Kings & Queens

Today is strictly vocal. No muscial accompanyment recorded today (aside from a little bouzouki from Jack). So I was spent standing in the dimly lit studio in front of this microphone trying to conjure up some magic from the past, some moment that sparked each song or line.

According to Dana (and i am relieved in this) this is the main key with vocal performance – pitch, vibrato, clarity, ennunciation are all second to the moment. This is all good because I just am not cut out (expereienced enough) to provide a perfect Marvin vocal on command. We are definitely more Young, Ferry or Richards over here in the Good corner. A little slurry and occasionally pitchy. But that’s how it is and I am happy with it. There will be no auto-tuning, ever, thank you. I love doing this – playing instruments required technique of the hands but here i am alone in the room, making noises with my vocal chords. Fuelled by water and wine only we get some good work done while the rain falls heavy outside. Today’s list: Fire Escape, A Heart’s Ease, Coming Apart, Sign Of Life and a retake of Confessed Again thanks to the queen. Andi was down for the evening and she and Dana contributed some beautiful tracks to Heart’s Ease. 5 part harmony, dig it. When its all over there are some pro-tools mixes of ‘What’s Goin On’ to listen to. Holy smokes.

I was awake at 5am half dreaming of some kind of bank robbery and half concious thinking of lyrics and whether to track down some kind of clay pipes to use instead of flute. I hate laying awake at that time of the morning. My back is out. Anyway, it was also snowing this morning, i recorded a rough of some Wurlitzer, drained rainwater from the rear lights of Leonard (our large impractical 38 year old car) and got on the road. Back at Brighton today. It’s like coming home now. I notice when things are different. We cover some ground pretty quick; lots of guitar tracks for ‘Confessed Again’, ‘into Black’ and ‘Sign of Life’ (just realized how metal all those titles are) adn then finally got to vocals. I have had confidence issues in the past. Not so today, or not so much. Dana is a fine person too have around for these times. Confessed again now has a pretty nice vocal. That song is almost done. i need a cello player. Know any? its a short part. blah blah. nothing nothing…

We went to the desert yesterday. Out through the trees to the bright, barren Nevada desert. Simon was there with us taking some pictures. These pictures here are some roughs he took with my digital camera – for the real glory of film go here and refresh to see more.

I just need to forget everything and get on with it. I have a few songs with incomplete lyrics; holes if you will. I am attempting to find some time to finish these things off. the Problem is, of course, that all the best lines, songs, words come from that moment when it just pops in. Walking down the street scribbled on your hand, on the back of a cracker box in front of some dreadful late night tv, wading through a lake, in the middle of a boring conversation… So that’s when most of it arrives. Difficult to ’schedule’ song writing. Words especially. I have until monday to make some arrive. Maybe i’ll take a motorcycle ride or something. Andi and I are out to the desert on wednesday with Si… maybe then. I just painted a room in our house – here’s the wallpaper from before. Imagine who put it there… wonder what they were thinking.

Unexpected day back in Brighton Sound with Dana today. Managed to crow bar it into the deeply disturbing schedule of work. Threw a few guitaros in the car and we got a few things done: feedback etc… on the Theme, picking guitar on the untitled song (confessed again) along with a few layers of droning tremolo noise beauty from the Firebird; how ridiculous it can appear out of context. Others include electric flying v on a song that may be called ‘back again’ – that required some ingenious amp setup – see pic.

That one took some time. It is troubling when i’m bound by my rough garageband versions of these songs but occasionally there’s a sound you get that you want to carefully lift into the new version. this is difficult and time consuming. I borrowed Lee’s Martin to record some picking on All in Favour and Into Black. Thank you sir. That’s about it. I could have done with Noah today for the guitar pickin’ but he’s in the homeland playing the Astoria with Luckey. Dang. If you are around Tottenham Court Road tomorrow night you should check out the show o Devendra. It will truly rock you. I went to Trader Joe’s to buy cereal and cat litter. On the way home i heard the kinks on the radio doing that Paranoia song that sounds like Til the End of the Day – not too keen….

A week in the studio left me ready for this. Nothing nothing nothing. Now i’m ready to go back. Thank you sierra november glory. Andi is really sleeping.

I’ll finish this more later but just so you know Saturday consisted of an hour of guitar on Colder before switching to vocal mics and many peoples. We capture Lee, Andi and myself on Sign of life and everyone on what is currently called King’s Theme. Everyone means – andi, ro, ski, dana, lee and myself all clapping stomping and a crooning. It was obviously wild. I can’t wait to finish this stuff so you’ll all know what the heel i’m on about. Sadly today was the end of the week for us so now i have to get more time to finish this. left to do: organs, guitars on a few songs, cello and lead vocals… and a bunch of little weird stuff like bouzouki probably.

ok my friends. for now we’re out. back next week.

a word about the situation we’re in here. i am living in another world. i think its good to put yourself in alien environments when recording. frees you up to focus only on what you are doing. new distractions yes, but not the day to day distractions of work, the fridge, tv, no tv, answering machine etc… this is all good. thanks to dana, ski and jack for allowing me to do this this way.

alright, back into that place. only two days left.

its 13 hours later. a bunch of guitar tracks have been birthed or born or somehow now exist. today was actually the first day i’ve felt the pressure of volume recording. long hours, many notes played. some easy easy (kings theme – 1 take) and some difficult (fire escape – many different sounds needing to be recreated to keep the feel of that original demo from Desert Heights – its a simple song but the sound has to be layered to make it feel right) and some alarming (colder: Neal and I mujst’ve been on something to play that fast – sadly this may mean we need to spend time slowing it… i think i was paranoid about losing its groovy groove and ended up going overboard when we tracked it acoustic/drums style. waffle waffle. I realize two things in the process today: my best songs are almost always the ones that happen, lyrics and all, in a single night, and that i don’t know how to play my own songs becaues i record them as i write them. relearning is necessary. dana and I still managed to have fun today – food consisted of 4 egg rolls and a few drinks. i hear it was sunny.

now there’s a helicopter outside my window. not used to this city living. it’s right there. AND i’m responsible for a 6 year old boy being removed from his bed in the middle of the night. I feel rather awful about that. though its good to leave the air mattress for a night…

del taco, infa-re x-ray specs and arrested development rounded off this day.
tomorrow is the last day of this session and i’m not finished. we’ll still have a good few days work left from here. acoustic instruments, vocals and even some strings. i want to be done. we’re close.
ok, its very dark in here an i don’t have that fancy lighted keyboard. pictures tomorrow.

holy cow i just remembered the incredible new stuff on Slow motion – its getting truly good.

So it comes down to this guitar and this amp. today we got in early for some hooking up of boxes, equipments and morning star links… no coffee, just links. Andi was messing around with the Vox Jaguar and dana was in tech support hell earlier so we get running around noon. Four main things today – another list:

1 – arrange ‘into black’ from 5 different versions the neal did for us.
2 – add final bass track to that song.
3 – get noah’s wurly up and running for 5 tracks.
4 – guitars begin.

‘into black’ has been a problem song only in that it presented too many possibilities of composition. now is worked out. Its changed since it originally arrived in crete five years ago but it still has the same feel attached to it. It still reminds me of that place whenever i play it. The old music for memories thing. We get the bass added pretty quick thanks to victor’s old telecaster bass – that thing just sounds so round and golden. blah blah…

Next up the wurlitzer piano. I just marvel at this thing. It turns anyone into Ray Charles, Manzarek etc… Dana and i wonder if maybe those guys were actually just great because that Wurly never sounds bad? Its dismissed pretty quick but, you know, we both add some cool tones to the songs under the 200A spell. I’ll get an mp3 here soon.

We break to take a look at the airstream dana is considering as a mobile recording unit. can you imagine? Shame the guy who’s selling is a methed out crazy man who bleats on and on about nothing and everything all at once; “You guys recording? i got , you know, my brother gave me the organ and now i got the dvd player and the laptop i mean you know what i’m talking about but yeah you talk to ted he know s all what’s going on you just tell him and we’ll work it out but soon i mean you know this other guy was wanting to know today but i told him i’m sleeping and working 2 hours at the airport and you know how it is….” er…

A brief food break with the ladies and then comes the guitars. I worry about this way more than i should. Keyboards, bass etc… are not really my instruments so there’s less pressure to be something of quality but this i’m supposed to be good at. So its a relief when the sound of the V hooked to that little late sixties 20w Marshall just makes it all easy. Simple good tone. Thank you Greg for lending me your setup – it sounds incredible. We run two songs tonight. And its truly a joy to rock ‘coming apart’ in a falling down the stairs fashion; dana’s reassuring patience making it easy to take it 5 times to explore as much random note behaviour as possible. I’m stamping around Young-style – no fear of sanitizing the records in the studio. I like a mess of guitar. We also go through ‘all in favour’ this time both in the control room with dana controlling the memory man delay. I love all this collaboration. But its late and time for a drink at the local pub – authentic Bonnlair. Old speckled hen – i say!

Quick one about yesterday: bass on 4 tracks: coming apart, kings, scorched sea and rain(scrapped – and replaced with Farfisa bass by Dana). that’s it really. Andi came down and we discovered mexcan food in Sacramento. just can’t muster it up today…