My Life Is On The Line is an orchestral quintet consisting of guitar, bass, drums, cello, and violin. Most of the band lives in San Francisco. The original idea for the music was wrought on a self-notating, plastic keyboard James Nestor bought for himself as a Christmas gift in January of 2002. The cello and violin sounds on the keyboard were tolerable, and so they were used to color in some piano-based ideas on which JN had spent a few weeks working. Curious to hear how the songs might sound in a recording with real string players, JN queried his friends to see if anyone knew any players: a coworker lived with a erstwhile violinist; a friend's ex-girlfriend had lived with a cellist years ago in Berkeley. String manuscripts were scored out. A wild drummer was procured.

The group— Libby Miller, cello; Ugo Costa: violin; Geoff Reed: drums— met in a steel-roofed woodworking warehouse in Emeryville a few weeks later. In tow was a finicky 8-track analog tape recorder and some vintage ribbon mics; behind the knobs was engineer Jeff Byrd. Rhythm tracks were recorded live that afternoon; string overdubs were recorded in a few hours the next week. The ep was released August 2002 and is available free-of-charge via mail through the Contact page or a download on the Audio page.


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