A Good Pull Up

Who are the real campers? Through-hiking backpackers traversing the Appalachian Trail? The family in an SUV making a tour of national parks and sleeping in tents at campgrounds? People committed to the RV lifestyle who move their homes from state to state as season and whim dictate?

Ty Bates was born in Atlanta, Georgia and grew up in the south side suburbs. Like most country singers that grew up in the “Bible Belt”, Ty started singing in church. Church stages led to other stages and it didn't take long before singing became his life. Ty knew he was serious about the music when he quit playing basketball to sing. When asked if he ever looked back, he says, "No never, pretty sure that even though making a living at this life has not been easy, it sure beats anything else I can imagine, there's nothing like the feeling you get hearing a crowd cheer for you after a song."

We live in an age of extreme inequality, when a wealthy minority of the global population lives in historical luxury even as middle-class people fear for the future and twenty percent of the world struggles with chronic poverty. Social policy has failed to find answers to this crisis, and we are beginning to see powerful calls for a new way of thinking about how to escape it.

Um were a one off group consisting of Hal Crook, Bob Gullotti, Rick Peckham, and Dave Zinno with special guest John Medeski on the Hammond B-3. They released Stray Dog in 2001 on outrageous/rope-a-dope. This album was recorded live at Club AS220 in Providence, Rhode Island on 11 & 12 May, 1999.