Mark Knopfler & the Notting Hillbillies - BBC Sessions (1988-1990)

I previously posted a live album of Mark Knopfler and the Notting Hillbillies. Between that and this BBC sessions album, you should get a good sense of what the band was all about. I prefer both to the band's lone studio album, in 1990, "Missing... and Presumed Having a Good Time," which was a little overproduced and lacked many lead vocals by Knopfler.

I posted the live album before this one because I wanted to start out strongly and that album has better sound quality overall than this one. That's not to say this one has bad sound quality, but it's taken from five different radio sessions, and some sound better than others. They appear chronologically, and it just so happens that the first one sounds the worst and the last two sound the best. So if you're disappointed with the sound quality, keep at it, it gets better.

I explained about the Notting Hillbillies when I posted the live album. Suffice to say that it was a true band, not just Mark Knopfler and a backing band. For instance, he shared lead vocal duties, and only sings lead on about a third of the songs here. But at the same time, Knopler was the clear star, due to his fame from his previous band Dire Straits, and the main people listen to this is to hear his singing and lead guitar work. Don't worry, while he doesn't sing all the time, his guitar is all over this.

Everything here is officially unreleased. The first two songs actually come from a 1988 BBC session, which I think is before the band officially became the Notting Hillbillies, but it was the same group of musicians. The rest are from 1990. Most everything else is from various BBC TV or radio sessions, except for the last five songs. Those come from a concert broadcast on a different British radio station, Radio Clyde. That features highlights from a concert the band did in Glasgow, Scotland, in April 1990. 

"Tennessee Blues" has "[Edit]" in the title because there was a spot near the end of the song where a few seconds of music were missing. Luckily it was during a repetition of the chorus, so I patched it up with a part of a chorus from earlier in the song.

This album is 52 minutes long.

01 Weapon of Prayer (Notting Hillbillies)
02 Please Baby (Notting Hillbillies)
03 Feel like Going Home (Notting Hillbillies)
04 That's Where I Belong (Notting Hillbillies)
05 Blues Stay Away from Me (Notting Hillbillies)
06 When It Comes to You (Notting Hillbillies)
07 Tennessee Blues [Edit] (Notting Hillbillies)
08 The Next Time I'm in Town (Notting Hillbillies)
09 Bewildered (Notting Hillbillies)
10 Setting Me Up (Notting Hillbillies)
11 Down the Road Apiece (Notting Hillbillies)
12 Let's Have Some Fun Tonight (Notting Hillbillies)
13 One Way Gal (Notting Hillbillies)
14 talk (Notting Hillbillies)
15 Running On Down This Road (Notting Hillbillies)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16026070/NottngHillbllies_1988-1990_BBSessons_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is the same as the one featured on the cover of the band's only studio album. However, that version was in black and white, and only filled up the middle section of the cover. I was lucky to find a color version of the same photo.

Mark Knopfler & the Notting Hillbillies - The Maltings, Snape, Britain, 5-15-1990

I recently started posting some solo stuff from Mark Knopfler, the leader of Dire Straits, and I plan on posting a bunch more. But I decided that before I get any further, it would be good to post a couple of things from his early 1990s band the Notting Hillbillies.

I put Knopfler's name in the title of this post to help his fans find this music. But actually, it's not entirely accurate to call the Notting Hillbillies Mark Knopfler's band. The band put out only one album, in 1990, called "Missing... Presumed Having a Good Time." That happened during a time when Knopfler was still feeling burned out from the massive success of Dire Straits. With the Notting Hillbillies, he could be just another member of the band, and take part in a much more low key project than Dire Straits ever was. On their sole album, I believe Knopfler only wrote and sang one song. The band was more rootsy, doing lots of country and blues covers.

So, in theory, Knopfler was just one member. But in reality, he was a massive star and everyone else in the band were relative nobodies. Few people would have paid any attention had it not been for his involvement, and the band went just as far as the amount of time and energy he was willing to put into it. They toured in 1990. But then Dire Straits reunited for a final album and world tour in 1991 and 1992, so the Notting Hillbillies went into hiatus while that happened. Then Knopfler went on to other things, but he still reformed the band from time to time. They did a couple dozen concerts between 1993 and 1999, often for charity concerts. There have been no reunions since then.

The roots of the band went waaaay back, thanks to the relationship between Knoplfer and band member and guitar player Steve Phillips. They met in 1968, when both of them were about twenty years old. They were a musical duo for about five years, called "The Duolian String Pickers." After Knopfler left town in the mid-1970s (and later went on to fame and fortune with Dire Straits), Phillips connected with a singer-songwriter named Brendan Crocker, and played with him for many years. So the core of the Notting Hillbillies was Knopfler, Phillips, and Crocker, with all them taking turns singing songs, plus three more musicians playing pedal steel, bass, and drums.

The sole Notting Hillbillies studio album is nice, but I find it a bit slick and overproduced. I think they were better in concert. Plus, they only did 11 songs on that album, but they played more than 50 songs in concert, with the vast majority of those being covers.

Given all that, I think this concert here is an ideal introduction to the band if you've never heard their music before, even more so than their studio album. It's a soundboard bootleg, and the sound quality is excellent. Knoplfer only sang about a third of the songs, but his famous lead guitar playing was all over the place. Plus, the other band members all admirably played their roles.

Only the first 12 songs here are from the 1990 Snape concert in the album title. The last four are from a benefit concert held in Newcastle, Britain, on July 6, 1993. For that, I only included the songs that weren't performed at the Snape concert or weren't on another album I'll soon be posting. By chance, that happened to be four Dire Straits songs, even though it was a Notting Hillbillies concert and not a Dire Straits one.

For the Snape concert, there's no banter between songs, and often a minimum amount of applause at the ends of songs. I suspect this was broadcast on TV or radio, which would explain the excellent sound quality, but probably everything but the music was edited out. Chances are, there were more songs that didn't get included. And for both the Snape and Newcastle portions, I felt the lead vocals were too low in the mix, so I boosted them for all the songs by using the UVR5 audio editing program.

This album is an hour and 16 minutes long. Just the Snape portion is 55 minutes long.

01 One Woman Man (Notting Hillbillies)
02 When It Comes to You (Notting Hillbillies)
03 Water of Love (Notting Hillbillies)
04 That's Alright, Mama (Notting Hillbillies)
05 Your Own Sweet Way (Notting Hillbillies)
06 Run Me Down (Notting Hillbillies)
07 Hobo's Lullaby (Notting Hillbillies)
08 I Think You Love Me Too Much (Notting Hillbillies)
09 Roll, Roll, Roll (Notting Hillbillies)
10 Railroad Worksong (Notting Hillbillies)
11 Feel like Going Home (Notting Hillbillies)
12 Dallas Rag [Instrumental] (Notting Hillbillies)
13 Calling Elvis (Notting Hillbillies)
14 So Far Away (Notting Hillbillies)
15 Why Worry (Notting Hillbillies)
16 Setting Me Up (Notting Hillbillies)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16014083/NottngHillbllies_1990_ThMaltngsSnpeBrtain__5-15-1990_atse.zip.html

The cover photo was taken during the band's appearance on the Saturday Night Live TV show in 1990.