This is my first time hearing of AGR, and it was a nice find. Hobby > tangled, and jakob > free as a bird are my favorites. The recording is great for LMA.

My AGR story: Discovered them at work (in the car in Chicago on WXRT) digging Upspin and Smiling Up... Bought One by One and loved it--Hobby is one of my favorite tunes ever in my 450+ CD collection--but after a couple of years it MDFMCed on me (mysteriously disappeared from my collection.)
That was about 2000. fast forward to '06 and I get Hobby back in my head, but somehow forgot the name of the album and the band!! (bizarre, I know--maybe I'm more like Hobby than I think...)
I search "Hobby" on Amazon and find everything and realize it's out of print, so after refreshing my memory and loving One by One once again, get "Vibe," Straightaround, and "Needle" before they disappear.

But alas, that didn't satisfy my fix...it only worsened my cravings.

I'm no computer wiz, but I finally got XP and DSL in Feb '07 so I can mess around with more audio, despite still strongly preferring to get stuff to WAV or MP3 CD and run it through the good ol' stereo.

Well, Tom & Greg, it couldn't have been easier to download, unzip, and burn your VBR MP3 version of this show using RealPlayer. If others of you out there aren't totally satisfied with your audio programs, I suggest you get it--totally intuitive if you ask me.

Thanks again--I read your piece about the process of doing this show with older technology PC-wise and can't thank you enough for keeping this great and progressive music alive.

--nate

man, i remember seeing these guys in 2000 at VT, and they were the shit, thanks for posting this awsome show.

This a great show. The drummer used to be my drum teacher a few years ago. I wish I had known of AGR so I could have caught their live show.

I read the other reviews for this recording and figured the show sounded good, but nothing sounded as good as the reviewers were making this out to sound. I was wrong. This is the best recording of a live show I have ever heard. Just beautiful. Could not be better subject matter either. Andrew's voice has so much subtlety that it is nice to find a recording that does it justice. The worst thing about this recording is how much it makes me miss seeing AGR live on a regular basis.

breathe

water

h-bond

uno

om
madne
padme
aum

great show

I'll keep it simple since everyone else has said pretty much what I'd want to say. This is the best recording of a concert I've ever heard.

What these guys have done is nothing short of amazing!!! This is a great example of the beauty about the whole trade friendly concept! Okay,alright now that I have given this a listen all I can say is that, If you are new to agents.. You really need to hear this! The band is EVERY bit as amazing as this recording and I give them 10 phatties all the way!!!

This show is the pinnacle of my AGR exodus.

Greg Young (one of the two people to record and mix this show) originally turned me on to this band. The other half of this recording contingent, Tom Owens, helped solidify my interest in this band. I met Greg and Tom at James Madison University in the 90's. Back then I was a jazz performance major, audiophile, turned computer geek and all around "good music lover". So naturally I became good friends with Greg and Tom in a short period of time. One very rare thing these two guys shared with me was our insistence of good sound quality. All three of us have turned each other on to different immaculately recorded albums, which I know have influenced the mixing of this set (i.e. Steely Dan's Countdown to Ecstasy - Aja albums). Even if you hate AGR...you cannot deny the time, effort and quality of the mix on this release. In fact it bests many classic major release recordings I know ALL of you have. It is worth the download for that alone.

Sound quality aside, this show straight up rips. These cats were on fire. I came late into the AGR fray and saw the band play a few times a year, for a few years, before Stewart took a gracious bow out. This show was recorded shortly before his initial time-out. Then came Kevin Hamilton, our Jaco Pastorius influenced bassist who pushed the band to very cool directions in the live setting. However, for true AGR fans it wasn't the same (although I loved it since I'm a Jaco whore). Anyway, this show is, for many, the apex of the "true" AGR with Stewart on bass and is a MUST F'N DL FOR ALL!!!!

I have at least 5 copies of this show. One from the original sound board and at least 4 versions of Greg and Tom's mixes. I can honestly say the several years wait and effort put into this mix just now begin to reach the amazing level of playing and musicianship recorded on the magical night of May 31, 2000 in Richmond Virginia.

Anyone into "good music" (which means most of you reading this) should DL this show and keep listening to it. It is simply THAT good.

Enjoy.

This show is a great example of everything that's great about our favorite band.

Well, here it is folks. I know there are a few out there that have
been waiting to listen to this recording ever since you saw Greg and I
walk into Alleykatz toting a borrowed DA-88, a borrowed Tascam
TDM-1000 8 channel mixer, and 4(or maybe it was 5) Aiwa minidisc
recorders. Before I talk about any details of anything we did, I want
to just mention that we got very lucky showing up with all that
makeshift recording gear on a night when AGR decided to blow the top
off of Alleykatz with the set they played that night. It was an amazing show that the true AGR fan will entirely appreciate,
and give any newcomer fan a very good idea of how kick ass these guys
can be. Considering the original soundboard taping of this show has
already been downloaded more than 200 times, the "Nip and Tuck" or
"Out and Back" setlist from that night is probably well known to most
of you already. A brief introduction of that setlist for those
unfamiliar:

Each song in the first set was actually a combination of two songs
that AGR often played, both original songs and cover tunes, with them
jumping back and forth "switching" between one song and another at
different points in the songs. It's quite a challenge at times to
pick out which solo belongs to what song. I think that this set will
be the one that hardened AGR fans will like the most as it's quite
entertaining listening to them turn their own songs into audible
puzzles for you to sort out.

The first and second sets were seperated by an Andrew Winn solo guitar
set where he played some amazing classical guitar pieces, including a
full version of "Leyenda" and "Sunburst". He also played and sang an
extremely rare version of "Red Lights".

The second full band set begins with Steel Hammer and also features a
number of rarely played songs such as Redman Hoedown, Picasso's
Daughter, Mellow Man, Waiting at the Corner, and Give It Up.

I hope this new multitracked mix opens some new ears to AGR and also
refreshes the ears of AGR fans who've been looking for another
carefully mixed live show.

For any of those interested, let me give a little history and
technical details of how we managed to create this multitracked
version of the 5.31.2000 Alleykatz show. This part may be too
technical or boring for some, but the tapers on the list should really
get a kick out of this. As I mentioned before, we used one Tascam
DA-88 8-track tape recorder and a number of Aiwa Minidisc recording
units. We took direct outputs(post fader) from the soundboard at
Alleykatz and recorded 2 tracks per minidisc unit (Left/Right stereo),
and all 8 DA-88 tracks.

After the recording was complete, the next goal was to get it into my
computer so that I could begin mixing. The goal for extraction was to
keep the signal entirely digital. It is fairly comical now for me to
look back on how we pulled this off, but we did. I managed to do this
using the TDIF output of the DA-88 out through the Tascam TDM-1000
mixer and then via a 2 channel L/R S/PDIF digital output from the
mixer to my Pioneer deck CD-R. So for each DA-88 tape, I had to
record 2 tracks at a time onto the CD-R unit and then finally extract
the wave into my computer and re-sync all tracks in Sonic Foundry's
Vegas Software(now known as Sony Vegas). To extract the minidisc
tracks digitally, I purchased a Sony Deck Minidisc unit that had a
S/PDIF output. I then extracted each disc onto a CD-R using the same
process with my Pioneer deck CD-R unit. This process alone took weeks
to do. If only I had the technology I have now in 2005, this could've
been easily done much faster. But in 2000, I was using an unreliable
466mhz Celeron processor machine, which became the reason for a lot of
hardware upgrades throughout this mixing process. By the time this
project was complete, I had upgraded computers 3 times to handle
the processor load of mixing twenty-some tracks with plug-in effects
in Vegas.

Once all tracks were in my computer, I used Sonic Foundry's Sound
Forge software to splice the tracks together, and then I loaded them
into Vegas. The issue of syncronization was the next headache I had
to play with. The clever solution for this was to record pure high
frequency tones of 19khz or so onto the beginning and end of each
track of the DA-88 tapes and then sync up the tracks based on these
frequency tones in the software. For the minidisc tracks, I had to
syncronize these tracks completely by ear. It was by this point in
time that Greg and I dubbed our little setup as "Makeshift Studios", a
very fitting name. As you can tell, this recording is unlike any
other live recording they have.

Ok, enough technical details. Eventually I got my system set up,
using a better computer, new Studio monitor speakers, and all the
tracks were in Vegas ready to mix. Some key aspects about the mix
that I would like to point out:

I mentioned the direct outputs from the Alleykatz soundboard were post
fader, so that required some extensive time in leveling out some of
the tracks and in some places doing some cut and paste of different
parts of tracks to make it full. The most notable part to listen to
where levels were manipulated is the very first track, Two Bucks ->
Beautiful Genius. Because this was the very first song, Phil had to
set the levels and sound check as they were playing. Brian's vocals
were almost nothing at the beginning and the Bass guitar signal was
actually nonexistent until many seconds into the song. You probably
won't pick up on it when listening, but that's kind of like an audio
"Easter Egg" in the mix that you may listen for. There are a few
others like that throughout the mix, but I won't reveal them mostly
because I don't remember exactly where they are. (It's been over 2
years since I last mixed this show)

Being that this was one of the first projects that I ever mixed(and
still one of the only), I took many chances to try different things in
the mix for my own education. In a very few cases this involved
cutting and pasting some instrument and vocal parts, adding different
instrument and vocal effects, and changing how things were panned in
the mix. Because of this, this recording is not 100% exactly how it
sounded when they played it live. In some cases, I cut out some crowd
noise, cut out talking on the tracks, and I also cut out some chatter
and dead space in between songs so that the entire show would fit
evenly on 2 CD-Rs. All changes I made were made with the best
interests of the show and were only intended to make it sound better.
To hear the differences, I encourage you to download the original
soundboard recording of this show and make your own comparisons.

Well, this has been long winded enough(is anyone still reading this?)
Greg and I invested literally hundreds of hours mixing and remixing
each track until we were satisfied that it was as good as we could
make it with the hardware we had. In the end, this became sort of our
way of thanking the band for providing such entertainment for us for
so long. I hope that everyone that hears this show enjoys it...I'm
very excited that we've been given permission to release it.

Thanks to the band for allowing us the access to make this recording.

Thanks to the fans who encouraged us and helped to get the ball moving
on its release.

Please drop us a line to let us know what you think.

Happy listening!

(post edited for clarity/spelling)

hot, hot seed. it was worth the wait!

http://db.etree.org/shninfo_detail.php?shnid=29588

If you haven't heard Agents of Good Roots before, this is the show to download. It is the best quality I have ever heard from a non-professionally released show of any band. The setlist is excellent as well, and the first set of 'Nip and Tuck' is one of the highlights of the AGR live catalog.

If you are familiar with the Dave Matthews Band live releases, this show is the Live at Red Rocks of AGR. Incredible sound quality, excellent set list, superb musicianship. Thanks for getting this show circulated!