Silver Jews Starlite Walker on LP 

Flow on, silver juice, flow on...into the vein-streams of the nu generation via '90s classics like Starlite Walker (1994) and American Water (1998) and thence to the new century. How many lifetimes have we lived since the salad days and nightz of the original Silver Jews - David Berman, Stephen Malkmus and Bobby Nastanovich - when they walked the back-alleys of the earth just a scant couple decades ago?

Carefully sidestepping the maudlin cliches of most modern country music, Silver Jews' appeal is unselfconsciously American, and all-embracing. Poetic without pretention, the band's 1994 debut, Starlite Walker is like walking into a bar somewhere in the midwest and having the luck to sit down next to the most eloquently miserable man in the western hemisphere. By the time he's ended his woeful tale, you'll have been completely won over.

"Starlite Walker was an Oxford, Mississippi record. David resided on the outskirts of town at the time. He was renting a tiny building that was part of a professor's chemistry lab in the woods. He paid $100 a month. It was mildly suspicious. Stephen and I went there to rehearse for about five days. Oxford is a beautiful town. There are lots of beautiful people. We were well. Peaking physically. 

"We built songs around David's words. David had just about all of his lyrics written down in a notebook. When we were 70% ready, we headed up to Easley Studios in Memphis (which burned to the ground a few years ago). Doug and Davis were ready for us. They were cool and it was welcoming. Steve West joined us on the songs that we needed a 'real' drummer. I just wasn't good enough. It didn't bother me. I was proud of my drums on "Trains Across The Sea" and my moog on "New Orleans." 

"We didn't have any significant problems recording and it turned out well. Our host Sherman Willmott (we stayed above his record shop in a small apartment) did a marvelous job of keeping barbecue sauce on our faces the whole time. I gained six pounds. Upon completing Starlite Walker, Silver Jews felt like a band instead of a project. We became formidable." - Bob Nastanovich

1.  Introduction II

2.  Trains Across The Sea

3.  The Moon Is The Number 18 

4.  Advice To The Graduate 

5.  Tide To The Oceans 

6.  Pan-American Blues 

7.  New Orleans 

8.  The Country Diary Of A Subway Conductor 

9.  Living Waters 

10. Rebel Jew 

11. The Silver Pageant