says that he intended to do a less serious "goof" or "good-time" record in contrast to The Band. The group's plan was to record the album live in their home base of Woodstock, New York at the Woodstock Playhouse. Ultimately, the town council feared a Woodstock Music and Art Fair-type stampede and vetoed the idea, leading the group to simply use the off-season theater as a makeshift studio. Upbeat, straightforward rockers like "Strawberry Wine", "Time to Kill" and "Just Another Whistle Stop", the funkier "The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show", and Robertson's more prominent guitar work together suggest the record retained some of the early, good-time intention. However, Robertson gradually found the songs taking a darker turn: "this album Stage Fright started seeping through the floor. I found myself writing songs that I couldn't help but write." "The Shape I'm In" and "Stage Fright" grappled with dissipation and panic, while "The Rumor" and "Daniel and the Sacred Harp" addressed the malevolence of gossip and the loss of one's soul in pursuit of fame and fortune. Manuel's dreamy "Sleeping" walked an uncomfortable line between bliss and a too-close-to-home longing for final escape. Standing alone as a purely positive song was Robertson's delicate lullaby, "All La Glory", written for the birth of his daughter, buoyed by one of Helm's most gentle, emotive vocals. Even there, though, Robertson uses lonesome imagery, referring to feeling "so tall like a prison wall". In a 2010 interview, Robertson described the recording atmosphere as tense, with the group contending with a tricky sound situation in the playhouse, an unfamiliar presence in Rundgren, and "distraction and a lot of drug experimenting." In This Wheel's On Fire, Helm concurred, describing a "dark mood that settled upon us" during the sessions. Helm also believed the record could have benefited from more time, saying, "for the first time we hadn't cut it to our standard... The days when we would live with the music were over." Two different mixes were prepared in London, England, one by Rundgren at Trident Studios and another by Glyn Johns at Island Studios. Some reports have suggested that Johns's mix was selected for the original LP release and nearly all subsequent reissues on Capitol (including the expanded 2000 remaster), while Rundgren's Trident mix was eventually used on Capitol's first CD release and a 24k gold CD reissue by the DCC Compact Classics label in 1994. However, there