The following are the liner notes from
For the Country

By the end of 1986, a year and a half of pretty constant touring had taken its toll on the band. Steve Michener had quit the band shortly after Positively had been released and had been replaced by Michael ‘Spike’ Priggen (a friend of ours from New Haven). When we returned home from a particularly grueling 3-month tour just before Christmas Kirk and Spike made a decision to leave the band. Shawn and I considered our options. Our record label wanted us to start working on a new release and offered us the chance to go to Rockfield Studios in Wales to record with producer Hugh Jones. We recruited new members Kevin Salem and Tom Shad and started rehearsing the new material. In late April of 1987 we flew to London for a week of pre-production with Jones before heading out to Wales. This was the first time we had the opportunity to recotrd in a first-class studio, with a full month of recording time budgeted and a couple of more weeks for mixing. It was complete luxury compared to how the previous two records had been made. I think I learned more about recording in those two months than I had in the previous ten years. For the Country was released towards the end of summer 1987 and we immediately went on tour throughout the U.S. to support the record. But the fun times weren’t going to last. The label was going under and we were going down with it. Tom Shad left the band after that tour and once again Spike Priggen came back on board to play bass. But in the summer of 1988, while trying to negotiate signing with a new record company, we were served with a $5 million lawsuit which would effectively prevent us from releasing any new material for three years while it worked its way through the court. We eventually prevailed, but it was pretty much a Pyrrhic victory.

Notes on the Extra Tracks:

Didn’t Know and Waiting for You were recorded during the For the Country sessions, but didn’t make it on to the original record.
   Bad Day, Waterwheel and Better of You were recorded at the original Fort Apache (8-track) studio in Boston (engineered by Joe Harvard) and were to be demos for a new record. Brian Dunton played bass on those; the rest of the lineup was the same as For the Country.
   Carefree and For the Country are from a January 16, 1988 CBGB’s show with Spike Priggen playing bass. Engineered by Steve McAllister. Mixed at the Bubble (Austin,TX) November 1999 by Seth Tiven and Chris Smith.

   - Seth Tiven 2003