This One Goes to 22

So far, so good this weekend, with two extremely productive studio sessions on Friday and Saturday nights. Friday night Dave and I worked on the lead vocals for the song Bombs Away. I kind of suspected Bombs would be tough. I had the most trouble with the guitars for this song, and Aoife had a bit of a time with the violins.

It's not that the song's hard technically... it's that it's a different sort of song than we usually write. It's very poppy and bouncy, very clean... so it demands something a little different. I warmed up by running through the song a bunch of times, and then we got to working segment by segment. The first verse was a real trial. The melody starts in a lower register, but since it's the first line/verse of an uptempo pop tune, it needs to have a lot of energy. And I find I have trouble bringing energy to lower notes and wind up oversinging a lot.

So I tried. And tried. And tried. And tried. (Repeat 18 more times)

And finally got the first two lines on... take 22. Yeah. Take 22. I'm a real pro. The funny part is that I proceeded to nail the bridge, which has something like 10 lines of singing, on take 1.

Take 22 and take 1. I guess the bottom line is that we got where we wanted and it doesn't matter how you get there as long as it's good.

I would love to be a fly on the wall in Bono's vocal sessions, or Chris Martin's or Chris Cornell's. I wonder how those guys work.

BOMBS AWAY Put it all out there to see what I could see Closed the door on all the midnight tragedy Under the skies the city's eyes are watching Watching as we fade away Maybe the dream has run its course Maybe the river returned to the source Under the trees the mercury is falling How the summers fade away Fade away Fade away Bridge: So you're just time bomb Ticking night and day, night and day Suddenly the time's gone And it's bombs away Under the trees the mercury is falling How the summers fade away

Bombs is about time passing and how it affects your dreams. Time and dreams are both lyrical obsessions/crutches of mine, but there's something so elemental about them... especially for aspiring musicians. I have a real love/hate relationship with this song, but it turned out really well... it's a pop tune but it's savvy, and the arrangement was a group effort.

Saturday I taught and then headed back down to the studio. We worked on the song The Soft Drown. The Soft Drown was the last song written for the record, and as such had the least work done on the arrangement. To boot, we've never really been able to play this song very well live. Is it because the song isn't that good? (In best Corky St. Clair voice) Maybe.

But also, I think we have a tendency to overplay and the song is really a straight-ahead rocker that thrives on minimal, powerful playing. The basic tracks for it are good though, and I knew it would demand a really strong lead vocal to make it work. After warming up, we started working, and immediately Dave decided I needed to Joe Cocker it for the verses. Just let it all hang out, gravel-voiced, almost yelling.

We got some really good takes down. Character, energy, and a lot of grit. I'm learning something new about my vocal capacity every time we record and with The Soft Drown, I learned how to let go and just emote. Very cool. The choruses took awhile, but we built them up using harmonies, layering and call and response. Again, there's nothing like it yet on the album. The last chorus was a great example of how a producer can make a tune. I had some ideas about background vocals, and Dave took them and refined them and we just sweated it out idea by idea, line by line, until we had something incredibly cool.

THE SOFT DROWN It's all Almost over now The stars are in the sky And they're never coming down And why We keep asking why Why we take up arms and fight Against the dying light Chorus: It's taking It's taking now It's taking The soft drown 2X And hope Rides a dark horse While a white one pulls the sun Across the fallen sky Awoke At 4 a.m. And tried to find the answer as The world began to end Chorus The flame Is finally low In a moment we'll be left With nothing left to show For love For opening our eyes For wanting nothing more than to be Buried with a smile Chorus (x2)

The Soft Drown is about life stealthily overtaking you, almost without you noticing it. Man, I'm depressing. I really like these lyrics. They're a little dramatic, but I love the imagery and the sentiment. And I think the line "Wanting nothing more than to be buried with a smile," with its dual connotations, is a pretty tight bit of songwriting.

Ow.

I think I just pulled by elbow patting myself on the back.

jbg

Fried-day

Well, it's nearly the weekend. And the fact that I've got so much going on this weekend makes me wish I would have gone to sleep early last night instead of hanging out in our backyard until 2:00 in the morning and then getting up at 7:00 to go to work.

Oh well.

Tonight it's into the studio for some vocals. Tomorrow's a (supposedly) full day of teaching followed by another studio session. Sunday's a wedding and reception. Monday is a low key graduation party for my sister's boyfriend. That equals: lots of eating and drinking, not much sleeping. I do feel pretty well-rested all things considered, and the week off from rehearsal has been great for my voice. It feels strong and recovered from last weekend's rehearsal, show and recording.

Hopefully tonight and tomorrow will go smoothly and I'll be within spitting distance of finishing the lead vocal tracks. I woke up this morning intending to write some stuff on politics, but I don't think I have the energy or patience, so that'll have to wait.

Wow: least-interesting-blog-entry-ever. And that's saying something.

jbg

So You Wanna be a Rock Star?

It's been a slow week in these parts... and it's come at a good time. There's a lot of stuff coming up, from recording to shows to weddings... nice to get a little break.

The down-time gave me a chance to read So You Wanna Be a Rock Star: How I Machine-Gunned a Roomful of Record Executives and Other True Tales from a Drummer's Life by Jacob "Jake" Slichter. Jake was the drummer for the band Semisonic.

I was never a huge fan of Semisonic. I thought Closing Time was a good song, but it got beaten to death. I actually liked the song "All About Chemistry" (off of the album Chemistry) better. The book is a memoir of the rise and fall of Semisonic, from being courted by major labels, through going platinum (1 million albums sold), through having their third album bomb and going on hiatus.

Along the way, there are great (read: horrifying) stories about the excesses of the music industry, about dealing with newfound fame, and about reconciling the idealism of rock and roll with the realities of business. All of it is written in a great conversational style and should be required reading for anyone busting their ass as a musician as well as anybone who wants to understand that it's usually the musician who gets the "business" part of the "music business."

jbg

Sampler? I hardly know her

This weekend had a bit of everything... Friday night we had a good long rehearsal in advance of our Saturday night outdoor festival show. We had an hour and a half to fill, so we pulled out of couple of old tunes we hadn't played since... the last outdoor festival we played. It was actually pretty fun to play these songs after the time off from them.

Saturday, I taught all day and then we went right to our show. The festival was small and was a benefit for a grade school in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. It turned out to be a great gig. The sound was amazing. We played nearly non-stop for an hour and half, I took a turn in the middle playing two solo tunes while the band used the bathroom, and we even made up a song as a band on the spot during an extended jam. We were loose, and although there weren't a lot of people there, we got rid of a ton of CDs, so many that we're running dangerously low on our second pressing of the EP and will have to order a third pressing of 1000 immediately to make sure we have some for the summer.

After the gig, we all went back to our magical Grecian backyard, drank beer, and ate pizza. And had a good fire in the firepit. Good times. Some of our tenants' friends stopped by, and suddenly it was 3:00 am.

Sunday morning, I headed into the studio for an early session. I was a bit worried because I'd sung so much on Friday and Saturday and stayed up so late... but the song we worked on, Seraphim Do Mar, called for a weary sounding voice, so it worked out well. It's actually some of my favorite singing I've ever done, really relaxed, really gritty, really genuine.

Seraphim is the last song on the album. It's different from anything else we've done. The guitar sound is... as heavy as it gets. For a lot of it, there are something like 16 guitar tracks (part of it has almost 30!), all layered and textured. It sounds like Smashing Pumpkins, but wider and warmer. And there's an apocalyptic ending that is nearly A Day in the Life-esque. A really cool way to end the album. 

SERAPHIM DO MAR Angels of the dirt We ask of you Go and get your kin They'll know where to begin Rise up, fall down Rise up, fall down Angels of the sea Take these sunken dreams Raise them to the sky So maybe can I Rise up, fall down Rise up, fall down What's left when it's all gone?

The melody is very much like a nursery rhyme, as are the lyrics. What's the song about? I'm not sure. The title is a pun, sort of. And the imagery is meant to evoke Atlantis, a group of angels lifting it up from underwater, and, well, "what's left when it's all gone."

I guess. After recording, I headed up to Deerfield to attend the Village Music School Spring concert. I had two students performing and they did great. One performed "More Than a Feeling" by Boston. And it killed. And the other performed Little Peter Cottontail, accompanied by me.

It was great to see them both succeed and to talk to their parents about how much they enjoy guitar. I guess I must be doing something right.

Or at least not wrong.

jbg

Vegas, baby

Before getting to my somewhat eventful weekend that involved sitting around in our new backyard as much as possible, I should throw down a few words about my set-up trip to Las Vegas.

Barret and I got out of Chicago on Sunday night pretty late, but because of the time change we landed in Vegas around 11:00 pm. After a snafu at the rental car company (no cars!), we proceeded to our hotel, The Golden Nugget, which is in the older part of the city (Sinatra-town) on Freemont Street. I guess this hotel used to be a bit run down, but a few years ago casino tycoon Steve Wynn (his new casino cost $2.8 billion and has something like 4000 rooms!) took over the Golden Nugget and revamped it. It's a nice blend of affordability and typical Vegas luxury-kitsch. desperate for a drink, Barret and I hit the casino and I immediately won $75 playing video poker. This was a curse in disguise because it fooled me into thinking my entire trip would be filled with gambling successes.

Vegas preys on fools like me.

Barret then pulled a Hunter S. Thompson and ordered us shrimp cocktail from room service and we passed out. In the morning (Monday), Barret headed over to Foothill High School in Henderson to work with some of the drummers in their jazz band. I adjourned to the casino and began a steady descent into gambling hell with Guiness as my Virgil. Barret joined me in the casino in the early afternoon, and we wandered the Freemont strip for a bit, checking out other casinos, grazing on a buffet, and just generally pumping $20 bills into various machines in the hope that we might hit it big. 

We didn't.

Suddenly, it was dinner time. We met Travis (the band director at Foothill) and his wife Pam for dinner near The Golden Nugget. Travis and Pam are really wonderful people and we had a great time talking music, eating wings, and consuming cocktails. After dinner, we hit Freemont Street just in time to witness the hourly laser light 'n' music presentation on the mile long canopy which hangs a hundred feet the street. Complete with Styx, gambling, cars, boobs, and American flags... unbelievable.

Barret said he thought I was going to fall down I was laughing so hard. It reminded me of yet another reason I don't get the current Republican Party: the constituency that votes national GOP candidates into office is made up of libertarians who want the "hoi polloi" to have what they want (gambling, boobs, drugs, etc.) unfettered by government regulation and also cultural conservatives who are consistently shocked and offended by what the "hoi polloi" want (gambling, boobs, drugs, etc.) and think the government should use the Christian religion to regulate these vices out of existence. Getting those two groups of people to vote the same way is truly something amazing, and by amazing I mean horrible.

Enough of that. Back to Vegas.

After Travis and Pam went home, Barret and I kicked it up a notch. We must have been a sight, two musician types, long hair, tattoos, beards, wandering the street howling like monkeys with fruity drinks in giant phallus shaped containers... Hunter would have been proud. People were actually parting like the Red Sea to let us through.

Needless to say, Tuesday morning was painful. We had to be at Foothill at 9:00 am to work with the jazz band, and then I was slated to perform the Odyssey at 10:00 am. Luckily, Barret had ordered room service, and they arrived around 7:30 am with eggs, pancakes, coffee, and all the fixings.

We made it out to Foothill in time. After the jazz band rehearsed, the auditorium began filling up with kids and I performed the Odyssey to an audience of about 250. It went really well. After that, it was back to The Golden Nugget. Barret napped, I hit the pool and the spa and tried to avoid gambling. 

Feeling refreshed, we headed back out to Henderson for the Foothill Spring Band Concert. It was really cool to see Travis in action. He conducted four different ensembles and the kids seemed completely locked in to what he was doing. Barret and I sat in on a funk tune with the jazz band, and it went really well. After the concert, we went out for dinner with Travis and came back into the city for a drink. We hit the Voodoo Lounge at The Rio which is a bar on the 51st story of the hotel that affords a beautiful view of the entire strip.

After that, I had to go to bed. I was beat. I knew I was hurting when the elevator man at The Golden Nugget (who looked like Martin Landau) eyed me up and down and said "Boy, you look tired." When a guy who works the overnight shift in a casino tells you you look tired, it's time to go to bed.

Barret and Travis stayed out late, and Travis won $250 playing video poker. Figures. Wednesday was a day of travel... returning the rental car, getting to the airport, etc. Not to mention that America Worst (er, West) airlines managed to screw up our flight on both ends, resulting in 2 hours of delay.

When you lose two hours with the time change, that sucks even more. So ended our Vegas trip. If "What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas," then "What Happened in Vegas" was my money, because it sure as heck stayed there.

 jbg