Recording Diary – Part the Zillionth

Note: I have a show tomorrow at the Middle East Upstairs. I go on around 1:30 pm. Doors open at noon, tickets are $12 at the door. The show is all ages

Well, I’ve now had several recording sessions since my last recording recap. So, I suppose that it is high time that I got to writing some stuff up. Because, you know, it didn’t happen unless you blog about it. And I am really looking forward to finishing up this album.

We did two more sessions this weekend: one on Friday morning and one this afternoon. But, I still haven’t finished up my recap of the last session that we did. So, here we go.

When we last talked about recording, I was up in Vermont, we had finished up one day of overdubs and we were about to be joined by one Mister Robert Holmes who was going to rock all of our worlds with his mad music skillz. And rock our worlds he did.

As you can see, he takes his guitar playing very seriously. Also, that picture just might have been staged.

Robert has this amazing creative process. We would play a song for him and he would hum to himself, pick up a guitar and just go wild. He would just add in these crazy rhythm guitar parts that were pretty much, well, perfect. I was completely and utterly blown away.

He also added in some sweet guitar riffs.

we broke for lunch, where he regaled us with some hilarious stories about the time that he spent driving a cab. Apparently this was after ‘Til Tuesday had been huge. A friend asked him if he was interested in driving one night a week and he said sure. Not because he was broke, but because it sounded like it would be fun. He told us the following story:

-Band gets into the cab and they say, “hey man, can you turn on WBCN? (a local radio station) We want to hear if they’re playing our song”

Robert: “Sure, did you win the Rumble?” (the ‘BCN Rock and Roll Rumble is a local tradition and ‘Til Tuesday was pretty much the only band to have won the Rumble and to have gone on to get big nationally… at least until the Dresden Dolls won a few years ago)

The Band: “Yeah, we did.”

Robert: “Oh, I was in a band that won the Rumble.”

The Band: “What band?”

Robert: “‘Til Tuesday.”

The Band: *crickets, open-mouthed stares*

The guys kindof flipped out, because they were thinking “this guy was in the one band that really made it after winning. And they sold millions of records. And now he’s driving a cab.” He didn’t bother telling him that he was only driving a cab for fun. Apparently he got a huuuuuge tip from them and a condescending line about “I’m sure it will get better.”

Break time was over rather quickly and then it was back to work. We added a bunch of harmonies in over the course of the afternoon. Pete even got to sing a bit as he and Robert added in a little background singing for the chorus of one of the tunes. He sang on my last album as well, so I was teasing him that he has to sing harmonies on all of my albums. I engineered for this bit as well. It was quite a bit trickier, because we were double tracking all of their parts, so I had to switch from one track to another for each section. This involved changing inputs on the Radar system, moving some sliders on the boards and switching around inputs on the patch panel. Pete was impressed with my ability to switch everything back and forth (he was expecting to have to run into the control area between takes) and he jokingly offered me a job. Oh man, that would be fun.

For that same song, we added some “ooh la las” onto the bridge. I jokingly sang some along as we were listening to it and Pete thought that they were pretty good. We were going for spontaneous, so he handed me a pair of headphones and plopped me in front of a mic to sing the first thing that came into my head as he played the bridge back to me. The first thing that came into my head was pretty interesting, but also completely off-pitch. So, I re-sang the same basic melody….. but in tune this time. Then, Robert came up with some harmonies to go along with what I sang. He said that he never in a million years would have come up with a line like that, but that it sounds great. Score one for me!

We finished the afternoon off with Robert singing some basic harmonies and then we took a group photo and he drove off into the sunset.

Pete and I finished up by talking about what we accomplished over the weekend, what we still needed to do and then he put together some rough mixes for me to take back with me. Then, I packed up all of my stuff to make the trek back to Boston. Note to self: driving 2.5 hours late at night after an exhausting recording session is not smart. In fact, it is the opposite of smart. The drive itself wasn’t bad at all (hooray for cheesy songs to sing along to), but it was the last thing that I wanted to be doing. What I really wanted to be doing is sleeping. Next time, I am building a rest day into the recording schedule. Or bringing Kristian along with me. Or both.

The album is coming along fantastically. I couldn’t be more excited or more proud.