Gone too soon but not to be forgotten, San Francisco guitar pop supergroup TRIP WIRE has left an impressive legacy. Big Stir Records is proud to celebrate the band's career with the release of TRIP WIRE – a limited edition vinyl LP and extended digital collection that stands as the definitive anthology of Trip Wire's recorded catalog, available now at www.bigstirrecords.com/store and everywhere music is sold or streamed. The LP culls the twelve greatest tracks from Trip Wire's first three CDs, now on wax for the first time. The extended digital version (included with the LP purchase) includes all 12 cuts and adds highlights from the bands's fourth album Once & Always, both sides of the two singles issued on Big Stir Records, and the entirety of the final EP Spite House, issued after the band's retirement for a comprehensive view of the band's all too brief lifespan.

The release is a fitting tribute to a group destined to be recalled throughout the Bay Area as one of the hardest-gigging, hardest-hitting guitar pop outfits in recent memory. Formed by and centered around singer-songwriter-guitarist MARTY SCHNEIDER, TRIP WIRE always had room for multiple voices: the definitive lineup anchored by powerhouse drummer STU SHADER also included power pop legend JEFF SHELTON (The Well Wishers, Spinning Jennies), several of whose tunes are included here. Always melodic, the band's guitar sound tapped into roots beyond the power pop pantheon: there was just as much of the Stones as The Beatles in their DNA, and echoes of college rock greats from The Replacements to R.E.M. to the Pixies were a big part of the brew. There was Americana twang, too, evoking The Band and Uncle Tupelo, and more than anything else, there were just some damned fine songs.

The Trip Wire ethos coalesced quickly across their first two albums, Get In & Get Out (2015) and Seizureville (2016). In 2017, Cold Gas Giants, released on Kool Kat Music, saw the lineup stabilize with Schneider, Shader, Shelton, and Bill Hunt (who would also contribute songs to the band's oeuvre). The dozen songs on this LP are drawn from those first thee records, with “Long Days Gone” from Cold Gas Giants kicking off Side A. The digital bonus section commences with the single “Act Fast”, which, along with its non-album B-side version of “Golden Gloves”, saw the group make the move to Big Stir Records in preparation for what would be their final and perhaps finest album, Once & Always, amply represented here. One more single for BSR, “Katie Says”, demonstrated there was still plenty of electricity in the Wire, but Schneider's move out of state brought an end to the band, with the farewell EP Spite House serving as a fitting coda. All of the single and EP tracks are anthologized here.

Schneider is already forming a new band and writing new material in Georgia, and of course Shelton remains a prime mover in the power pop world with The Well Wishers. But the music collected here attests to the fact that Trip Wire was a unique musical force of its own. So blast off one more time for a self-titled spin of the best the band had to offer... they will be missed!

BIG STIR RECORDS is thrilled to welcome to its roster: TRIP WIRE! The band's brand new fourth album Once & Always will see release digitally on Friday, March 15, on BSR, with a physical CD to follow in late April. TRIP WIRE has risen a long way in a very short time. From their formation in 2015 as a collaboration between singer-guitarists MARTY SCHNEIDER (Midway Delta, Campbell Apartment) and BILL HUNT (Captain Fatass, The Generous Grants) to today, they've released three full-length albums, culminating with the celebrated and raucous hook-fest Cold Gas Giants (Kool Kat Musik, 2017). Along the way they've become a hard-gigging and compelling live act, regularly commanding stages on the vibrant San Francisco guitar-pop scene alongside the likes of Bye Bye Blackbirds, The Bobbleheads, David Brookings and Scott Gagner. It was the late 2016 addition of JEFF SHELTON (The Well Wishers, Hot Nun, ex-Spinning Jennies and host of KSCU's The Power Pop Show) and drummer STU SHADER that pushed TRIP WIRE over the top. What you witness onstage and hear on record now is a trio of top-notch songwriters and players pushing each other to new levels of performance and craft, propelled along by Shader, an absolute monster who's as much fun to watch as he is to hear. Schneider, Shelton, and Hunt trade duties on guitar, bass and lead vocals (sometimes within a single song). The band's live set draws on Shelton's Well Wishers back catalog. It's a joy to hear those songs (and that voice!) in a wild and wooly live setting, and Hunt's contributions shine as well. Schneider's songs, sung in turn by himself and the others, are the emotive glue holding the polyphony together, and the band play with the chemistry of a group that's been together far longer than they have, and the energy and abandon of teenagers just out of the garage. It's a joy to behold. That live energy informed Cold Gas Giants, which burnished the band's power pop pedigree and evoked the heady heyday of '80's college rock radio and early '90s alt-pop: crunchy echoes of The Replacements and Hüsker Dü, The Posies and Teenage Fanclub, Uncle Tupelo and Wilco at their early, rocking finest were well evident. The energy spills over into the brand new ONCE & ALWAYS (Big Stir Records, 2019) which roars out of the gate with Schneider's “Had Enough” and Shelton's irresistible “Down” and is replete with giddy melodic rockers like “Bottle Rocket” and the Hunt/Shelton collaboration “Light of the Moon”. But the record quickly reveals itself as the most textured, varied, and (dare one say it?) mature platter in the TRIP WIRE catalog. It evokes at times the early work of The Band filtered through the “No Depression” era of what we now call Americana, with nods back to straight country (“Carolina”), hints of that driving early-R.E.M. jangle (the gorgeous “Act Fast”, written by Schnieder but sung by Shelton, and “Easy Exit”) and even chamber-pop and psych flourishes (“Into the Sound”). Schneider handles the lion's share of the writing here and he's in fine form, turning in a Warren Zevon-worthy hard luck tearjerker in the form of the subtly string-laden “Golden Gloves”. It's one of a pair of boxing-themed tunes alongside “Get Up Slow” which inspired the art design (from multitalented SF power pop master Scott Gagner). Elsewhere flashes of pedal steel and even a Pixie-evoking theremin broaden the sonic pallet beyond the guitar sound that's the band's bedrock. ONCE & ALWAYS lives up to its title in its timelessness. It pushes beyond genre labels, but it's a cohesive and engrossing work that invites repeated listening and shows off TRIP WIRE as the treasure of the San Francisco scene that they are. Act fast in deed... this is a band for the ages.