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Dear
Blackheads |
|
Dear Blackheads, Ks `n Qs, Rodeo Royalty Watchers, BARKers, loyal subjects, Sweethearts of The Rodeo, whatever you wanna be called, Ok,
Ok, OKAY! I'm now back in Guelph and despite my best intentions,
So there we were in Bogalusa, Louisiana. At Studio In The Country. As I recall I signed off on the last chapter by saying that I needed to go sit on the couch and watch people set up mics whilst we all waited for tape to roll. Well no sooner had I pressed "send" and e-mailed the first chapter of this literary triumph (!) off to you, then things really did start to get juicy. Imagine us all (Gary Craig - drums. John Dymond - bass. Richard Bell -organ/piano. Tom, Colin and myself - voice/guitars) set up in a sort-of circle with the drums in the middle. Black cables snaking everywhere, big ol' tube microphones hanging like ripe, silver fruit from heavy black and chrome stands. Guitars racked side by each or lying in open cases on the floor. Vintage amplifiers humming quietly behind sound baffles, their "ON" lights glowing red, like little antique Fender Cyclops... and that peculiarly lovely smell of hot tubes. Gary's drums are a pile of wood and chrome in the centre of the room; they look like some kind of rhythm shrine. Extra drums, cymbals and hand percussion lie scattered about in open road cases and canvas bags, waiting for a good idea. In the corner of this large, airy space, a grand piano covered in packing blankets sprouts more black cables and chrome boom stands disappear into the mouth of the open lid. A Hammond B3 with the back removed cheerfully displays its multicoloured wire guts to all and sundry, like some kind of weird 50's robotic sideboard. In short, the whole room looks like a wonderful Goddamn mess, like the basement den at your Uncle Ray (the inventor)'s house after a sleep over. This is what studios should look like! There should be instruments everywhere and enough mics plugged in and hanging that you can turn on a dime and record anything you feel like. Everybody has their own little station, a side table littered with guitar picks, capos, spare strings and styrofoam coffee cups. Handwritten sheets of lyrics and bits of paper with chords and choruses are scattered round the legs of my chair. When I get up to fill my coffee cup or go for a pee, I stumble over effects pedals and spare cables piled haphazardly around the base of my mic stand. Tom has a shrine beside him with pictures of his kids and other mojo from Hamilton (a bear's tooth... I kid you not). Colin has also concocted his own shrine, largely comprised of bottles of BBQ sauce (swear to God) and is almost knee-deep in guitar cables and effects pedals. Colin
prefers those old fashioned "retro" guitar cables, that
are covered with cloth weave, like the power cord from your Grandma's
old space heater. Each cable is a different colour or pattern and
the overall effect is like some kind of vintage snake pit. Candles
are lit, lights are dimmed, and headphones are adjusted. Everybody
wants "a little more me" and "a little less him"
in his mix. Every time someone asks Gene to "turn down the
drums", there is wild cheering. Now we're in headphone land,
where you can whisper the slightest insult into your mic and watch
everybody crack up... or, alternately, ignore you. Tom taunts Richard,
(Ri-i-i-chard...come out to the barn Riii-i-ichard) Colin and Whynot
speak backwards, I mostly After endless twiddling and fiddling (technical terms), Whynot yells "gneellore!" ("Rolling!") and we have at it. First song is called "Swinging From The Chains". It's an up-tempo, swaggering, almost Rockabilly tune that Tom and I wrote months ago at his place in Hamilton. It's goofy and really fun. We play through it two or three times for good measure, then peel off the headphones and crowd into the control room for playback. Playback is usually loud and raw as each instrument is adjusted on the fly to get a rough mix. The idea at these sessions is to get good bed tracks, a deep groove and the kind of excitement that happens when good players are just on the cusp of "knowing" a song. They know the broad strokes of the arrangement (intro, verse, chorus, bridge, blah, blah, blah), but nobody's really played the song enough to have memorized a "part" per se. I've made five records, with Colin producing (this one'll be the sixth), and I know from past experience that this is where he goes looking for that indescribable something that means the difference between good and magical. Sometimes the difference between three takes of a song recorded back to back is startling... Take one is exciting but a little rough around the edges, take two is more assured but there are a couple of clams, take three is smooth and mistake free and has the great guitar solo... We
choose take one for the excitement and the rough edges and what
I People wander in and out with coffees and cookies, the cell phones ring, Colin and Whynot talk backwards and even worse - they SING backwards! Next song is "Born To Be A Traveler", a tune I wrote with my pal Andy White last summer. It's a much more moody piece with lots of delay on my electric guitar and a more atmospheric vibe than the last song. I'm singing and playing and freaking out a little at how good it feels to play with this band. As you know, I spend most of my time working as a solo musician.... And...Well, I can't really describe to you how exhilarating it feels to make music with these guys, watching and listening as they take my tune and fill it out, change it and reinvent it. I'm inspired and I hope my excitement is obvious to them; I can't help but giggle maniacally between takes. Again, we do two or three takes to make sure we've got it then head into the control room for playback. More laughter, more goofy shit and bad jokes. This is the umpteenth time we've all been together in the studio so there are some standard jokes now, a sort of comedic shorthand that means one only has to repeat the first line or phrase for the desired effect. It's only been a day, but my cheek muscles are starting to hurt from grinning. This time around I think we choose take two. I'll have to redo my vocals later, but the groove is really solid and I'm relieved to hear that my electric guitar sounds good and full. I'm a little self-conscious about my electric playing as it's still somewhat of a new instrument for me and... well, I am sitting beside Colin Linden! Several months ago, I spent some dough and bought myself a lovely old `67 black face Fender Deluxe Reverb Amp. At the time it seemed a little extravagant for a guy who mostly makes his living playing an acoustic guitar. Now I'm thrilled with my purchase... the amp sounds fucking awesome coming back through the speakers in the control room. Grins all round. Thunderbirds are go! So this is how it goes: For the next five days we arrive at the studio at noon.... oh, except for the day when a bunch of us got up early and drove the hour and a half into New Orleans for coffee and beignets at Cafe Du Monde. It was my first time in The Big Easy and I was blown away. It reminded me of Montreal or Quebec City in a way. You know the kind of vibe you get when N. American culture comes face to face with European/French culture? Well the French Quarter is similar; in that it is so unlike the rest of Amerika... it has an excitement and a spookiness to it that is immediately apparent. Oh, and the beignet were fantastic too, they more than made up for the lack of Hortons.
As we drove into New Orleans that morning, we listened again to
the When we got back to the studio early in the afternoon, we had another surprise. One of the other artists on that Uncut compilation CD was Clarence `Gatemouth' Brown doing the Okie Dokie Stomp. Well, it turns out that he lives in Slidell, just up the road from Bogalusa and has done a lot of recording at the studio too. Anyway, to cut a long story short, later that afternoon Clarence `Gatemouth' Brown pulls into the studio parking lot in a huge, jet-black Cadillac with a bucket of ribs and BBQ sauce from his own little rib joint in Slidell for all of us hungry Canuckistanians. Yet another star studded and nutritious moment!
So, as I was saying, the routine goes like this: Arrive at the studio
by noon(ish), drink coffee / laugh / talk / record / listen / record
/ listen / eat BBQ (God did we eat a lot of ribs and chicken!) /
record / laugh / record / listen and sleep. Five days of LOUD! Lord
Of The Flies for middle aged men. The time flew by and the only
thing I could tear myself away for, was phone calls back home to
try to convey how much fun we were having... I didn't lay it on
too thick about the weather, because people who are in the grip
of a Siberian cold front do not want to hear words like "balmy'
or T- shirt. Sometimes I'd just walk out the front door of the studio
for a 20-minute sanity break, go for a stroll through the woods
surrounding the studio. On one of these jaunts, I found the old
reverb chamber out back (a square concrete building/box with 20
foot ceilings designed solely for generating reverb - y'know, the
same effect as when you clap your hands in an underground parking
lot - "smack- ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"!) Well, they don't use
these things so much since the invention of black boxes with digital
doodads. The building had fallen into disrepair... roof collapsed...
sparrows nesting in a corner... even without the roof it had a very
cool echo-sound, but what was REEEEEALLY cool was the pile of rotting
road cases in the corner... big road cases, like the kind you'd
put a huge mixing Anyway time flew by and before I knew it, we were half way through the sessions, and I was turning 40. That's right, I'm a Capricorn and on January 12th my little internal clock clicked over into a new decade. It occurred to me as I sat there with my headphones on, wailing away like a shaved cat, that there really is no finer way to cross that little meridian. What did you do on your 40th birthday? I made a fucking record with Blackie and The Rodeo Kings in Bogalusa Louisiana! All in all, over those 5 days, we recorded 19 tunes! Two of them are destined for tribute albums that will be released sometime later this year (Summer Side Of Life - for the Gordon Lightfoot Tribute and Folsom Prison Blues - for the Johnny Cash Tribute. Keep an eye on Northern Blues and Borealis Records web sites for details). Of the other 17 tracks, well, you'll just have to wait and see what shows up where, I know that they won't all be appearing on this record, but I don't know which ones will be making the cut. They all felt really good going down onto tape, that's all I know. We'll make the really hard decisions later. Oh and for those of you who are interested in these things, most of the songs we recorded are originals, new tunes written by Tom, Colin and myself - solo and as co-writes). So January 8th found us putting all the toys away and heading out in our rental cars. Much manly hugging and backslapping, laughter and shouted goodbyes. Profuse thanks to Gene and Debra and Pete for their help and hospitality (really nice folks). Richard, John, Gary and Whynot all flew home from New Orleans, whilst Colin, Tom, Charlie and I headed back to Smashville for the next round of recording. I must say that I was a little choked to be leaving Louisiana... it was sooo warm and Southern. The Spanish moss hanging like dirty lace from gnarled old trees, odd looking birds I've never seen before, strangers by the side of the road who wave at you as you drive by, an abandoned house covered and almost swallowed by Kudzu vines. Bogalusa was sort of lazy and strange and very, very evocative. I love the South. OK,
this seems like a good place to take a break, look back over this
ridiculously long stream of blather, turn the spell check on and
send it off to the web site. Stay tuned for part III When Blackie
rolls into Nashville - including a special paragraph on Stephen's
first NHL experience. ALL TOGETHER NOW!! Ohhhhhh Canuhduhhhhh... |
