The Posies | Saltine

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The band's first line-up included Ken and Posies drummer Brian Young - this line-up appears on "I Owe You," released in 1997 on the Happy Meals Vol. 2 compilation. Around this time, their cover of "Know One Knows" appeared on a Badfinger tribute credited as the "Solteens."

By the next release in 1999, the band featured John "Scooter" Haslip of Voodoo Gearshift on bass, Blake Wescott (formerly in Pedro The Lion) on guitar, and drummer Paul Mumaw (who has worked with Aaron Sprinkle and Shane Tutmarc).

(For a period after Brian left, ex-Presidents Of The USA and Love Battery Jason Finn was the drummer.)

In 1999 and 2000, the band released three 7" singles, 2 EP's, and appeared on a compilation album. Songs from This Sounds Like Goodbye were reworked and/or re-recorded with Saltine, including "Any Sign At All" and "Your Love Won't Be Denied."

Most of the songs ended up on Touched, which Ken originally began recording with the band in 2000 (they then played SXSW, then quit the recording when they came back, and Ken went into the studio with R.E.M.). He later said, "I felt things in Saltine were a little one-dimensional, so I decided to end the band and make my own album."

In 2000, Painted Sky Discs released a compilation calling To Meet You, which included a never-released Saltine song, "Just A Thought."

From Ken's Comes With A Smile interview, 2002:

Interviewer: To clarify, is 'Touched' the album that was to be released under the Saltine name?
KS: In a way ... at the beginning of 2000 I was working on an album with Saltine, I started to record and then I scrapped it all. I didn't like how it was turning out. I just felt like ‘these aren't the guys' y'know? They're fine but it just wasn't for me. So I ended up making the record 'for real' starting from scratch a little later. I printed up some advance copies with the name Saltine on there, it didn't occur to me to call it a Ken Stringfellow record. I'd been working with that name [Saltine] for a while with a few different people… which is kinda stupid, in a way, 'cause the name's not attached to anything.

Interviewer: When you were involved in the Saltine set-up there were still a fair amount of straight-ahead 'rock' songs, songs like 'I owe you'. Nothing of that side of you is represented on 'Touched', so had you decided beforehand that this record was going to sit within stylistic guidelines, or did it shape itself?
KS: Some stuff just sounds better with a band. Except in the case of the first Foo Fighters record or something. For me at least it would be silly to be 'rocking out' on my own. That's for a band and also these things have a tendency to... whatever you conceptualise before you go into the making of any record, I think, the record decides how it will be on its own to a great degree, given the circumstances of the players and location and whatnot. In many ways, as it is always, this record sounded how it would sound of its own volition. One of my experiences of making that Saltine record was that the people I was with were a little bit limited ...my basic stylistic beef with that situation was that I thought Blake [Wescotts]'s view was too limited. He was into indie-rock and thought that he had it all figured out. He was also into other music as well - he was also into sixties music and he's significantly younger than I am - but for some reason he decided the parameters that he was limiting himself to were, in my eyes, guitar indie-rock. In his mind there are certain rules to be adhered to, things have to be done a certain way. I just can't live my life that way. I need to be totally free to do whatever, whenever. Certainly in music.