And into the deep end.
You know what that picture above means I think. This week I took a pretty big plunge- for me anyway. It’s one thing to be making music in your basement, maybe even recording it and sticking it on the internet somewhere like Soundcloud, maybe even playing out some, or playing in a band.
Making a record feels like a whole other level of something. But really cool.
We spent two days tracking the core of six songs this week. Drums (Brian McRae), bass (Brian Schey- also producer person), acoustic guitar (me) and lead guitar (Arthur Lee Land). To get six songs done in two days was pretty busy, but really fun and interesting. Working with three musicians that good was also really fun, but intimidating as hell. We had made charts in advance, and recorded a guide vocal for each song, and that’s really all these guys needed. We talked about the vibe of the song, went over the form, I played a bit just to give them the feel.
Brian’s megadrum kit.
Then we jumped.
But with guys this good, even the first pass sounded great. So by the time we had six takes or so, it sounded better (to the point that it was literally painful for me to listen to the guide vocal- I’ll be really thankful to record those over again).
It was also great to work with a bunch of guys this nice and humble about how awesome they really are. I felt pretty outgunned as a musician, which was balanced by the fact that I wrote the songs, so when it sounded good, at least I had that. Of course, another great luxury is to do all of this about two minutes from my house- which is part of the joy of living in Lyons, CO.
Studio dog.
This is, of course, just the start of the process. Later this week Brian (producer person) and I will start wading through all the takes and figuring out which are the best, which need to go, which parts should be swapped. All that stuff. And we still have some instrument parts to record- pedal steel will come later and potentially some keyboard parts. Then there’s the part where I try to sing at the same level at which these guys play. Yeah, we’ll see about that when the time comes.
Giant, funky kick drum. Sounds way cool.
In the meantime, this is really fun and really cool and really exciting. And I’m still managing to write a few new songs in the middle of all that, and play a few shows. Updates for solo shows here, for shows with Malibu Drive here.
Rock on.
Stay tuned as the process unfolds. I’m hoping for an early fall release of this project.
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