Diane Schnier

“Before Cowboys”

Basemental Records

This is an interesting release. It’s not something you’ll find at Strawberries and it’s not going to be the selection of the month for your Columbia House CD Club. Where you will find it is on the moe. website at www.moe.org. moe., as you may or may not know, is the band that put the “jam” in jamband. And yes, they do spell their name with a lower case m and a period at the end. Diane is married to founding member Al Schnier who not only produced this disc but also plays guitar, bass, keyboard, and mandolin. Gordon Stone is a special guest on few of the tracks playing banjo on the first cut and pedal steel on three other tunes. Diane, who wrote all the songs, handles the vocals, piano, and drums.

This is a very feminine disc. If it was a movie it would be a chick flick. I don’t mean this in a negative way though. Diane has a very sweet way about her. She’s very much a girly girl with a mellifluous and melodic voice. This is what makes the disc interesting. Contrast that with moe. - a band that comes across like Popeye after a plate full of spinach. If this recording is to find it’s market, and I hope it does, it won’t be with the majority of hardcore moe. fans or jambands fans in general. It will be with fans of Joni Mitchell, Sarah McLachlan, Suzanne Vega or the whole Lilith faire scene. Al Schnier may play on this disc, but Al appropriately underplays it letting Diane’s piano be the dominant instrument.

There are 13 tracks on the disc and all but one were written between 1993 and 1996. A spare and haunting tune called “Soldier” was penned in 2003. The songs, as many as 75 according to Diane, spent years on old cassette tapes stored under her bed. It was only when Diane wanted to preserve them by burning them on to CD’s did the idea to release some of them first come to light. After all, the Schniers have a home studio! Diane jokes that she and Al worked the past year and a half, 3 hours on and four weeks off, before finally coming up with a finished product.

The disc has whimsical songs like “Fly On The Wall,” love songs like “Winooski,” and touching ballads like “Waterfall,” and “Cloud 9.” However, one thing that can definitely be said about the entire disc is that the songs are intensely personal and you come away from it thinking that you’ve known Diane Schnier for years. She really puts her heart and soul into her music. This CD was a nice chance of pace from the stuff that I usually listen to like, like, let me think for a second, like moe. for example. And the more I listen to “Before Cowboys” the more I like it. The Schnier’s have their own website and you can hear some of the tracks by logging on to www.alschnier.com/diane. So check it out for yourself and see if you like it as much as I did.

- Bill Harriman

***1/2