so the long story short girls can be notoriously late. but they are 20, and unemployed and beautiful and more talented than any family should ever be... so what are you gonna do right? nuthin'.
thursday night was no different.
they were supposed to meet me and ashby at his apt. so that we could loan them our rehearsal gear, pa system, etc. we are in the middle of mixing, and they just got their dad to spring for some nice new instruments... so why not upgrade the pa for while as well...
we had sake and wine and a piano and a guitar, so we didn't mind waiting...
so ashby, as he does often these days, started plinking out this cute little melody on the piano. i had this kinda sad d - a minor - e minor thing that i thought was catchy...
so we kinda combined them together. the acoustic was tuned down a half step and ashby transposed the chords on piano. it sounded really pretty. very sing songy.
and then the words came... verse after verse... the air got heavy...
ashby did some stream-of-thought stuff and i'd stop him when i heard something catchy... and he vamped around a ton of melodies, and again, when i heard something interesting, i made a note of it... so the girls finally showed up around 8:30.
by then we had a song. sorta. a really long one.
of course we told the girls... since we were loaning them our pa and they were late, their punishment was to sing harmony on this little lullabye we wrote.
whatever ...anyway... it's very melodic.
the only problem with this song though... it was 3 times as long as it needed to be. we made a little recording of it on my digital camera with everyone around the piano... ashby playing piano (with his cute broken finger) and singing... and then there was me playing acoustic and singing harmonies... and the girls doing that thing that god or something like it, made them for...
its was like 9mins long. stupid. funny. adorable.
we knew it was cute. but its not wiseblood. its not even really the ashes in any familiar way. its just a nice thought, manifested in words and music. carried along at a comfortable tempo.
light wind from the east. 72 degrees. easy.
friday... ashby arranged it some more, i tweeked the melodies, and the intro and outro...
saturday afternoon we had planned on recording houston but then this song came up, and houston got backed up in mobile, so i came over to ashby's, played around in the pool and then we began fine tuning the arrangement. by this point, the working name for the song was - "down."
by saturday night, we had something very sweet. houston came over and messed around with it. it started to take on this timeless feel. a mix of randy newman-wilco-rufus wainright-john lennon-and ??? i dunno... classic. american.
it was a fun, relaxing evening. good wine and song.
sunday we had a mixing session and we had tons of technical trouble. really, ever since we've started mixing... hours upon hours of it...
trying to get a mac running protools into a system running nuendo on a pc. jeff kept uttering "this is a nightmare!"
we were pretty frustrated, but we finally got it all working, and we finally started mixing our album in earnest. and the girls said that they would try to stop by on their way back from nashville where they had gone to see a show on saturday night.
they showed up looking all rough and tired (according to them). which worked great, because we were rough looking and tired ourselves. and the a/c wasn't really pulling it's weight all day.
at the end of the evening with a few hours to go, i sprung it on jeff, the engineer, to start prepping the vocal booths and the piano, etc. ...we felt like doing a quick little one take demo of our lullabye... to jeff's credit, he had to suddenly engineer a live session in three rooms. he pulled it off nicely. i wanted to see him in action.
as serendipidy would have it... our friend carl ross showed up with a hi-res dv camera... he agreed to film us for the hell of it. man does that camera make things look good. so we set out to record this little song...
we miked up the piano in the main room, put the girls in a vocal booth and me in the other booth with my guitar and a vocal mic. i dont know what will ever become of it, but its sweet, and pure. maybe we'll record it "for real" eventually.
i decided this weekend that 16 years was enough, and of course now i'm dealing with some expected depression. yesterday i was kinda sick for part of the day, but a nice low-key dinner in forest park cured me. that and i'm starting to look forward to los angeles.
apparently not only am i vip the whole week for the viper room, i've been invited to take some shots of some bands via a press pass. this will include an opportunity to take photos at "the boat" a recording studio owned by the dust brothers.
my good friend casey just emailed me. i've been slacking on the call backs to detroit. i suck. i'll make up for it though.
i guess the word is out that i've retired from performing live for a while. i keep getting emails from people. i appreciate the interest though. it's good to be regarded as a worthy player. then again, it could be the fact that good bassists in alabama are as rare as lesbians at a g.o.p. convention.
i'm tired of writing.
thursday night was no different.
they were supposed to meet me and ashby at his apt. so that we could loan them our rehearsal gear, pa system, etc. we are in the middle of mixing, and they just got their dad to spring for some nice new instruments... so why not upgrade the pa for while as well...
we had sake and wine and a piano and a guitar, so we didn't mind waiting...
so ashby, as he does often these days, started plinking out this cute little melody on the piano. i had this kinda sad d - a minor - e minor thing that i thought was catchy...
so we kinda combined them together. the acoustic was tuned down a half step and ashby transposed the chords on piano. it sounded really pretty. very sing songy.
and then the words came... verse after verse... the air got heavy...
ashby did some stream-of-thought stuff and i'd stop him when i heard something catchy... and he vamped around a ton of melodies, and again, when i heard something interesting, i made a note of it... so the girls finally showed up around 8:30.
by then we had a song. sorta. a really long one.
of course we told the girls... since we were loaning them our pa and they were late, their punishment was to sing harmony on this little lullabye we wrote.
whatever ...anyway... it's very melodic.
the only problem with this song though... it was 3 times as long as it needed to be. we made a little recording of it on my digital camera with everyone around the piano... ashby playing piano (with his cute broken finger) and singing... and then there was me playing acoustic and singing harmonies... and the girls doing that thing that god or something like it, made them for...
its was like 9mins long. stupid. funny. adorable.
we knew it was cute. but its not wiseblood. its not even really the ashes in any familiar way. its just a nice thought, manifested in words and music. carried along at a comfortable tempo.
light wind from the east. 72 degrees. easy.
friday... ashby arranged it some more, i tweeked the melodies, and the intro and outro...
saturday afternoon we had planned on recording houston but then this song came up, and houston got backed up in mobile, so i came over to ashby's, played around in the pool and then we began fine tuning the arrangement. by this point, the working name for the song was - "down."
by saturday night, we had something very sweet. houston came over and messed around with it. it started to take on this timeless feel. a mix of randy newman-wilco-rufus wainright-john lennon-and ??? i dunno... classic. american.
it was a fun, relaxing evening. good wine and song.
sunday we had a mixing session and we had tons of technical trouble. really, ever since we've started mixing... hours upon hours of it...
trying to get a mac running protools into a system running nuendo on a pc. jeff kept uttering "this is a nightmare!"
we were pretty frustrated, but we finally got it all working, and we finally started mixing our album in earnest. and the girls said that they would try to stop by on their way back from nashville where they had gone to see a show on saturday night.
they showed up looking all rough and tired (according to them). which worked great, because we were rough looking and tired ourselves. and the a/c wasn't really pulling it's weight all day.
at the end of the evening with a few hours to go, i sprung it on jeff, the engineer, to start prepping the vocal booths and the piano, etc. ...we felt like doing a quick little one take demo of our lullabye... to jeff's credit, he had to suddenly engineer a live session in three rooms. he pulled it off nicely. i wanted to see him in action.
as serendipidy would have it... our friend carl ross showed up with a hi-res dv camera... he agreed to film us for the hell of it. man does that camera make things look good. so we set out to record this little song...
we miked up the piano in the main room, put the girls in a vocal booth and me in the other booth with my guitar and a vocal mic. i dont know what will ever become of it, but its sweet, and pure. maybe we'll record it "for real" eventually.
i decided this weekend that 16 years was enough, and of course now i'm dealing with some expected depression. yesterday i was kinda sick for part of the day, but a nice low-key dinner in forest park cured me. that and i'm starting to look forward to los angeles.
apparently not only am i vip the whole week for the viper room, i've been invited to take some shots of some bands via a press pass. this will include an opportunity to take photos at "the boat" a recording studio owned by the dust brothers.
my good friend casey just emailed me. i've been slacking on the call backs to detroit. i suck. i'll make up for it though.
i guess the word is out that i've retired from performing live for a while. i keep getting emails from people. i appreciate the interest though. it's good to be regarded as a worthy player. then again, it could be the fact that good bassists in alabama are as rare as lesbians at a g.o.p. convention.
i'm tired of writing.