04 - Week Off

I have the week off from recording so I thought I'd share my rendition of the Everly Brother's classic, "All I Have To Do Is Dream".
All I Have To Do Is Dream.

I feel like I should be wearing denim for this.

This was absolutely the silliest recording session of my entire life. I wanted to do a classic country duet like they used to back in the days when country had more heart than dollar signs, so I had the always wonderful Genevieve Schatz from the band Company of Thieves join me. The day first started feeling funny when half way through listening to the song Jon turns to me and says, "I feel like I should be wearing denim for this". Coincidently, I had on a denim shirt that day and Chris had one in his closet, so needless to say within only a couple minutes we were all wearing denim and the mood was set for the rest of the day. We continued to build a classic shuffle-country bounce rhythm over the melody and sooner than later Jon pulled his hair and exclaimed, "Ah, I just can't handle how fun this song is!".

We wanted the song to have a dive bar kind of feel to it, so we moved the session into the kitchen where there would be more access to various pots, pans, tables and..oven doors? Anything we could use for backround noise that would make this song even more fun than it already was. Gen and I took a shot of Whiskey (Well, she plugged her nose and only finished part of it, but it's okay, her heart was in it) and we recruited Ben to help us make funny sounds. Then just like that, we were tracking vocals right there in the kitchen while Jon and Ben hopped around like Teletubbies making every possible sound they could think of, using every possible thing they could find without breaking their house. I couldn't have asked for a better distraction.

The Voice From Above

I returned the next week under the new name "The Voice From Above". I guess all that week Jon had been mixing the song "Peace Not War" really loud in his bedroom upstairs so all of his roomates had to listen to my idiot voice all day. I would apologize, but that house is like a Musical Neverland, man. I am yet to be there without feeling any sort of melody or rhythm in the walls. In one corner of the house, wrapped in a blanket, their roomate Ben wholeheartedly goes to work on composing music for an independent film. In the living room, Chris blares a healthy reminder that The Meters are better than we will ever be. In the basement, Ben and Marson rehearse for their band, This Is Cinema. And of course, placed conveniently in the center of all of this, we have turned Jon's bedroom into a recording studio. Not a likely location to be recording an album, I know, but I have no intention of making these songs sound any bigger than that.

Of all the songs I'm recording for this record, "Soul Shaker" was the one I was most uncertain about. Not with the song itself, but with the direction of where to take it. "Do you think I should keep it how I have it or make it more...like a band?". "I would say more like a band" Chris replied. I knew that was the right answer I was just afraid to take it there. So, I stepped into it like a cold bath and within the hour we were playing what felt like a brand new song. It was much easier for me to move forward with this song than I thought it would be, but that's only because Chris and Jon made it that easy. With a Feist-like groove and a certain pop sense worn handsomely by The Kinks, I'm sure it will rest easy with at least some of you. Did I just review my own music?

Okay, there's a fire.

"Okay, there's a fire". You would think given those words we would have immediately starting running in circles, waving our hands wild and free, desperately searching for some form of liquid to put out this new friend of ours (Atleast that's how I imagined myself to react in the face of a fire). Instead we stood as still as Man vs. Bear, like the fire would leave us alone if we didn't move. "Okay, okay.." Jon says, "What do we do?". Man, where do I even begin in a situation like this? There was no crumbling ceiling, no cat(s) to save, no John Travolta, and no trampoline at the bottom of this basement window, so all I've ever learned from the movies was of no use to me now. "Uh, should we just throw it in the snow or something!?". I know, I know, you can't just pick up a fire and throw it away, but what happened was a ceiling light fell and set the outer shell surrounding it on fire. Jon triumphantly took hold of the little demon and I opened the door behind me as we danced our way into the cold and watched it wither away.

I really made that entirely more dramatic then it actually was, but it made for an interesting first day in the studio. Aside from all that, it was a very successful day in the sense of getting to know both Jon Alvin as my producer and Chris Faller as a musician. I have known Chris for a while now, but never really knew the extent of his abilities until that day. He took the skeleton of my song, "Peace Not War" and built this brilliant, subtle layer of intensity in the rhythm section that still gives me chills when I hear it. Jon was able to look at "Peace Not War" for what it wasn't. He recognized it's potential and challenged me to take it to a place I never would have dared to go. See, these songs are my babies. Finding the right producer is like trying to find the right babysitter for your children. I trust now that both Chris and Jon will feed these songs, play a few rounds of Nintendo Wii with them, get them to bed at a reasonable hour, tuck them in, and leave one light on in the hallway.