Cavern Sound

Not quite hell, but close enough. Local Customs: Cavern Sound covers six years lost in the deranging darkness of Independence, Missouri’s Pixley limestone mine, where a team of misfit engineers captured the reverberating echoes of Kansas City’s rock n’ roll blasting cap. Taped in the subterranean studio headspace of Cavern between 1967 and 1973 are previously unissued recordings by Jaded, Larry Sands & the Sound Affair, Sheriff, Mulligan, Stone Wall, Morningstar, the Montaris, and the Dantes, alongside the most explosive tracks released on KC’s Pearce, Rock, and Cave labels by the likes of the Reactions, Burlington Express, the Classmen, Fraight, American Sound Ltd, Baxter’s Chat, 21st Century Sound Movement, Pretty, Tide, and A.J. Rowe. One of the strangest recording studios ever built, Cavern collected a cast of characters—the country-loving general manager, the young rocker, the Sun Records rockabilly pilot—and a dedicated clientele of religious groups, schools, country singers, and rock n’ roll dreamers hoping to stumble across the true sound of the underground.