Work continued last night in the secret vaults of Whispermaphone Studios (swamp version*) last night.
The original tracks (cut last week) were made with the four of us playing live in the room (as opposed to the players overdubbing their parts individually). All of them were done this way but one: “Clever Things”. This was cut a few minutes before Leland could get there. So tonight, Leland strapped on the headphones and laid down the piano part—-no mean feat. Sometimes it’s hard to make something ‘feel’ just right; finding the ‘pocket’, ‘the groove’, can be tricky when you’re laying something down while listening to the original track—Leland pulled it off perfectly.
The next challenge was to fix a problem that I had caused. Two of the tracks “Who’s Got a Light?” and “Send the Band to Liverpool” didn’t have drums. Well, they sort of did…I had re-routed John’s mic’s for the previous song, and then didn’t set them back to where they belonged. The result: two perfectly good takes with drums that you could only hear bleeding slightly through the other instrument’s mics. Gargh!
John set about trying to overdub drums. Not only is this an ill-advised way to work (you want your rhythm tracks locked in perfectly), it’s severely difficult. If the band’s tempo varied at all (and it usually does), it can be impossible. I’ve seen John pull it off, but in this case, the original drums bled through enough to highlight any discrepencies. [ach, who was the lame engineer who'd led us to this pickle?] After a valiant attempt and some creative work-arounds, we decided we’d end up with something we were all proud of only if we re-cut the two tunes. Luckily the band had just enough juice left (even though it was getting late) to pull off two fiery takes each of both songs.
So….the work continues.
Not only do these versions have a different ‘sound’…what with us using only acoustic pianos and guitars, but since we’re using a different approach, the arrangements change a bit…it’s more a creative re-working than a reproduction of these songs which are a familiar part of our live sets. I’m hoping that those who recieve this new disc (by pledging 20 bucks or more on our kickstarter.com campaign—-Click here!) will be very happy with this unique project.
watch the video to learn more.
*It does get a little ‘swampy’ in there when recording four folks live, and you’ve gotta turn the air conditioning off (it makes noise y’know) when the tape’s rolling….but that, and Leland playing the rather down-home-y upright piano…made for an atmospheric deep-in-the bayou mood on these sessions.