Aireline, was a quartet hailing from Murfreesboro, TN with one foot in rock and and the other in classical whose influences range from Radiohead and Sunny Day Real Estate to Johann Sebastian Bach and Krzysztof Penderecki. They founded in December 2000 and disbanded in March of 2005. Written and recorded in 2001, their first collective effort Ocean Songs from the Year of the Horse was well received by both fans and critics. Originally released only in limited edition physical form, its been over a decade since these thoughtful tunes have seen the light of day.

Shady Place Demo
Coming off the heals of two band breakups (Caesar’s Glass Box - Mason/Matt, Harmonium - Chris/James), music was mostly in the rear view mirror for all of us. We were back in school at MTSU and of course had lots of friends in the recording program. In 2000, one of those friends asked Mason to record a song for her school project so he worked up Shady Place with the help of Matt in about a week’s time. They went into the studio and this is the recording that came out. Chris and James heard the song and decided the four of us should get together and work on some music. Aireline was born. This song and this recording are largely responsible for that. We ended up rerecording Shady Place for our first album, Ocean Songs From the Year of the Horse, but this recording has a special place in our hearts.

We Will
This was another MTSU student project that Mason was asked to do. He and Chris worked up this song for the session, and it is one of the earliest examples of us experimenting with our classical influences. We worked up a version of this song as a band years later but never actually performed it live or rerecorded it.

Live at the Boro 8/31/01 Murfreesboro, Tn
On August 31, 2001 we played our first show as Aireline. We did not yet have a band name and had been tossing around many potential candidates, but we could not agree on one that we all liked. Aireline was one name on the list. We decided “we’ll just use this name for this show because we have to have something and then we’ll change it for the next show.” As it turned out, we still had not decided on a name by our second show, so once again we played as Aireline. By this time, we decided that we had missed our window to come up with a “real” band name so we stuck with Aireline. This is a recording of our very first show which we played at the Boro in Murfreesboro, TN, just down the street and walking distance from the house on Greenland Ave. where we practiced in Mason’s and Matt’s living room. The recording was done by a friend on an open air recorder in the back of the venue, so the quality is not very good. We offer up this recording not for it’s greatness, but for it’s significance to us. It is like a mini time capsule of what we were before we even knew what we were. For those familiar with our music, you will hear unfinished lyrics, many mistakes, and slightly different arrangements on a song or two. We have also left in some dead time between songs just to give the feel of being there that night. We have doctored it in no way. We hope you enjoy it, or even if you don’t, we hope you will appreciate it as we do: the maiden voyage, although a bit rough, of what would be an amazing musical journey for us.

Exit/In recordings
These songs were take straight from the board mix at one of our shows at the legendary Exit/In in Nashville. We have no idea when this show happened, and once again it is a bit rough in spots, but we were never a perfect live band and were never embarrassed by that. For those of you who attended any of our live shows (maybe even this one), hopefully this will be a pleasant trip down memory lane. It definitely is for us.

3 Degrees
This track came straight from the board mix at a club in Minneapolis call Club 3 Degrees. We played there while on tour with Cool Hand Luke, and I think it might have actually been 3 degrees outside that night. Again, this recording is rough in spots, but was a great show in an amazing venue with a great audience on a tour where we played for two people at one show and had to leave our broken down van in Missouri and pile into Cool Hand Luke’s van only to drive 6 hours to a venue that had closed down and no longer existed (we also got a flat tire at 2 in the morning driving home from that nonshow).