Recording
July 31st 2004
The snapdragons that Annie Lalley had left as a housewarming gift are
finally shed of their blossoms on the kitchen table. Pink and lavender
petals lie strewn around a stack of unopened mail and nick-nacks that always
find their way to the table’s lesser-used corner.
I notice these things in a moment of quiet. The thread that joins the events of this July is elusive as if looped on a needle and lost in a haystack. There have been twelve gigs, two weddings, one birthday party, one dinner party, and five recording sessions to prepare for and attend. Each day has been as if waking up along the banks of a rushing river and jumping into it for the day’s ride. All this sings of abundance, but forget any rest and repose; save that for January’s cold and dreary days, for this is making hay when the sun shines.
I can say that the focal point of the month has been the recording and mixing sessions for Native Soil. I promised our booking agency in England that the album would be in their hands by early September, and there’s nothing like a deadline to make things happen. The discipline this provided also created ballast to steady our jump into the river each day. Toward the end of July, mixing at Chris Rosser’s studio, a sense that we really had accomplished something crept into us. We’re not finished yet. There’s still one more day of mixing, then mastering, artwork and manufacturing. Then comes time to slay the publicity monster. For now the height of July’s mid-summer energy has sent us through the album’s most difficult part.
There’s a huge difference between playing music for recording and for performing. In performance we cast songs upon an audience with broad strokes. For recording we become scientists at work in the laboratory. Every minute detail is examined and analyzed. Technology has grown to the point where the recording engineer can go into “god mode” and repair all manner of inaccuracies. Vocal pitch can be altered, and a bum note can be replaced by a good note, copied and pasted into the poor ones place. Waveforms upon a computer screen can be re-drawn with a little “pencil”. Compressors, limiters, equalizers, and reverb can place a track just so within the landscape of sound. Thousands of dollars worth of gadgets available just to achieve a natural acoustic sound.
I have aspired to use as little of these tools as possible because, frankly, nothing beats a great live take. My favorite tracks on this album are the live ones. Recording Lost Girl in Chris Rosser’s studio living room with John, Meredith, Sue and myself sitting in a circle with microphones between us, the room became a fifth musician, itself a breathing box with it’s own personality and dynamics. In Greg Steele’s lofty studio room in Massachusetts our two guitars and voices on Ain’t No Cane take on this sweet, elegant and ghostly sound. It’s more rewarding to nail a live take even if it’s a little rough around the edges; much more fun than “beating up” a track with multiple overdubs and hours spent in editing.
Perfection is boring. Think of your favorite music, and ask yourself, “Is it perfect?” No. It is the raw visceral emotion in music that moves us so much. The joy, angst, peacefulness, helplessness, grit, and unselfconscious beauty in a song is what really moves us. It can’t be recreated on a computer screen. I’ve always been aware that my favorite movies and albums were not the big budget productions, because with money, the tendency is to attempt perfection and perfection does not come naturally to humans.
August 6th 2004 Manchester, Vermont
As I write Sue is nose deep in Photoshop creating a mock-up of our
Native Soil artwork. Tomorrow we’ll drive halfway home to pause in
Winchester, Virginia where we’ll stay overnight. Sunday morning before
driving home to Asheville Sue will record a banjo track onto
Andrew
McKnight’s upcoming CD. Lui Collins fans will be happy to know that she is
now in the studio working on a new CD as well. Last week I spent a day with
her and Anand Nayak of
Rani Arbo’s band Diasy Mayhem putting down some
banjo, mandolin, and guitar tracks. Everybody’s making new music!
We expect Native Soil to be available by Saturday, September 11th. Folks have been starting to preorder them. If you’d like a copy just write me and let me know. Sue and I will autograph all the pre-order CD’s.
Thanks for reading, keep in touch!
Dana Robinson