Day 6-6/12/08

Zee end iz near...

J- A great day! What a cornball way to start off, but I can't help myself. We finished the basic tracking for the final 3 songs today. All we got left to do are odds & ends overdubs tomorrow & Saturday. We got good news last night. Our long-time friend and corroborator, Julio, is coming into town to join us for the few odds & ends. Julio plays drums on the album, which were recorded a few months ago in DC, and he's coming to lay down a percussion track or two. Awesome!

We started the morning off by recording Sweetwater, a narrative ballad I wrote a few months ago about a small-town woman and her life journey. I'm quite lucky to have been blessed with the penning of this song, because it is quite beautiful and quite possible the most complete story I've ever been able to fit into a song. It is classic Americana in theme and in sound and Scott called it Dylan-esque, to which I beamed! (Scott knows how to butter me up!)

We then worked on Save Some Room for Me, and I didn't quite know how this song would fill out. The lyrical content is light, almost whimsical, but the sentiment is nice; it's a love song. Scott had some great ideas about harmonies and melodies and he had me play a little snare shuffle with some brushes. Only, we didn't have brushes and we ended up making brushes out off twigs and tie-wraps!!!...Let's just say it works as a reference track. So glad that Julio will be here in a few days with proper brushes! It was still fun as hell, and kept the atmosphere lively and playful.

We ended by mid afternoon with Fumblin' with the Blues, a Tom Waits cover that Laura kills on. We decided to record it at the last minute and, consequently, I now have to buy the mechanical rights to it in the next few weeks. For those of you that know the original from the 1973(?) Heart of Saturday Night album, we did something a bit different by pairing it down to just 1 acoustic guitar, 1 vocal track, and one glass of scotch (No worries, you'll see!) I've always believed that when covering a song, especially and amazing song like this one, it's best to re-work it and make it your own, because you will never be able to do justice to the original if you just try to mimic it. So that's what we did, and that's where the glass of scotch comes into play. Scott wanted to go all theatrical for our last song and wanted to sound off ice swirling around and the glass hitting the "bar" to accent the song. Laura and I are total hams so we were all too quick to jump aboard the idea, and since we use scotch to clear our throats and fog-up our brains regularly [sic], there just happened to be a glass of scotch sitting around! So were recorded it several times, and after that we did it several times more, making sure to sip and refill the glass to proper recording specifications. Uh...I don't remember finishing the song....

But, we did finish and we celebrated with more scotch at a very nice restaurant called Swanks in Kilmarnock. We had a nice evening and are now left with the task of overdubbing! Rub-a-dub-dub!