Dirt Floor is the fourth studio album by singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...

 and guitarist

Guitarist

A guitarist is a musician who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar while singing.- Versatility :The guitarist controls an extremely...

, Chris Whitley

Chris Whitley

Christopher Becker Whitley was an American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist.Whitley changed his sound frequently, and achieved modest mainstream success while maintaining a small but devoted following...

.

It was produced by Craig Street

Craig Street

Craig Street, born in Oakland, California, is a noted record producer.Craig moved with his family to Los Angeles at the age of 11, but returned to the Bay Area for his high school years. He began playing guitar at age 14, playing in a number of Berkeley bands...

 and recorded live direct to a two-track analog recorder

Multitrack recording

Multitrack recording is a method of sound recording that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources to create a cohesive whole...

 using a single stereo ribbon microphone

Ribbon microphone

A ribbon microphone is a type of dynamic microphone that uses a thin aluminum, duraluminum or nanofilm ribbon placed between the poles of a magnet to generate voltages by electromagnetic induction...

 by Danny Kadar

Danny Kadar (producer)

Danny Kadar is a producer, engineer, and mixer living in New Orleans. While growing up in New York, Danny first began as a student photographer studying at Pratt Institute he would then later decide to go into the music industry with his own band at the time. After being in the studio Danny would...

 at Blue Moon Racing Shop (Whitley's father's barn) in Bellows Falls, Vermont

Bellows Falls, Vermont

Bellows Falls is an incorporated village located in the town of Rockingham in Windham County, Vermont, United States. The population was 3,165 at the 2000 census...

.

This recording was also released by Classic Records in two audiophile

Audiophile

An audiophile is a person who enjoys listening to recorded music, usually in a home. Some audiophiles are more interested in collecting and listening to music, while others are more interested in collecting and listening to audio components, whose "sound quality" they consider as important as the...

 formats. It was released in digital audio disk (DAD) 24-bit

24-bit

Notable 24-bit machines include the ICT 1900 series and the Harris H series.The IBM System/360, announced in 1964, was a popular computer system with 24-bit addressing and 32-bit general registers and arithmetic...

/96 kHz

Hertz

The hertz is the SI unit of frequency defined as the number of cycles per second of a periodic phenomenon. One of its most common uses is the description of the sine wave, particularly those used in radio and audio applications....

 digital audio

DVD-Audio

DVD-Audio is a digital format for delivering high-fidelity audio content on a DVD. DVD-Audio is not intended to be a video delivery format and is not the same as video DVDs containing concert films or music videos....

 format playable with DVD hardware

DVD player

A DVD player is a device that plays discs produced under both the DVD-Video and DVD-Audio technical standards, two different and incompatible standards. These devices were invented in 1997 and continue to thrive...

. Classic Records also released it in 180 gram vinyl audio format

Gramophone record

A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...

.

Track listing

All tracks written by Chris Whitley.

1. "Scrapyard Lullaby" – 3:42
2. "Indian Summer" – 3:39
3. "Accordingly" – 3:27
4. "Wild Country" – 3:08
5. "Ball peen Hammer" – 2:38
6. "From One island to Another" – 2:17
7. "Altitude" – 2:52
8. "Dirt Floor" – 2:10
9. "Loco Girl" – 3:08

The import version of this album contains the following bonus tracks. All tracks written by Chris Whitley unless otherwise noted:

1. "The Model
   Das Model
   "Das Model" is a song recorded by the electro-pop group Kraftwerk in 1978; written by musicians Ralf Hütter and Karl Bartos, with artist Emil Schult collaborating on the lyrics. It is featured on the album, Die Mensch-Maschine; English version title: The Man-Machine...
   
   " (Karl Bartos
   Karl Bartos
   Karl Bartos was, between 1975 and 1990, along with Wolfgang Flür, an electronic percussionist in the electronic-music group Kraftwerk. He was originally recruited to play on its US "Autobahn" tour...
   
   , Ralf Hütter
   Ralf Hütter
   Ralf Hütter is the lead singer, keyboardist, and reportedly leader of the electronic-music band Kraftwerk. Since the departure of Florian Schneider in 2008, he is also the group's sole remaining founding member....
   
   , and Emil Schult
   Emil Schult
   Emil Schult is a German painter, poet and musician.He is most famous for his collaborations with the electronic music band Kraftwerk. He has created most of their sleeve designs since 1973...
   
    – Kraftwerk
   Kraftwerk
   Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
   
   ) – 2:58
2. "Alien (live)" – 4:45
3. "Living with the Law
   Living with the Law (song)
   "Living with the Law" is a song recorded by American singer-songwriter and guitarist, Chris Whitley. It was the first single to be released from his 1991 début album, Living with the Law, and became a hit single in the United States, rising to #28 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart in...
   
    (live)" – 3:57

Critical Praise

• "...a beautiful album of one-microphone simplicity." – The New York Times
  The New York Times
  The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
  
  

Cover versions

• Gavin DeGraw
  Gavin DeGraw
  Gavin Shane DeGraw is an American musician and singer-songwriter. He is known for his songs "Chariot", "Follow Through", "I Don't Want to Be" , "In Love with a Girl", and "Not Over You".-Early life:DeGraw grew up in the Catskills in South Fallsburg,...
  
   covered "Indian Summer" on Free
  Free (Gavin DeGraw album)
  Free is singer-songwriter Gavin DeGraw's third album. The album was released on March 31, 2009. It was his final album for J Records.To keep himself from overthinking the songs, DeGraw made Free in less than two weeks at the Brooklyn studio of his producer Camus Celli, who has worked with such...
  
  (2009).

Personnel

• Chris Whitley – vocals
  Singing
  Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
  
  , guitar, banjo
  Banjo
  In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...
  
  , and foot stomp
  Percussion instrument
  A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...