The Ballad of Stayed and Gone 7

Part of me resists writing these posts, these posts about our recording project. These posts about music most of you probably won’t care to hear in its finished form, much less in the incomplete and imperfect form found in these posts. Part of me wants to wait until everything is done so I can just say, here it is, love it or leave it, I don’t care, it’s done, I’ve moved on to other projects. Part of me doesn’t want to discuss it unless you are playing on the record. That part of me says that I don’t remember why I started writing about this in the first place, says that whatever the reason was, it probably wasn’t all that good of a reason anyway, and says that I am conceited to think anyone cares and that if I stop now, no one will say, hey what happened to that series of posts about the record you were recording? That part of me wants me to hide the incomplete parts, wants me to hide in a basement somewhere and not say anything ever unless it’s absolutely true and necessary, anything more than the completely true and necessary is vain, pointless, selfish. That part of me may very well be right.

But I don’t care. The other part of me, calls that part chicken-shit. The other, stubborn part of me wants me to finish what I started. The other, bullshitting part of me likes crap whose reason and meaning might be hidden from me, might be so hidden that I won't see it until I take my last breath, or maybe never, maybe it doesn't have any, and maybe its attraction and beauty is precisely the result of that very lack of reason and meaning. So that other part of me wants to show how stuff is put together, wants to show little pieces that might end up making the whole, wants to show how this record is different from other records we’ve done, wants to let the crap fly to the four winds, devil be damned, before it ends up in the cutting room floor. This other part of me sometimes hopes that when you hear the finished record, you’ll feel like you were part of its creation, feel like you heard the songs when they were merely a few chunks of undigested chords. But this other part of me, also thinks, to hell with it, this is what I’m doing, and who needs a reason for anything. Because this part of me likes to go on about nothing, constantly dwelling on nothing, constantly trying to make something out of nothing, constantly trying to find the little bit of something in all that nothing.

And if nothing else this series of posts should at least be a document of how our record was made, a document of how we made a record after having a baby during her first years, a document of music in transition. A document which maybe, just maybe, long after I'm gone, she'll read as she listens to the record and feel something special thinking that this record was all done for her.

Ok, so a few weeks back we picked up the recording after the holiday break and I put some guitars to substitute the scratch guitars that were there with the drum tracks. Not really too much to report from that session. But some days later Stu Cole put some bass tracks down. You’ve already heard his name mentioned on this blog, so let me tell you a little about Stu.

I’ll tell you a recent story because I think it conveys the spirit of the man when it comes to music. Last year, on Thursday November 1, I went to the Orange County Social Club (a bar in the town of Carrboro which is in Orange County NC) to have a drink after work, and I ran into Stu. He had been out late late for Halloween the night before and wasn’t fully recovered. We had a few drinks and an old friend of Stu’s who he hadn’t seen for some time showed up. I left them catching up in the back patio and went inside for drinks. I guess I took a bit longer than I thought because when I went back out, Stu had walked the five or so blocks to where his car was parked and had walked back with his stand-up bass, so that his buddy, who fetched his guitar from his car out back, and him could play a few songs sitting in the back of the OCSC. There was no one there but us three, so it wasn’t like a concert or anything of the kind. It was two buddies playing music together, playing bits of songs, helping each other remember old songs they’d played together, sharing new music they’d been working on, laughing, singing, playing and having a good time. I kept going inside to talk to the people at the bar and out to the patio to watch them play a song or two and back inside. Once in a while someone would hear the music and walk up and sit and listen for a bit, and then go on their way. It was all very casual and it went on for a good two hours.

Eventually Stu’s friend had to go. By then both Stu and I were fairly toasted, but Stu had the added weight of the previous night’s Halloween debauchery plus a stand-up bass to carry. I offered to walk with him to his car so we could drop off the bass and figure out what to do next. But the bass is a big instrument to carry drunk for five blocks. So we crossed the street with some difficulty and reached Southern Rail (aka The Trains), which at this point had been opened for just a month or two. We decided we needed a rest stop. After all, we had made it across the street from OCSC, so a reward was in order. As luck would have it, there just so happened to be an old-timey band about to start playing in the main platform/bar area of The Trains. These were four guys with no amplification at all, fiddle, banjo, mandolin and washboard. And in walks Stu with a stand-up bass he can barely carry.

Master songwriter Jim Smith, immediately spotted us, and comes up to Stu and will not take no for an answer, not that Stu was trying to get out of it. Jim carried Stu’s bass to where the four unsuspecting gentlemen were about to start playing, took the bass out of the case and held it up while he waited for Stu, who stumbled over to the bass and barely got behind it as the group started their set. It was like Popeye and spinach. Without missing a beat, Stu was on. It was hard to tell if he was holding the bass up or if the bass was holding him up, but there was no denying that he was rockin' that Brutus of a bass. And just to be sure, the old timey band, right away on the first song, threw him a solo, Stu handled it like the captain of a hundred stormy seas, and from then on the old-timey band was up and away riding a ship fueled by Stu and his bass.

After that the night got even crazier, but that is another story. What I’m trying to say here is that Stu is not only an incredible bass player, but also a musician with a true love for music. This is a player who’s in a band that (according to the wiki, anyway) had a platinum record, has been on all the late night shows, Sesame Street, the Olympics, president Clinton’s inaugural ball, you name it. But even with all that “success”, his real success is that he has remained true to the music. And he is never too tired to play or record with a friend.

Originally we were going to record at Stu’s little farm cabin studio, but the studio had to be shut down. I still wanted Stu to be part of the project so I asked him if he would play some bass on the record and he readily agreed.

We set up a date with Jesse Olley, who is co-producing and engineering the record, and I gave Stu a CD with what we had, which was drums and guitars with some scratch vocals. After that I met with him three or four times. Each time we sat and listened to the tracks, and talked about them, and he would play little bits on whatever instrument was available. And I would respond and we would listen some more and talk some more. We did a lot more talking than playing and we never played the songs all the way through from beginning to end. The night before the session, I was nervous. I’ve heard Stu play many times, and I’ve heard his recordings, so I trusted him, but I hadn’t heard him play any of the songs we were going to record from beginning to end, and this way of recording one instrument at a time is still new to me, so I was nervous.

The recording day arrived and we went to Jesse’s Ultra Fin Riz Studio. We had a five hour session ahead of us and about 10 songs/parts of songs to work on. The plan was to do as much as possible and then come back another day to finish. We decided to do the electric bass parts first since those were the majority, and Stu suggested a direct line and then just punch and run. Jesse and I must be from the same school that doesn’t trust direct lines too much, so we ran the bass direct and through different amps, but the direct line always sounded best. So we went with that, and then Stu proceeded to lay down 9 of the 10 songs we were working on, in one of the smoothest sessions I’ve ever participated in. We did not get the full impact of Stu's playing as I've seen it on stage, ripping it up like some rock god, instead Stu put solid bass parts that enhance the songs without drawing attention to themselves. They were the perfect bass parts for this record. And besides that, I got a master recording lesson.

There were a couple of factors that made this session such a success, aside from Stu’s expertise. The first was the punch and run method, which was a definite eye opener for me. The second was the importance of talking about the music and developing an understanding about it. As Stu laid down the bass parts, I realized that during the hours we had spent talking about the tracks we had developed a clear way of talking about the music much like the way that bandmates sometimes can. Understanding was the main obstacle, and once we understood each other the act of translating that understanding into music was actually fairly simple, at least when working with someone as skilled as Stu.

The way the session went was pretty much like this: Jesse would start recording and Stu would play the song up to a good stopping point, he would then ask me what I thought of that, and I’d say something like, maybe you can flip that last turnaround upside down, loosen it up a bit and come in on the three with that buddy holly bit, except make it more clouds and rain but add some Jupiter to it, and he knew exactly what I meant! And not only that, he would adjust accordingly, replay the part up to the break, stop, how was that? Perfect, I'd say. Ok, let’s keep going. Jesse would punch in there, and we’d move forward along the track, punching and running, sometimes back tracking a bit and redoing a section, until we’d get to the end. Then we would listen to the whole thing, and maybe do it one more time depending on how we felt about what we had. Sometimes we redid a beginning only, or a middle part, but for the most part it ran seamlessly, and for the most part when we got to the end of the track, it was done.

One is never to old to learn new tricks and this session taught me a few things. I had more than a few preconceptions blown away: that you have to know the song beginning to end to be able to record it, that recording with a direct box is not a good idea, that it’s better to be standing up when you record, that punching in is only for correcting mistakes, that one should play the song beginning to end like one would if it was a live performance. These are all preconceptions I’ve had from years of recording music as if it was live, from years of trying to capture in the studio what a band’s perfect live performance might be like, because all those things apply if you are playing live. But if one does away with the idea that a recording should somehow document what a band can do live, then one can judge a recording as just music. I'm sure all this is no news to many, and though I knew it in theory, this is the first record that I feel I've been putting that to practice. And while some purist part of me wants to call it cheating, the other part of me is quickly learning to call it recording.

Now, here’s a couple of tracks that are more traditional songs

First, here’s Stayed and Gone which I think you’ve now heard at various stages. This is just one guitar, drums, electric bass… still to be added is other stuff like vocals, trumpet and pedal steel.

And here’s Season of the Grape which you’ve also heard at a few stages along the way. This again is one guitar, drums and stand-up bass, which was recorded with some heavy duty mikes in an isolation booth, but still using the punch and run method.

Finally, here’s the first minute from Always Home, which includes a new intro, which used to be a separate bit called An Attempt, which was originally recorded as a segment for the NAP’s exquisite corpse experiment many months ago. That bit is now integrated into the song, at least by Garageband standards. Many of these more abstract bits such as An Attempt, which were recorded on Garageband are being slowly transferred to the masters at Jesse’s studio and re-mixed and re-edited for the record, but keeping the actual tracks.



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Se Acabaron las Navidades

Christmas is over in Puerto Rico. This Saturday, February 2nd, Dia de la Candelaria (Candlestick Day), everyone will take their dried up x-mas trees to the beach and burn them in huge bonfires.

The weekend before last was the official last party of the season with Las Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastian. These Fiestas have grown from a little street fest for the local residents of Old San Juan into a massive festival with lots of corporate sponsors and the idiots that go along with the corporate sponsorship. I’m not sure how I would feel about going to them if I was there, but even so, I see from the picture below, that Billy Van is still going, so I think ultimately I would have to say, that if it is still good enough for Billy Van, it’s still good enough for me. Billy Van has developed over the past 20 or 30 years into a sort street leader for the fiestas, organizing random groups of singers and musicians, and leading them through the streets. Here’s a picture of Billy Van in action by the Ponce de Leon statue in the Placita de San Jose, with his trademark hat and megaphone. This is one huge parranda. Can you find all the instruments in the picture?

The Ballad of Stayed and Gone 6

It’s been 17 weeks since my last post on this recording project. During these past weeks, we’ve been focusing on rehearsing the music, playing a few live shows, and vacationing, and last Sunday we officially started production of the record.

But before that, over the past few months, we played a few gigs in order to rehearse the songs we would be recording. However, not all the songs we are planning to record easily translate to a live stage. Many of the tracks for the record already have parts that have already been recorded, what we might call musique concrete parts. Some of the tracks are composed almost entirely of these pre-recorded bits. But using tape effects or laptops on stage is too complicated for us, so any tracks that relied on these pre-recorded sounds were either not played, or the pre-recorded sounds were substituted with other stuff that could be played live.

The opening song, Walk, for example, is a song we wanted to play live, but to do that, we had to come up with a different way of doing the pre-recorded intro. The intro, you might remember, started with a long series of sounds from door opening and closing, lighting a cigarette, footsteps in gravel, etc, in a crescendo that led to the beginning of the song. On stage the pre-recorded sounds were substituted with some spoken word describing the sounds, backed by some snare, pedal steel and guitar washes that built up to the start of the song. The spoken word described the pre-recorded sounds in a non-specific kind of way. You hear the sound of home, then the sound of leaving home, then the sound of the longest walk, then looking back, even the fading is gone, the longest night, etc etc… Stuff like this reinforces my opinion that, although a record can be a document of a live performance, generally speaking recording and playing live are two completely different animals. Which is why there are so many bands that excel at one and not the other, and why, to me, the ones that are able to excel at both, clearly treat them as the two different animals that they are.

We have a plan for the recording, but the extended process of recording one or two instruments at a time makes it so that the plan can be adjusted as we move forward. The plan includes voice, guitar, bass, drums, pedal steel, cuatro, various keys, trumpet, percussion, and pre-recorded sounds loosely organized into various arrangements. However, the live shows were all done with voice, guitar, pedal steel and drums, because that’s who was available for the shows. Following are a couple of tracks from the show at the Local 506. This show was recorded from the back of the room with a digital recorder, so keep that in mind. The purpose of recording the show was to have a reference for the studio work ahead.

Here’s Stayed and Gone, the third song, which you might also remember as the song that had the cheesy Garageband horns and that ripped off some Neil Young lyrics. I post this one, because it’s probably the one that has changed the most since it’s original Garageband sketch. The lyrics have changed, the arrangement has changed, the structure has changed… I post it here starting from the very end of Sometimes Mariana, because I like the transition.

The other song I’m going to post from the 506 show is Season of the Grape which has remained pretty much the same in structure, and vocals, but I want you to hear Nathan Golub’s pedal steel and Nathan Logan’s drumming on the arrangement, a far cry from anything Garageband can do, even when recorded from the audience with a handheld recorder.

So we played a few lives shows, way less than would make me comfortable before going into the studio, but there was no way to get around that. It's a different rock and roll world with a one year old baby. So last Sunday, we jumped in the recording waters and officially started production of the record. Luckily we are working with a crack team of musicians that are used to jumping into the fray and getting it right. For me, however, this will be a very different recording experience in many ways and as such, a little daunting but also exciting and educational.

Almost everything I’ve ever recorded has been recorded the same way, practice the songs and play them live for months and months, go into the studio for a couple of days and pretty much lay down the songs live with a few overdubs on top. On this record, however, we have not had the opportunity to play the songs live for months, so the recording process will be a little more organic and integrated into the creative process, instead of trying to document and reproduce an already existing musical experience. So instead of starting with a canvas that already includes guitar, bass, and drums, we are starting with a blank canvas, and building from there, one instrument at a time.

In the past all my recordings have also been based around one studio. Go into studio X for Y number of days and come out with the tracks that make the record. This time we are working with microphone and sound effects master, Jesse Olley, and we will be recording wherever best suits the music being recorded, studios, train tracks, festivals, small rooms at home, etc. For the first session, however, we went into the very professional Track and Field Studios, and recorded a bunch of drum tracks with Nathan Logan. In preparation, Jesse suggested we listened to the drums in the Beatles’ Rubber Soul. In Rubber Soul, the drums seem to be miked from above with just one mike, so the cymbals come in very clear while the kick drum is a little more distant. I liked the idea since the sound we're looking for on this record is fairly light and I’ve been concerned with getting too much kick drum into it. So for the recording Jesse and engineer Nick Petersen, tried a bunch of mikes placing them overhead in various ways. But they also miked the kick, snare and toms, as they might end up being useful in the end.

We then spent twelve hours running through tracks that would have drums in them, some times whole tracks, sometimes partial tracks. Per the recording plan, less than half the tracks on the record have drums, but getting the drums right for those tracks was crucial since those are the tracks that are also songs in the more traditional way. Well, it was a painful experience, I won’t deny it, recording just drums with some scratch vocals and guitars on top is not very rewarding at all. It’s a lot of work and when you play it back it just sounds like drums playing by themselves, which is what it is. I had to focus on my faith in Jesse and in the final product in order to get through it.

But we did. And a few days later Jesse gave me a CD of the drum tracks so I could meet with Stu Cole and start working on bass parts, and it was a beautiful thing, the hard work that Jesse and Nick put into picking and placing mikes to get the drums just right, paid off.

So off I go to start working with Stu. So far the process feels somewhat like making puzzle pieces, and trying to get each individual puzzle piece right, without loosing sight of the bigger picture they are supposed to be making, but without being able to put them altogether to see if indeed that is the picture they are making.

The Ballad of Stayed and Gone 5

Here are two new sketches on the continuing Ballad.

Walk*
This bit represents my coming to terms with the most basic influence for what I hope this record will be.

Dialogue is invaluable to me during the creative process. I don’t create well in a vacuum so I need the back and forth and exchange of ideas I’ve generally found in bands, friends, music venues, etc. However over the last year that dialogue has been somewhat lacking. Since the arrival of our daughter the band hasn’t been gigging. The Ms and I have played a few shows in the past month and we are slowly making our way back to the clubs, but it’s been slow moving. Since we haven’t been gigging we also haven’t been having official band practices. The Ms and I practice at home when we can, but she is busy with her new business and with the baby, so the little time we get alone together we haven’t been using for practicing music. We also haven’t been in bars and friends houses playing and exchanging ideas until the sun comes up. Of course, none of this is said as a complaint. It is our new life with our daughter, and I love it. But it’s a transition period, and it needs a little tuning. And one of the aspects that needs tuning is that I’m having to find new ways to interact with people and get that dialogue that I use as part of my creative output.

I am working on various ways to obtain such dialogue, and one of them is this blog. Granted it is not the same as all of us sitting around in a practice room with our instruments working on music, but by the same token it may offer other possibilities. That being said, I appreciate the comments that have been offered, but at the same time I wish for more. I wish you would all see this blog as the great opportunity that it could be. We each have our own preferred modes of expression and we don’t necessarily agree on aesthetics, methodology, or much else for that matter, but we’ve all made a commitment to this blog and to me that combination is one of the best foundations to create something that could actually evolve into something greater than the sum of our parts which ultimately would be a very musical thing to do.

Back to the sketch. In this first sketch you might recognize the beginning of a previous sketch (the wrecking ball). It starts the same, but please, if you’ve heard it stick with it through that beginning because it’s going somewhere totally different this time. However, just as I felt before, I still feel that this is how the record starts. Though I feel the mood is now more acurately described.

Sometimes Mariana*
This is an older song. We have live recordings of it but have never done any kind of studio recording of it. Subject-wise it’s the central inspiration for this record I’m working on. And in a way it’s her record. Mariana’s record, that is. I grew up with Mariana from very little until her dad was stabbed on the street, walked into a bar and bled to death when everyone thought he was just drunk. Then her mom and her and her little sister moved to Canada and I never saw them again. She was my first best friend.

Anyways, the usual version of this song that we play as a band is quite fast (runs about 2 minutes) and in D major. For the record and since I’m thinking about it in terms of being the song right after Walk (see above), I feel it should be slower, more folksy, and in C major (though I’m already beginning to see how it would work with the faster version too). Here’s a first sketch of it with just me on the guitar.