day four:

solo acoustic: take one

out of the kindness of his heart, seth warden of wetwerks fame offered to let me use his pretty pretty guild for the solo-acoustic tracks. great guitar, easy to play, but after run-throughs of 'watchtower' 'six' and 'liquefy,' we determined that it just didn't have the sound that i was going for. sounded good, but a little thinner than what i wanted.

a frantic call to hoby. he makes a call to his brother david and calls me back with the news: i can use one of david's pretty pretty collector's items. all i have to go is drive down and get it.

my hero.

vocals

scary. real scary. the music is sounding good, but it's the vocals that are going to stand out. make or break the record. 'what do you want to start with?' john asks. 'screw it,' i say. let's start at the beginning.' so i do 'anymore.' let the tape roll. voice isn't really warmed up until the second verse. listen back, re-do the first verse. it's sounding good, so i do a second track of back up vocals, then a third, and a fourth for the very end. mmmm good.

keep going, on down the line. 'closer' - was worried about the middle part sounding too sparse, but the vocal fills it up. beauteous. 'six' is fun: do the flow in the middle section with two voices. sick. 'tiresias.' 'interview...' 'one-four...' 'smiling...' it goes pretty quickly, especially once the voice in warmed up. and 'cycle' - i was probably most worried about this one, but it's gonna kill. the buildup to the end is gonna be great.

electric axe.

thought i was done for the day when mario returned an earlier call - said he'd be happy to bring over his fender amp for me to use. started salivating. wound up using john's rickenbacker for heavy chord stuff on 'six' and 'smiling.' used his strat for the riff on 'one-four,' which now doubles with the old acoustic track for a really warm, chorus sound. and surprise, surprise - use my ibanez roadstar piece-o-stool for bluesy lead noodlings on 'cycle' and 'smiling.' i haven't done any real lead work like this since the project with the middlebury boyz (matt bonner and al smith) a year and a half ago. but still pretty strong, once i decide to keep it simple, keep it cool. real cool.

day five:

the olson.

cindy and i drove down to grab the guitar from david early sunday morning - only a few hours of sleep after the fun fun fun QE2 show saturday nite. the guitar? a beautiful custom made olson. so we start today's session with that. sit my butt in a chair, set up a coupla mics for the guitar, and a vocal mic. everything live to tape. start with 'watchtower' which feels good while i'm playing, but really kills on the playback. david's guitar sings, and it's so easy to play. vocals pretty much dead on. we don't have a lot of tape left to play around with, so we decide it's a keeper and run through the rest. first 'six,' then john pulls the mics closer for the finger-pickin-good tunes: 'liquefy' and another which shall remain unnamed (heh-heh-heh). the only one that really gets a second take is 'liquefy,' - first take interrupted by a ringing phone. (what can ya do?)

the flow.

this weekend i came up with a flow to go over the jam that closes the album, and another for the electric noise that closes 'six.' i've been ITCHING to perform 'em since i wrote 'em on friday, so once i put the olson down, it's time to set up the mic and go to it. the 'smiling' flow first, doubling a smooth voice track and an aggressive voice track 'peekin at my music soul food he smell the chicken fat.' one take and you're outta there. the 'six' flow gets a second take: no real mistakes, just needed to be smoother at one point. yet more slurred. if that makes sense. 'here g-go the radio plastic jen-jen...'

the lady.

cindy stops by to inject some female sensibility into 'six' and 'interview.' simple, quick. took maybe fifteen minutes.

the re-do.

listen back to the stuff from the previous session. it's good, but i'm anxious to get a second take on the lead vocals to 'anymore' and 'smiling.' we listen back: the second ones are definitely stronger, smoother. no need to mix and match: the second take is a go for both.

long ass day. after playing with backup vocals on a couple-few tracks, we cut our losses and hold off for next time.

day six:

clean-up.

almost uneventful. everything is pretty much done. today i re-do the bass on 'one-four' which goes quickly, except for a minor emergency search for band-aids to ease my achin' fingertips.

being my own worst critic, i decide to punch in a vocal for a single line in 'interview,' and a single line in 'smiling.' then i re-do some backup vocals i'd only experimented with during the last session. re-do the scary angel voice in 'one-four' so it sounds more natural. add an improv lead vocal to the end of 'cycle,' and an inspired reading of the fourteenth psalm, as a thematic bridge to the song 'one-four.' there are thematic bridges at the end of more than a few songs now: 'six' alludes to 'liquefy,' 'cycle' to 'one-four,' and 'smiling' closes with a quote from 'anymore' - full circle. i'm gettin' all warm inside just thinking about it.

then it was the real clean-up to get ready for the mixdown next week. eliminating odd noises, guide tracks, old takes. laying out a game plan for the mixdown: yesterday i decided i wanted a german quote from eliot to fill the space on the bridge to 'anymore.' figured that putting a guitar solo there would be too obvious, and i want the first song to sound sparse anyway: another instrument would make it sound fuller, but in relation to the rest of the cd, i want a dynamic buildup, start small. so no guitar. i have a few german women resources, but it will depend on how their schedules coincide with the four days set aside for the big mixdown. may follow through on cindy's suggestion to have a woman's laughter close the album. perhaps more than one. other than that, it looks like it's good to go. still not 100 percent sold on some of my backup vocals, but other than that, we should be ready to roll on the 27th.

scary. real scary.

all stuff copyright 1999 bryan paul thomas
bryanthomas.com