Sordid details following. This must be brief – I’m almost asleep.
Start time – 10 AM. Matt cant come til 3 or 4 so it’s me to start with.
Task #1 – check banjo on K Street (now called Rhinestones). Amazingly I dont stink and we have a banjo track! We have to nudge this a little the left and this a little right, but it sounds good and I feel almost like a musician…
The song sounds great and I know time will be tight later so I sing it. Singing before noon is so very wrong, but we have a record to make so I do it and after about 3/4 hr I think we have it. DD will need to listen and we need BVs but I don’t stink so we move on.
MS is in the house now and we address the mandolin on Inverse Midas Touch – this goes super smoothly – a few tweeks here and there and we’re done in 45 minutes. MS is a PRO.
On to the solo on Rhinestones (K Street) (I will stop the K St refs soon). I wrote this idea but I know my technique isn’t quite up to it. Plus I want my credit on the record to be ‘Acoustic guitar and banjo’ only. So, the deal was – whoever is here first plays it. MS is here and it is dun rite in next to no time. He plays my tele (which sounds a little scratchy on the bass string) into the Matchless and then the THD cab. Weird funky sound!
He then looks a the solo in Man Overboard – he plays his part beautifully but he wont let it lie. He goes all Brian May on us and plays a bunch of violin parts, too. It sounds great… maybe too much.. maybe not enough… we will decide later.
Matty’s turn. His part in Man Overboard demands some modification from the Small Ensemble version if we are going to make it work… a few run throughs and we have a plan ( a little subtraction was all that was needed). 1 hr later we are on to the next song – The Flipside…
This is where it gets to be fun to make records. The tone we get with Matty’s SG into my little Matchless Hurricane (with Hay Huge Saffron Squeeze (compressor), MXR 10 band EQ and Ibanez analogue echo in line – the cho is timed to be about half as fast as the amp tremolo) is off the scale. It is just fantastic. To get a completely clean guitar to sound full and rich is an achievement – that’s what small amounts of distortion are usually needed for, but we have it here…
The song is different with the band, as compared to the ensemble version – everything is understated and M sees this and plays off it. We only need a few run throughs and the last but one is so good I have goosebumps, I’m in danger of getting gushy – really, one of the best guitar takes I have had the privilege to be a party to.
It takes us a little while to assemble the comp track, as it always does – having too much good stuff to choose from can actually slow you down.
We make a rough mix and head to the bar.