A Facebook memory from nine years ago popped up in my profile today, in which I talked about playing along with a click track for the first time ever, while working at Machine Age Studios. That means my previous band, the Love Letters, had our first recording session a good two years and change before our double 7" single was released in 2015. There were many sessions involved with the four songs that we recorded, including several where we worked laboriously with engineer Dave Cerminara (now a Grammy-winning studio guy in California) to make sure two of the songs sounded as good as the two songs that were mixed by John Collins (New Pornographers, Destroyer, many others). But I couldn't believe the first session was that far back in time.
Fast-forward to last weekend. Well, first, some context.
The Love Letters drifted apart several years ago. Eventually I found a few guys who wanted to play together and we became the Harry Von Zells. (Despite being named after a guy who I consider to be a funny radio man from the '40s who was later on The Burns and Allen Show on tv, we weren't meant to be a joke band.) The band played one show, back on Thanksgiving weekend, 2019. Other shows were planned in 2020, but like everything else, they were cancelled.
Somewhere along the way last summer, I hatched a scheme: Let's record an album. We can take our time with it and by the time the pandemic is over, whenever that may be, we can have a release show! We got together and practiced a few times (without using microphones) during the pandemic so we knew the songs pretty well. But then a month would go by and we'd miss practices, or someone wouldn't be able to show up. When we did reconvene, after we were all vaccinated, we were just spending time making sure we retained everything that we had learned in the past. Sadly, there was never enough time to devote to our cover of Van Halen's "Romeo Delight." (Don't knock it. These guys could pull it off.)
As I've gotten older, band practices and studio time become different things. I started wondering how hard it must be to record an album, getting the time to shack up in a studio to fine tune those things. How do you do it anymore? Personally, my psyche feels a big gravitational pull when it's time to leave the house for something other than work. Should I be doing this? Don't I need to stay around the house? The pandemic probably has a lot to do with that. But there are also other things that I feel like should come first.
Plus the band was starting to unravel as I booked the studio time for us. Prior to our show on October 15, the four of us hadn't been in the same room for at least four months, probably closer to six months. We had one practice before that show, which pretty much came off without a hitch. It was a good night. But it was also the last.
However, the studio session was going to happen anyway.
That being said, I was nervous about the whole prospect. It's been so long since I've done this. Things are so fragmented, bandwise. I don't have the confidence in myself that I once had. What's the point? I started putting it around that I'm done playing out, anyway.
So this is really where the story starts. Erik, our guitar player, was occupied getting ready for another album session with his wife Emily, which once again was going to take place at their house with none other than Kramer producing and playing on it again. (Emily is Emily Rodgers, incidentally, and Kramer's newly-revamped Shimmy-Disc label just released her album I Will Be Gone this year. It was recorded the same way.) Michael, our keyboard player, said he was available, but it seemed to make more sense to add keys after the basic tracks were down. That left me and Nathan, drummer extraordinaire.
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| It might be hard to tell, but Nathan is twirling his stick here. |
The two of us had a few practices with just bass and drums prior to the session, albeit it more than a month beforehand. The big takeaway from those practices was how much we both seemed to have the songs down. We knew what worked, knew all the changes, and we barreled through a whole set in one of those nights at the practice space. Maybe this wouldn't be so fearful after all.
Jon (who has his back to the camera in the first photo in this post) made the whole evening feel relaxed and easy-going. He and Nate had the drums levels set by the time I got there, and we got my bass set up pretty quickly. Then the suggestion was made to try a song to see how it felt. It took a couple takes to get the feeling down, but it was there. Try another song? Sure. A few run-throughs later, we had the basic track for song number two. And we still got home at a decent hour.
Since I didn't work on Friday, I was able to have dinner and some coffee before heading back to the studio. (The coffee is the monkey on my back, these days.) Nathan and I were both ready to get some serious work done. Which is exactly what happened. We laid down parts for seven more songs, making sure we were happy with the performance before moving onto the next song. Having just two people playing also cuts down on the number of possibilities of a song screwing up.
There was even time to do some fine tuning on a song. One of my songs sounds best if I use a pick on the verses, because I'm strumming to strings like a guitar. Anyone who knows me know that I never use a pick. Or at least I haven't since that fateful night in 1986 when Bone of Contention played on Flagstaff Hill and my fingers were bleeding so bad that I needed to use a pick.
But that doesn't really count. "The Ultimate Treason" (named for a term Mike Watt was used to describe when a bassist leaves a band and starts another one where they play guitar) needs the strum, but I couldn't recreate my walking lines in the chorus with a pick. So we punched in the fingered chorus part after getting the whole track down.
In another song where I play with distortion (Turbo Rat, for those of you who care), I added a second bass track, so I could do some feedback skronk at the end. That section starts with the second bass mimicking the first, and hearing the tracks back later, it sounded like an angry Moog synthesizer. Nate had only played that song a handful of times, but I think we nailed it in two, or maybe three takes.
Once that was done, we had pretty much run out of material. There was one song I could have pushed Nate to do, but the time didn't feel right. And really, the nine songs we did seem like the ideal length for an album. (My songs are never as short as I hope they'll be anymore.) At that point it was clear, we didn't need to come back on Saturday after all.
Some of the songs that we did have been around the block many times. Like, through a couple different bands. I go through periods where I'm proud of them and other times when I think that maybe I should just put them out to pasture, and that maybe the quality of my songs are why it's hard to find people to play with me. Maybe they aren't that good. People have reminded me to just do what I want to do, musically. Do it for yourself. That's a good motto - but it begs the question, why even bother renting a practice space and working to get musicians together when you can just hear the songs in your head?
That sounds bleak or sad sack-like. But that's not where I am. Now I'm at the point where I think, it's time to get these songs documented. Maybe I'll work on these recordings the rest of my life, like my own version of Orson Welles' Inherit the Wind. In the months leading up this session, I wondered if I'd have the focus for a song where I played almost everything, or a song where I got several friends to sing back-up on the songs. Anything is possible.
But at least the first step has been taken, which seemed unlikely to happen for the longest time.
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