Studio blog: Jerk

....So you've all heard "Jerk" by now -- it has a driving four-on-the-floor rhythm, which lends itself to an implied drum part. I was on the way to the studio a few weeks ago and was listening to Elvis Costello's "Get Happy," and thinking about how much I love "King Horse," a song that I don't think was very popular but which features one of Pete Thomas' best drum lines:

Start with four kicks on the beat. (1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4)

Add, in alternating occurance, a snare, a high hat, and a floor tom, on the 'and' between 4 and 1. (1 2 3 4 snare 1 2 3 4 hat 1 2 3 4 tom 1 2 3 4 snare....)

The chorus explodes into a more straight beat, dropping the polyrythm before it can resolve. It's so rad. I decided I wanted to steal it pay homage to it with "Jerk."

Mark was on board, but while he was checking his level, he started doing a pattern that went (kick kick kick tom kick-snare hat kick kick....) and it was so cool I dropped the straight lift in favor of that.

For the bridge, he started out with a four-snare approach, and I said, "It feels like it's too long a bridge for that snare to have any impact. Why don't you try four-on-the-floor and throw in scattered discourse from the toms? The kick will totally drive the bridge."

IT WORKED! It sounds so good, you guys. Drums all over the place. I can't wait for you to hear it.

Studio Blog: State of the Union.

It needs to be said that I'm still buzzing off of the success of my TRAF set, partly because you can YouTube the living hell out of it! Thanks to David Oleniacz for:



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I think my favorite thing is the two crotchety guys who full-on have a conversation about which way to go while standing in front of the camera, and nearly crash into it while heading past it. Like, "Damned if some kid on stage bein' filmed by some flim-flam flappin' flibflob is gonna tell us where to stand. We beat England for you!"

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Today, Mark and I had a whole rundown of the remaining candidates. We determined a few things:

I am over "Afterglow." I don't know what I hoped to accomplish with that song, and I feel like it captures the weakest attempt I've ever made at salvaging joy from the wreckage of a regrettably premature encounter. RETIRED.

"Astoria" needed a little work. We negotiated a bit on the sustained note at the end of the chorus, and getting the theme back in between the first and second verse. What was great was that Mark was frank and honest about where the song fell apart for him, and we found a solution instead of scrapping it.

So much for "So Much For Us." I think the bug up my butt about recording this because it didn't make the last album is made moot by Mark's assertion that it is suffering from too much bridge. Looking at it objectively, I agree -- if you're going to have a bridge, it should expand on the song, but looking at it now it feels like a lot more lyric to repeat the sentiments that were already there. Which, in fairness to the person I was in the moment that I wrote that song, probably what conversing with me on that subject was like: lots of reiterations on one monotonous theme. I'm going to try to rework it, but it's sidelined for now.

"Jerk" is a kick-ass song! You pretty much knew that.

"Here Goes Nothing" is better than Andy thinks it is. Andy Mac and I co-wrote the title track for this album, and I think it's one of my favorite crush songs since "Under My Nails."

"January" can start eight different ways. We looked at a lot of variants on the open, and it's still up in the air as to which one we'll use. It all depends on how we end:

"Home" does not need to be changed to sound less like other songs. I get a lot of flak from other singer-songwriters about small phrases that stick out to them, but after reworking it, Mark was like, "That's stupid. Put it back the way it was. Nobody is going to think that." Thanks, Mark.

"Hey Hey Hey" is not that big a deal. OK, it's a huge deal. But it's a bigger deal that we don't make a big deal out of it. Right?

"Enough" is better than I think it is. I'd been wish-washing on it, then Mark got enthusiastic. I may turn it into a duet.

"Boy Meets Girl" is recordable. I swear, guys, we're gonna get a good version of this song. I will not rest until it happens.

So there you go. Currently we're looking at this as a 10-song record:

Calling You Out
Wonderful Lie
Hey Hey Hey
Enough
Astoria
Boy Meets Girl
Jerk
Here Goes Nothing
Home
January

I can't wait to start delving into this stuff.

Next week, we're going to go in and try to get basic guitar and vocal tracks for 3 or 4 songs at once, to experiment with our process a bit. Wouldn't you love to listen to this stuff as it happens? Stay tuned to find out how you can!

Studio Blog: "Wonderful Lie"

I had an idea for a transition, and I shared it with Mark at the top of the session yesterday, so we started on "Wonderful Lie," a newer song about stuff that happened a year-and-a-half ago. Some subjects just stay with you, which is fine, as long as they stay catchy.

"Lie" is probably my favorite of the new batch -- it has a nice pop hook, and seamless transitions leading from the end of the chorus into the beginning of the verse and bridge. From 8 bars in, you're always in the song -- no down time -- which is very appropriate for the situation of the lyric.

This time, the band comes in right from the start -- Mark and I put together acoustic, scratch vocals, drums and bass all in one day, and while we still have a few little ornaments planned, we're not hearing a whole lot more here. It's a very full sound!

Mark on drums is still my favorite thing ever. He leans in, closes his eyes, occasionally looking up to see if I'm in it, then we talk about sections that he or I am unsure about, then he goes back into it. It's like no process I've ever been through -- no matter what suggestion I make, he performs it perfectly, and we evaluate the ideas objectively. It's a 50-50 split on who's right, so far, and each and every time the acquiescence is smooth and unadorned, because it's time to move on. So rad.

Mondays at the Rover....

....have been extended through May. We're going 9 to midnight -- come on out!

Studio Blog: "Calling You Out," day 2

Going out to Mark's studio this past Wednesday, I had, for the first time in a while, this amazing Zen-like feeling that everything was where it should be in my life. I mean, let's not even get into my dating situation -- that's always a mistake, and no one should ever ask how that's going, because like I ever know. Still, it's nice to be working on something again, and to have that feeling that this time it's going to be different, better.

When I showed up, Mark and Abby were rehearsing for her Living Room residency (which I haven't been able to go to because my Rover gig conflicts, which is I guess show biz, but it's really great that she has this opportunity and I hope it finishes well), and I got to zone out listening to her and a few of the finest vocalists in NYC work on harmonies for the final blowout set they have planned for week 4. Great stuff. We all shot the shit a little as they were on their way out, and after a little while I remembered each of them from some thing or other and we talked about how much fun that is, then we all moved on.

After a few listens at my rough draft, and a conversation about dynamics, we started work on the piano part. I'm proud to say that I played most of it, except for a figure that Mark suggested go a different way, which sounded so good I was like, "Well, play that then." We stripped down some of my ideas, fleshed out a few others, then moved on to drums.

When Mark does drum tracks, he pulls out only the pieces he's going to use. In this case, he started with just kick and snare, then played through once and said, "I think one cymbal." Then he pulled out some brushes and went to work. He's a completely vanity-free drummer -- the fills were present but not fancy, lots of space given to what was already on the track. A couple of times, we talked through some sections, me going "how about boomDAKboom instead of boomDAKKAboom...."

On one note in particular, we auditioned a series of zzzzzing sounds from his cymbal until I realized that the reason we weren't getting the one I was hearing was that he was holding the handle in such a way as to prevent an attack at the top of it, so I showed him what I meant, and he recorded the Tik-zzzzzzing that I had been going for. It was a cool moment.

Last, we worked on guitar. I did a standard open-strum background to thicken up the sound a bit, as I tend to do when I record at home, then dropped in the lead phrase from the demo with some minor revisions, and some harmonics to sweeten up the breakdown. My favorite part was adding lead bits to the second verse. Because I wanted the guitar to sound as open as possible, and because I'm an inexperienced lead player whose ideas don't always translate well to performance, I used the capo in two separate positions to get the little interjections. All in all, we got a lot done on this track -- all that really remains is to do some vocal bedding (which I longed to do and never got to do on the last album), and we can move on to the next song.

I love this process, so far, a great deal more than the one on the last few albums I've made, which have involved rehearsing a band, going in, doing basic tracks, then fleshing those out. Building a track from a straight acoustic performance is how all of my home recordings were done, and I missed that method so much. It's gonna take a little while, but I think we're going to have something good at the end of it.

Studio Blog: PreProd in record time, "Calling You Out"

The first day in the studio with a producer like Mark is all about pre-production. The two of you sit across from each other and talk about your music. You play him a song, he listens to it beginning to end and makes notes about how to make it flow better, trim excess time, tighten up the intros and outros. That's usually the whole day, and then the next week maybe you start recording.

I am proud to say that after about an hour and a half, give or take, we were ready to start recording "Calling You Out." Mark listened to eight of my songs, all of which he felt were already tight enough on their own, all of which he felt began and ended strongly. When a producer and an artist agree on all the issues of flow and time, it's a great start. By process of elimination, we decided to start with "Calling You Out," because it's a very accessible song that will allow us to feel out our process without getting too bogged down in the technical aspects of the composition.

The version we started with felt a little slow to me, but not to Mark, so he made a strong pitch for why it worked. I was ready to acquiesce when he said, "But let's try it faster anyway. Who knows?"

I played it maybe two clicks faster than last time, and it was like night and day. We listened to the two versions back-to-back, and I said, "It's minute," and he said, "Yeah, but wow, what a difference, huh? I'm glad we did that."

At the end of the day, I went home with a reference mix waiting in my inbox, with scratch lead vocal, completed acoustic guitar, bass guitar and shaker tracks, and a fully developed idea for a piano motif.

I spent some time today (two days later) playing with my Zoom HD8, sketching out ideas for background vocals, lead acoustic guitar, and laying in the full idea for the keyboard part. This is invaluable, because when I go back next week, I'll have fully formed ideas for what I want to do, instead of vague stuff that we hedge around.

Dudes, I am so psyched.

Studio Blog: Introduction

I've looked around for about two years for someone to work with on the new album -- recording in Pittsburgh would have meant too much travel expense, and I want to be more present during the process this time around. Last time, I wasn't there for half of the sessions, allowing the producer leeway to play through his ideas until he found something he was happy with, and it worked to my detriment.

I can't stress enough that I think "Boy Meets Girl" is a perfectly good, listenable album -- I've re-ordered, which is the goal of any independent release -- but the point of my solo career, at the end of the day, should be to be this guy with an acoustic guitar, and "Boy Meets Girl" doesn't reflect that so much as ask you to infer it. This time around, I'm putting my styling on shout, and gambling that it will work.

When I moved to New York from Pittsburgh, I had the good fortune to become re-acquainted with some of my fellow exports: Jamie Rae,
Jenna Nicholls, Brian Halloran, and Abby Ahmad are the four that immediately spring to mind, and as best as I could, I set out to incorporate them into my showcases in Astoria.

During Abby's set at my earliest showcase, at Winegasm, she played this awesome song called "Landing Gear" that, well, picture "Time For Change" with an expanded focus, one that nailed pretty much the national post-9/11 outlook. The best part of the song for me, though, was this intense rhythm figure that ends with her fully spanking her guitar. "Wow," I thought, "That is NASTY. And AWESOME. And will never be recorded."

In the studio, things tend to change. Microphones placed to the left of the soundhole of your guitar will pick up the sound of you playing your guitar if you're a standard player, with a plectrum or a supreme grasp of the fingerpicking styles of Robert Johnson and the like. However, if you want to spank your guitar, the only sound that mic is going to pick up will sound like a mistake. I was certain that they would take out Abby's spanking noise and make it part of a percussionist's figure, or worse, turn it into a snare hit.

Then the album, "Curriculum," came out, and it was there! Not only was it there, but it was the catalyst for this awesome chain reaction of nervous tom hits. Abby's producer/boyfriend, Mark Marshall, had completely bowled me over. I have pored over this album, and I can tell you it is a piece of incredible worth, an intimate portrait of Abby's style and attitude. The end of "Lost on Me," a later track on the disc, has this crazy drum fill that feels like frustration is melting away from her every time it attacks, with a rhythmic incongruity not unlike a dresser falling headlong down a flight of stairs. Fantastic.

I had a meeting with Mark, and we talked a lot -- about "BMG," about "Curriculum," about the album I want to make and the music each of us listen to, the approaches we've taken and would like to take. It was like a choir preaching to another choir that modeled themselves on the choir that is preaching to them. Kind of amazing.

I'll keep you guys posted as more stuff happens.