In 1984 Greg and I decided to make sure we’d have a recording of every song he had written from when he wrote his first song in 1969 to his most recent to date. We recorded them in chronological order. We present them here in alphabetical order to mix things up a bit for variety. The Catalogue Tapes Vol. 1 thru 9 are all available now. We hope you enjoy. Russell Calabrese Engineer/Producer March 2008 What you, the listener, will hear are the songs exactly the way they were first imagined and then catalogued, with no arrangements or production, just vocal/word and acoustic guitar. The styles varied as we went from song to song and I truly never thought that they would ever be used as anything but documentation, much less entertainment. But amazingly, they still stand, and they do tell some cool stories. Not every one is a home run, by any means, but please remember the name of this first collection:”The Catalogue Tapes Vol.1” This is a place where three guys were attempting to sort and produce a huge amount of material because that was the way it was supposed to be for us. It is a tremendous effort to make real all the things you talk about when you walk around suburbia and talk all night and dream. We were embarking on another great adventure together and quite frankly, to this day, I can’t think of a better place to be: singing stuff I wrote to my brothers, about a place we all knew well and people we all knew even better. With this first CD, and in many other good ways, we are there together still. Please listen and enjoy, as the songs are now for you. Greg Stier Musician March 2008 TWO BANDIT BOYS? Greg gives us a little insight on how a couple of his songs evolved. Bandit Boy 1 AKA The Outlaw and the Fiddler Knight ... is a song of examination and analysis, respectful questioning and possible emulation by the singer of the Outlaw and Fiddler Knight. The singer sees the lives of the Outlaw and Fiddler as a possible escape from the tragedy of his life, To the singer, the Outlaw and Fiddler, confidently enmeshed and awash in their lives of “women and causes”, are supremely something he can attempt to morph into, something that has meaning and content, no matter how dissolute it may actually be. The singer tries to be them, but is overwhelmed. When he comes to, he attempts to find the Outlaw and Fiddler but they are gone forever, “Desperate Men” into the night. So, having no one else to ”discuss whether or not he did it right”, the singer turns to others for the answers. The others have no idea what he is saying (in fact, they think he is ordering them around), so the singer then turns directly to the listener of the song and asks the questions: Do we conjure up stories to make it through? Or are they just tools to find something new? The rites of the passage, within and without We try every entrance to find our way out. Bandit Boy 2 is just called Bandit Boy. Bandit Boy, the final version, is a song of farewell. It is a song in which the singer is shown the life of the Bandit’s wanderlust and after careful examination, rejects it, wishing the bandit good luck, good travel and a hope that he doesn’t wind up “singing it all alone”, even though the singer witnesses the Bandit sitting with those big Quasimoto panhead clowns; a group of motor-heads hunched over the open hoods of their cars. This scares the singer, even as the Bandit exhorts everyone that “it’s not time to go home” and so the singer says his disillusioned farewell. The farewell is not said disrespectfully or piteously, only to recognize that while it may be good for the Bandit, it is not the way for the singer. While both songs use the same melody and chords, one set of lyrics tells quite a different story than the other. I have always performed Bandit Boy out instead of the Outlaw, only because the themes in Bandit were always a bit more accessible to most audiences. Preferentially, I like both because they deal with two separate issues. But, truth be told, Outlaw was written first, in one state of mind while Bandit was written after a lot of dust settled, thereby allowing the speaker in bandit to talk a bit more objectively. Additionally, Bandit could not have been written without Outlaw because the songs were written with two different people in mind; one to reject and one to model behavior and lifestyle off of. In the end, the singer loses them both and is forced to figure it out for himself. Greg Stier 2008 GUITARIST HAS NO TIME TO FRET (excerpt) Elias Holtzman, The Home News & Tribune, January 9, 1997 Greg Stier of Metuchen, a singer-songwriter himself who writes songs in the "story" line, has chosen a life in music that still allows him a chance to be with his family of a wife and two young children. Stier is a manager at the Sam Ash music store on Lincoln Highway in Edison* and has a clientele of at least a dozen young singer-songwriters daily. Greg has played the coffeehouses and clubs and knows how tough a road it can be. But there are compensations, he notes. Stier quotes poet Donald Hall: "When I was 20, I wrote poetry because I was 20. Now, at 40, I write poetry because I am a poet." Stier, who is 42, is a musician. He plays and performs because he is a musician. "It's a harder hustle these days," says Stier. Now in 2008 Greg Stier is a teacher at Linden High School in Linden, NJ. His children are not as young and he still writes and plays music.