thanks. Thank you Lou.

We are all right that is the we said it was the Edison concert band this was 1897 this was a wax and Edison wax cylinder right which is just like what it sounds like it's a it's a cylinder it turns and there's some kind of a stylus that comes in contact with the seller kind of like a record something right there's a groove something right in the groove and right mixes except it goes up and down it's Hillendale. If you if you have you know people who still have turntables out there if you look at the needle on your on your LP or 45 or whatever it is the needles are actually gone laterally.

It's vibrating back and forth. So that's lateral technology the cylinders go up and down in the grooves are Hillandale as the thing turns on the mandrel. And the feed screw. Takes the. Reproducer across. So it sort of later sort of moves it moves from from left to right or right to left like you know right from yeah right goes from left to right there's a horn sticking out of it. And your listeners can probably hear that horn quality. This the the band would have been performing in two large horns that then made vibrations in a diaphragm and then at just their signal onto the soft wax now they would do. They would perform into a bank of horns maybe a dozen or eight and get that many copies out of one performance and then they do this in a number of times until everybody got tired and then the studios could make copies from those cylinders. So if that last selection sounded a little brash for instance it's probably because it was copied either

by a tube method. Those tend to sound kind of hollow. This one is a more brash this is probably pantograph. Just as a joke. Well I guess just for people to get the images in their mind I'm sure that people have seen old photographs that have the horns right and madge where the sun comes up. So just imagine a VERY MUCH bigger one that the musicians would have to stand in front of and play into so the musicians would play into it if there was a singer they would sing into it very loudly everything very loudly and the vibration so there's no electricity involved at all. It's a completely physical method of doing this. You're sure shout your plane to the Big Horn and those vibrations eventually get translated into the little scratches on the cylinder and then play it back you'd sort of do the sing the same process backwards.

Exactly because of the way it's recorded you also can't stop and correct errors so there are cylinders that have some nice share and they just released it. And then also I guess the part of the reason that these things sound the way that they do is that that the. There's a there's a concept called dynamic range in music which essentially means the the all of the range from the highest notes to the lowest knowns. This is one of the things about this technology is that the highest notes in the lowest notes didn't make it. That's right so all you're getting is kind of the in-between and that's also why it is that why it sounds like kind of like music played over a telephone. Exactly. Now they they could record more than they could playback. So if you listen to you know your old Victrola a disc or or if you have a sewing machine and you play it with the horn you're going to get less bass and less trouble than you could if you reproduced it electrically. So when we do our transfers for instance we use electric. Needles and methods. So we get a little bit more base so you actually so we as a result of that your

technology we can actually hear more than the people could when they were using the reproducing technologies or of the time tiny bit more. In America we have a caller here and I want to bring them into the conversation maybe actual should also introduce our guest Richard Martin. Megan Hennessy they are the owners of archaea phone records and they have put out a number of CDs. They have a website by the way if you'd like to go and find out about Arky phonon and look at their catalog w w w dot A R C H ph O N E dot com. OK are you going to come and they are as we said they're interested in preserving acoustic music recordings things that these days would be extremely difficult to find or even if you could find them. You might not be able to play them unless you have they're all all the right hardware and we do have somebody here with a call somebody on a cell phone so we'll get right to them. Line two. Hello. Oh yes. You actually covered a couple things I want to ask you about and I was listening to. And I thought a couple of things. One was I you know

it's sort of characteristic of really old recordings that sort of and I was thinking about wondering what the bandwidth of the technology was there how much you know about both because there really is no bass in there. But as I was thinking about sound being vibrating air and being able to capture that vibration and translate that into something that you could reproduce reproduce it was pretty amazing to me. But that was really my first question you know when was it. I'm assuming that the Edison fan had to do with Thomas Edison the inventor of that or is it more our local Edison High School band I now it's you're right it's Thomas Edison's company the National Phonograph Company. And his house orchestra the Edison band they had several It was the Edison concert band The Edison symphony band The Edison brass quartet things

like that. The your first question about about frequency response on these I can give you numbers that are probably generally agreed upon people actually argue you know whether they can you know hear one extra hertz or not but about 150 on the low scale and up to 6000 Hertz on the high scale or 5000 the cylinders actually have harmonics that go higher than than the the discs. And I try to hold on to as many of those as possible and when I produce these things I think you maybe you're hearing theoretically when he heard the 20000 heard and perfect hearing that's that's pretty wild. But I was actually amazed at how good that sounds. Yeah it's there's a real beauty too to the acoustic process once you get used to it I mean you know if you can if you can get over the prejudice we have towards whispering and microphones there's a lot to enjoy there there's a there's a bracing

freshness to it. And then there are the you know they sound very present they sound like they're there standing there next to you hollering into a point. Yeah it's all mechanical. It's all just capturing that vibration and then transferring it to a wax cylinder. I made it how they figured out that that wouldn't work right now and it was Addison who was at the vanguard of that. I mean there are other people who made significant contributions but in terms of cylinder technology he's he's one of the first. The next selection that we're going to play actually is going to take us from the brown black spirit which we just heard the early stuff where they were made. You know one by one to be mass production stage where you won't have quite the brashness because now instead of copying them from from a master cylinder they actually had a molded process where they could pour the wax in and produce on that way.

But but literally those the first ones they had one horn for each cylinder or did they have a bass before that all they had no one thought or they had a collection of horns they recorded onto each of which recorded onto their own cylinder and because the singer would be varying distances from the cylinders for the same Take can have very different qualities and they used to sell them in some cases in different ways in terms of this one being better for listening to through earphones and this one being better for a horn. You thought that I was going to say one more thing about the performance. The orchestra's would be sized down. I mean you wouldn't have a full size orchestra you have probably could only get so many people in front of the horn. So that's why you're here. Symphony sort of classical pieces and they sound really stripped down and that's because there weren't as many musicians as you would if you were having it on a concert stage in a full size they wouldn't fit into the room and it would overwhelm the apparatus.

Just would be right. Nothing but mud. They'd be too far away from it. Really you think you have the good work. Thanks very much. Thanks for the call and of course other calls are welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Well you suggested we might play something off of a different CD. It's a collection of recordings by a man named Billy Murray who was Billy Mary. Billy Murray was the premiere recording artist from about 900 to nine hundred twenty five he was just the biggest guy in a day he recorded everything on record with just about everybody. So he was big he was the biggest star of his day. Yeah he's really the biggest star. Prior to being Crosby I mean if you look at at 900 to 950 it's being Crosby and Billy Murray but because. I would say 80 percent of his activity was acoustic records and he did make it into the electric period he just didn't have the same cache name because I think he

was in the acoustic era people. He's just been forgotten forgotten about because people said oh that's old technology. Scott it's like your 8 tracks they threw him out and said why would we ever want to revisit that scene. OK this is we're going to hear this a familiar thought from our saw Meet Me in St. Louis right and then right when was this record of 19 0 3 I think released probably 0 4. OK let's hear that. Meet me maybe Louie Louie by Billy Martin Yeah the non-regular. Through or. Through when knowing they rolled up the ladder Luong update. Program. And through it the owner ROMANO Right. So he. Paid a rented for it and he told.

Me. I will be. A. Great one. Reading the moving frame though you. May

I. May. There there are. Rules. All right that's the great Billy Murray the great and sadly forgotten Billy Mary from the collection. Billy Murray anthology it was so he was called the Denver nightingale is that was that was a nickname for that that he was given early on it became apparent. Within his first year or so that he was going to be a star and all the companies employ him. And he made tons and tons of records. He's he's credited with having an extraordinary ability with the horn he apparently nasalized certain syllables to make them stick into the Waksal better.

So there there was a definite technique involved in singing into the horn so that you could get the best reproduction that you could get with that. Yeah. So they say and he certainly I mean you can always understand every word he says. In fact some of the people that became successful recording artist early on it wasn't because of their voice but the fact that they recorded very well. So it just just something about them just happened to be suited to that particular to the end to the limitations of the technology right and it's and it's that extraordinary talent that can take something where you're essentially shouting and warm it up. Personalize it make it make it seem like you're not. Which he's pretty good at doing. We have another caller to talk with this person is over in Terre Haute Indiana on our line for. Let's go there. Hello. Good afternoon yes or good morning in Illinois. I am very interested in this. First of all just as a side note I a friend in Nashville Tennessee has a pretty good set of recording devices and we go to old time music festivals and he

plays and has people play in front of a record sum. He then cleans off the wax or reforms it and records again if you want another one but that. I call about something else. Well my father when he was in the Army sent back a 78 rpm small shellacked based record I believe these were probably pretty cheap servicemen could go into a place and record and send it back to their family. Are those also can they be copied at any quality so you save a digital image of that. Oh sure. I think what you're talking about is what's called an instant disk a lacquered record. And yeah you know those can be transferred the same is as other as other discs. Well I I will try to locate which of my sisters has the. Then we will do something about that. Maybe getting in touch with you. Yeah give us a call again all the information's on the website at DOT archaea phone dot com. But our phone number is 2 1 7 4

6 9 7 3 3 1 and we do that services as well as putting up the commercial CDs. Well I appreciate that. The ones that my friend made with the cylinders he also transcribes those two CDs I have several CDs of it sounds just like the old time music which sometimes isn't very good you know. Voice in the background but it's you know back kind they used to record in the hills. So he's got you said now he's taken the old brown wax cylinders and shaving them down and re recording on them. Yes some of them as he buys some to get their people to supply these. That's true they do they they. There are people that supply the blanks it's apparently a very guarded secret as to the to the formula they use and it's a fairly labor intensive process to. But it's really interesting because when it's about three people can be in front of the. He just has about a two and a half foot diameter horn and takes about. That's

enough for three people to be there and you can hear each of the instruments or the singers but that's about it. No more. Nothing interesting it's an interesting hobby. I do I would have thought that people were still just kind of for the fun of it and using that old technology. He does this. He goes around all old time music festivals where they're trying to preserve old traditions and so then do you want to be recorded an old time wax cylinder and take it home you probably can't play it but you take home or find somebody who'll make a conventional CD for the people back in those days did use the the the the blanks the brown lacks blanks and do their own home recordings just like you know in when when people discovered cassettes and wanted to record everything that everybody was doing they were doing that with the brown Mark Saunders. Well this is. It's interesting that they've got a record collector as well but the old time records but he's really got into this recording stuff and I.

I find it fascinating and I thank you very much for our thanks for calling Thank you and well thank you again other questions are welcome. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 our guest Megan Hennessy and Richard Martin are the owners of archaea phone records. They're interested in preserving old sound recordings things that were done by the acoustic method and they have a number of CDs different kinds of music and again they also have a website if you'd like to find out about them and what they have. You can just type archaea phone records into your website that's sort of like archaeology That's right archaeology except for sound and a r c h e o p h o n e. And the other end as I say other questions are certainly welcome. Now I'm assuming that what happens when you are making a copy of what you do is you have to have either a turntable that will play 78 or something will play a wax cylinder that you're taking that and putting it into a computer and using some kind of a program to try to take out scratches and clicks and remove things that are not the music

so that what is there is the music and nothing else. Yeah that that's correct that we've got a number of different tools and programs we used to do that. They've gotten pretty sophisticated. Once you digitize the signal that the disk or the cylinder. There's any number of things you can do and the first of which is eliminating as many pops and clicks as possible. Crackle. And then after that broadband noise reduce that and then I like to go in and fine tune edit you know get things that escape those prophecies and then you need to you know equalize it again to be pliable. And it's probably not ok simply to leave it just like that. Because our modern playback devices CD boom boxes and hi fi stereos can start ringing a little bit with the with

the signal being so sharp there in the middle it has to be adjusted a little bit in order not to blow yours off. So would've been interesting I was sort of only thought afterwards been interesting to say to you OK bring something that was retouched. We'll play that for people so you can say this is what it sounds like when they started. Yeah and then we could say oh goodness what what the end. Yeah and at some point I mean you just have to stop you can't you can't you can't fix everything. And one of the biggest problems we we kind of touched on it here a moment ago is lasting. When when the singer or of the instruments are simply too loud for the device. The original device to have captured it just it clips it it goes into overdrive and it makes a loud harsh noise and that's that's that's one of the biggest problems we deal with because a record that otherwise looks and sounds just terrific may have some of that and it's pretty hard on the

ears to hear that and then we have to make a judgment call about well should we find another copy you know or is it is it really rare. You know is it worth putting out even with these imperfections and that's that's a tough decision. And in some cases other copies have the same problem. Right. Yeah I could be in there in the master. Sometimes it happens through years of of where where. Playing it back with steel needles has just blown up the walls of the of the Disco of the grooves you know. OK. Let's talk with someone else we have another caller in Champaign this would be line number two. Hello. Hi. I have a question to you Mary. I have a question. I have gotten these their old 78 records that they were my grampa. I would very much like to make copies. Oh like on CD. I'm going to my brothers and sisters and. But

I I'm going to buy a new computer and I'm wondering if I could buy the equipment and use it for myself and how could I get the best quality if I did this. MIKE Yeah you can do it yourself. You just have to have you know a good photograph on the right speed needle and all that kind of thing and kind of just one little play 78. You can't use a stereo LP stylus on 78 so I won't ruin him but you won't get much sound because it's it's a very small needle you need a bigger needle for 78 because the grooves are are bigger than LPs and you 5s your turntable also needs to be able to play 78 too but what you got. Table play 70 A. OK I thought I was getting diamond. Did you go for it. OK you're probably in the right ballpark on that and you know give us a call and we can talk about some of the specifics but the other thing is you have to have some software to be able to to

digitize the signal and to put it on a CD. I mean if you're happy with with the groove where and the pops and clicks or maybe you have you know 70 dates that are in terrific shape and you don't have to worry about that stuff very much. Oh no they're definitely age right. You know it just feels like thing for me. Yeah. So I want these 78. I don't want anybody else. Right right I got you. So so you like them with the warts and all. Well they were my grandpa. Yeah. What I want. Yeah well you know again you know we'd be happy to give you some some tips on that or or help you or whatever the thing is it's pretty time intensive. I mean getting you know because it's all in real time you play it back in real time you and then you you know whatever work you do on it is in real time so you know it. It's it takes a surprisingly long amount of time to transfer you know a dozen or 20 sides you know and only fill up 60 minutes of this.

OK. Well I I'm curious about it because I was thinking that maybe if I were going to buy a computer anyway if I knew what to buy I could well make sure to get a CD burner in it. Think now it doesn't have to be I mean because you're just going to use the you're going to make a CD-R and play it in your in your car in your stereo or whatever and all the D. This is actually a technological question to David So if brings us up to speed when they first started putting out DVDs a few years ago none of them played CD-Rs. But you know in the most expensive models three four hundred dollars you know if you had a CD-R you couldn't play it. Yeah but now they all do and you can buy half see a DVD player for 30 bucks and it will play the CD-R's meaning's compact disc recordable that you've made in your computer. Yeah. OK well then I'll wait and listen to the number you call later and get it here.

Yeah it's 4 6 9 7 3 3 1. Thanks very much. You bet. Thank you very much. And other questions again welcome 3 3 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 Our number here for the show same numbers I was told free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Well what we've done here with the first couple examples that we played was where we're looking at how the technology started to get better and better. And you suggest that what we could do is move from the last recording that we played that was Billy Murray. That was a cylinder that was a cylinder from from the turn of 19 0 3 9 0 4. So what now we can do is we can play. This is a disc. Let's fast forward to nine hundred sixteen and show what a quality disc sounds like from the teens. And this is a song that many of your listeners will know. Irving Berlin's I love a piano. OK. Guy and I went wild when the damn plane. Oh I ran the man away.

WAYNE BLAIR in there one might find my son one day when I play them every night. Music killing them and I love I love I love to hear a grand piano simply carry a credit line known by name three way. I love run things. Then when I met and had a real come away I'm told it line of mine and I could hear that long so you can give me your I am no oh I love the night and I'm

home baby. When the green thing I am moved through things. Don't know why I did. When I run I want to love the accompaniment and I love my love to hear the grand piano simply carrying a line of my very first time way. I love me already and when I love I met when I had a real way to line the line and I think here that

can give me a priest I am oh I love resigned and I'm alright baby. All right and that is once again the immortal Billy Mary the Denver Nightingale and that was a little bit later than the last recording we played this was one that was made on a desk a 78 That's a 78 rpm diaphragm from 1916. And our guests are Richard Martin and Meghan have seen the owners of phone records in nearby St. Joseph Illinois and they're interested in preserving this kind of music. And again the go to their website you can see what they've got. How now do you go about finding the original material. It must be. Not all that easy because you just can't go right out and and get it you must rely on people who other people like you who are interested in collecting and preserving this kind of stuff.

Initially we started working with our own collection but as we went and did it longer we started meeting people who had some of the very rare stuff and we've got Greg for example a couple of discs. Popular songs from the 1890s and we would've been able to do the second volume if it hadn't been for some great people we met who had stuff that was really old and never issued. It's only maybe your headphones are a little loud. We're going to little feedback there that are maybe because you were kind of far away from the microphone is that. Yes very nice and very much and I think we're maybe getting another caller here lined up too and we'd be very happy to you know people have questions. I know our guests Richard and Meghan will do their best to give me an answer. We have about 15 minutes left or maybe more like 13 minutes left. OK we have somebody here on cell phone so we won't make them wait. We'll get to them line number two. Hello hello. Yes they got oh I have a quick question please I didn't get in on the very beginning of this. My family has never seen wind up

phonographs Bourke-White or with platters that are all over. Quarter inch the Diamond Discs. Yes. Do you have the the machine for playing those. If someone brought you the desks. Yeah we can do transfers of those the thing about the Edison Diamond Discs. For people who don't know about them they probably see them at the antique stores and flea markets the real thick and very heavy. Thomas Edison resisted the way of disc technology for as long as he possibly could he thought that cylinders were far superior. And he's got a good claim there because in the in the OTS nine thousand nine hundred seven or eight cylinders had become very good and disks were not there yet. So when he did finally start making his own discs in one thousand twelve the Diamond Discs were the result and those are not played laterally like the other disc like we were saying earlier the

the the needle the reproducer in the groove does not go sideways it goes up and down. It's a it's a it's a Hillandale disc record and you can't play those back on on anything but Hillandale machine. Now there is a way to do them using a regular turntable and we know how to do that. Some of these deaths there are many and there are some that are particularly fun to the family. I might want to get recorded and cleaned up and so on. Absolutely. And so I'll give you a call. Thanks please do. Thanks for the call. Maybe just one. One thing I one cautionary note we might give to people who are thinking about that I don't want to discourage them from calling our guests. However we would just like you keep in mind that this is a very labor intensive process. So when they tell you how much it would cost you. You might be surprised but you know if you want to find out do you give them a call and then there's stuff that

you can't get anywhere else. Certainly it's you know I hope we're providing a service that people can can. Profit by. But you know if you've got a bunch of Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra 78 those have been put out on CD. You might want to buy the CD it's cheaper. Oh we did get a call from somebody and maybe there are folks who do remember the time when you could go into an arcade or or someplace like that and go into a little booth and sing a song or do whatever and they would make a record for you know I don't know how much it cost a quarter or something like that not very much money. You could do that and afterwards you could come up with a record and that there may be indeed some of these records around somewhere of people's grandparents or or somebody like that that they think well gee wouldn't it be fun if we could actually. Yeah and then they had them in the homes and a lot of people recorded radio shows at home with their with their disc making machines. We have about 10 minutes left we thought we'd play something else and we're going to go to

I talked to by a controlling guy Henry for I'm going to play something off of this 1922 desk right there. And I think that election number 16 would like yeah go to Levon Sam the sheik of Alabama. This is track number 16. And who is this. This is this is the Virginians with vocal by Miss Isabelle Patrick Hola. Let's hear that. In the end I think I mean

being a family. Yes covering them up. I mean you know I am and I am saying maybe they need to be at the fan base.

They think they can pay for it. And it was a. Lame lame. There they are.

All right. And again that's love and Sam Sheikh of Alabama. And what year was that. We're talking about nine hundred twenty two. You just played that selection off our. CD called 19 22 an angels voice I hear. One thousand twenty two is the year that I was founded some god they're good. It's it enabled us to show one of the things that we do that's one of our most popular series called the phonographic yearbook where we are putting out the big hits of each year of the acoustic era from the 1890s through the mid 20s and they have a couple dozen songs and these lavishly illustrated color booklets.

It's a real a real bonus. And that's what that's one angle we take on this material we're trying to to. Take all this enormous amount of material and put it out in sensible ways. And that's that's one series that's very popular. But some people who like compilations like that they want to know what was a big hit in a given year. There are other people who. Only like to have a particular performer so we're doing the things like the Billy Marie anthology on those. So how many dicks are there in your catalog at the moment. Oh there are 9000. Right now it's OK for you. We have a caller here in Urbana. Let's talk with them why number two. Hello. We're Do we or do that have you can call us at 4 6 9 7 3 3 1. Later in the day or or go to the Web at w w w dot archaea phone dot com and the spelling is a r c h e o p h o in.

Great thank you. Thank you. Thanks very much. I would expect that there would be a relatively limited audience for this kind of music for for a variety of reasons. But there would be a lot of people who would find it fun and fascinating to hear these recordings because they were popular performers and songs of the time because the performance styles were different and so you could hear what what the music was like and and just because some of them felt for example like the man we talked about Billy Murray who was a huge star in his day and after the acoustic era the man was just forgotten. And so it's it is preserving history. But I'm sure that there are some people say well you know what. Who wants to listen to scratchy old records like that anyway. There's a bigger audience for it than you might imagine. People who are interested in history some people who are you know researching a given project and want to know what was the culture of a given time. People whose parents you know sing those songs when they're grown up people who have the records in their in their closet. But the problem we have and it's a little frustrating

is that it is a niche market certainly. And when you consider that that niche covers 35 years it's not it's not monolithic. I mean there's a there's a lot of different stuff. And some of it will appeal to that member the members of that niche market and some things won't. So that's where it's tough is trying to get everybody on board for the various things that that we're trying to do. And of course we've gotten lucky people seem to trust our judgment. But we hope that if they like what we're putting out we're working on a two-CD set right now that's going to be out in the spring of the Great War. We're going to have 56 tracks including really rare excerpts from a record with Woodrow Wilson on it and other other hit songs of the war and other. Songs that show the different kinds of political things that were going on in the

country at that time. Had you thought about doing much in the way of spoken word or you just say your territory's music and that's what you're going to do. We have one spoken word disc and we're going to be working on other artists who there's one artist working on a particular Cal Stuart who he's one of our upcoming projects who did a spoken word character he was almost exclusively spoken word Uncle Josh.. People he was a contemporary of Mark Twains a good friend of Mark Twain. Oh really. Yeah he did rural humor. Well we're going to have to leave it at that because we've come to the end of the time again. If you're interested in finding out what Arkie fun is all about. You can and you have access to the Internet. You go to their website archaea phone and you can see some of what's in their catalog and you can actually even if you have the the right stuff on your computer you can hear some examples of some of the current stuff that's their samples up there. We're are in some of the bigger stores in the bigger cities tower Best Buy borders and some of these but not necessarily locally and anybody who's interested in

getting the stuff from the store we would encourage you to to tell the people at the stores including pages that you'd like them to carry our stuff and support local business. Well Richard Martin Megan Hennessey of archaea phone records in St. Joseph Illinois thanks very much. Thank you.