What a week! I am so drained and excited and nervous... Over five days we managed to record and mix eight new tracks with producer Dave McCluney at Atlantis Studios in Port Melbourne. Listening to the end results there are a few things that we are going to have to tidy up, but by and large I am fairly happy with the end results...
Anyway, before I forget here are my recollections of a very wonderful and creative five days...
SATURDAY 8 SEPTEMBER
On Friday, my nerves had started to get the better of me and I spent a fairly restless night before getting up very early on Saturday and making my way from Fitzroy to Port Melbourne. I arrived at Atlantis around 930, giving me half-an-hour to settle in before the rest of the band (Dan Hoey/Victor Utting and Fancy Dave Bower) arrived. By about 12 we were ready to start doing takes. Dave McCluney set Dan and I up in the main room of the studio, with Dan playing their 1853 Blunther concert grand piano. I was playing Linday's Gibson mini-jumbo acoustic guitar. Dave and his kit were set up in the middle isolation booth, with Vic's guitar amp in the other. Vic set up playing his Fender Telecaster through an Ampeg combo that belongs to Greg Arnold (Things of Stone and Wood). Although small in appearance, the tone of this amp was absolutely terrific. Later in the sessions I used it to overdub my guitar parts to 'You Can't Stand in the Way of Progress'. It seemed the perfect amp for my Rickenbacker 330.
The session started slowly with us trying to piano/guitar/drums recorded for 'Ode to the Women who Would be my Wife'. In hindsight it was a bad song to start with - very fast and energetic - we couldn't quite get a good balance of energy and precision at that time of the morning. Eventually we abandoned the track to try something else.
At this point we moved onto Smile - one of the slower songs on the record. Much to our surprise, we managed to produce a really great version in only two or three takes. Having settled in a bit we then proceeded to sail through a brand new song. We hadn't yet worked out a title for the song, so we were using the working title of 'September Song' - but during the mix, Fancy suggested 'This One's Made For You' - a line that alludes to the Swan Gold commercial that many West Australian's will remember as a prominent feature of 1980s television. We did two really great takes of this new song - which we eventually edited together.
I can't remember which song we did next - it was either 'Paddy, There's Got to be One More Bar Open' or 'Ghost Town'. Either way, by this stage we had really settled in and got through both songs fairly quickly. For 'Ghost Town', Dan played the 1973 Rhodes at Atlantis, which sounded very lovely.
By the time we had finished Paddy and Ghost Town it was about 4:30pm and Fancy had to head off to a gig with his band Dust at the Empress of India in Fitzroy North. This gave Vic, Dan and I a chance to run through a song without drums. Playing to a click track we recorded a very slow version of 'A Million Ways to Say'. Whenever we played this song live, we always sped up a lot in the first chorus. Dave McCluney was determined that the song kept the same slow stately pace throughout - hence his insistence that we play to a click track. This was pretty tricky at first - partly because playing to a click takes a lot of concentration, and partly because we had never played the song that slowly before. After three or four takes we finally got the hang of it - when we listened back we were really amazed. Dave was absolutely right about the speed - by keeping it slow, the chorus take on a really stately dignity that really brings out the melody.
After 'A Million Ways' we must have had a bit of a break and started thinking about overdubs. I don't know what I recorded, but I must have done some vocals. It is quite possible that I did the vocals for 'A Million Ways' because Dave was pretty excited about that one. I think I also did the vocals to Smile. We ended the day with me recording a guitar/vocal version of the old Clancy Brother's tune 'A Parting Glass'. It was an exhausting day, and Vic and Dan and I headed to the Marquis of Lorne for dinner and to take stock. Exhausted, we knew we had done some good work, but that we had a lot more to do.
SUNDAY 9 SEPTEMBER
Again, I woke early. So I headed to the bakery on Smith Street and bought some rolls for lunch. Having planned to record 8 tracks, we only had one song left - 'You Can't Stand in the Way of Progress'. That said, 'Progress' was the song that we were considering to be the lead track, so we really wanted a perfect take of it.
We had left it till last because it was the only song on which Fancy played his drums with sticks (as opposed to brushes). Having got the sound ready, we slowly settled in to a good groove and got a pretty great take of the song. Again, Dan was playing the Rhodes. Listening to the final take, I must have been pretty happy with it because I can hear my voice saying - 'That take was great' and Fancy agrees.
After a short break we turned our attention to 'Ode for the Women' which we had abandoned on the first day. When we listed back to the last take we were really surprised. What we had dismissed as being too sloppy was in fact, wildly chaotic and energetic. Listening with fresh ears, Dave McCluney pointed out that whilst we might hope to get a more precise take, it was highly unlikely we'd get anything with that level of raucous energy. Personally, I thought it was the best thing we had done. I think Dan was a little doubtful... particularly as he had to overdub a piano solo over the rather shambollic middle-8. Still, consensus was that it stayed and we moved on to overdubs.
Buoyed with the excitement of discovering the energy of 'Ode' I think I started by laying a vocal down for that track. I'm pretty certain that I did it only one take - again, I think I was just riding on the energy of the song - my phrasing is very different to how I have traditionally sung the song, but it has a looseness and wildness that nicely matches the band's playing.
Next I think we got Fancy to put some very simple drums over 'A Million Ways to Say' - Dave McCluney had this vision of using a big booming floor tom - which Dave recorded first. Again, I think Dan was dubious - not really taking to the floor tom idea. Eventually, I think we got Fancy to layer over some cymbals, hi-hats and kick drum. The drums settled in underneath the rest of the band, just giving it a bit more thrust in the instrumental sections, which I think worked well.
After that I did a few more vocal takes – from memory I must have done ‘September’, ‘Paddy’ and ‘Ghost Town’ because then I had the idea of getting all four of us into the room sing some rowdy choruses to those two songs. With the four of us crowded around a mic yelling like a bunch of drunks at the football it was possibly the most fun and silly things I could ever imagine recording. Dave McCluney dubbed us ‘the yobs’ – a fitting epithet as we certainly sound like the Man U choir. That said, when we listened back, the idea worked, providing a boisterous and somewhat rabble-like chorus. We repeated the technique on ‘Ode’. We ended the day with Dan recording some piano solos to ‘Ode’ and possibly ‘Progress’ – I think I had pretty much lost concentration by this point and was leaving the creative biz to Dan, Vic, Fancy and Dave McCluney. It is quite possible that I was sitting outside enjoying the sunshine. It is also highly possible that I was being a bit annoying as Dan and Dave made the suggestion that I could “if I wanted to” sleep in on Monday morning while Dan did more keyboard overdubs. I think the session finished when Dan decided he had had enough playing. I went home, ate curry and watched rubbish on the television.
MONDAY 10 SEPTEMBER
I am usually very good at sleeping in. That said, I’m not usually very good at doing what I’m told. So, I woke up early, had breakfast at Cavallero on Smith Street, drove to Port Melbourne and bought some rolls for lunch and then headed to the studio. After all that, I still managed to get there by 10:30am. Oh well… Dan had just finished another solo – to ‘A Million Ways’ I think. I’m a bit hazy, but I think he also did some organ overdubs. Vic also did a tambourine overdub on ‘A Million Ways’.
At 11:30 Emma Frichot arrived – so we turned our attentions to doing vocal overdubs. As Dan had been doing ‘A Million Ways’, I think we got Emma to start on that one… Emma’s vocals immediately lifted the songs, giving the choruses a real extra boost. Emma was a real trooper – getting through the songs quickly and professionally. In about an hour, Emma had done brilliant vocal takes on ‘Progress’, ‘Ghost Town’, ‘Smile’, ‘Ode’ and ‘A Million Ways’. Around 12:30, Fancy arrived to do some male backing vocals for ‘September’. Again, the three of us crowded round the mic to sing harmony. Then Dave McCluney got us to all do our parts separately. He was trying to achieve a big chorus effect, which he was able to realise quite brilliantly I think. A very amusing moment occurred at the very end of these backing vocal takes, when Fancy decided to sing his part Idol style (and sadly I don’t mean Billy Idol).
By this stage, Dan and Vic had decided that their presence wasn’t really necessary, so they took the afternoon off. This left me in the studio on my own, so I took the opportunity to finish off the rest of the vocals. Working with Dave McCluney was really great because he was really insistent in not doing things over and over again. He was much more concerned to get great emotion and energy than to get things note perfect. On several occasions I wanted to redo something because I thought I was a bit off-tune or out of time, and Dave would casually reply, with something like “Nah, that was the best bit.” Listening back, he was almost always right.
As the session was pretty much finished, I decided that I wanted to record at least one electric guitar part – partly because I wanted to hear how my Ric sounded through Greg Arnold’s guitar amp and partly because I never get the opportunity to play electric guitar anymore. So I cranked the amp right up and used both pick-ups on the Ric to achieve this scorching but warm tone. I laid down some incidental noise and arpeggios on ‘Progress.’ The tinkling guitar notes at the beginning of ‘Progress’ were achieved by picking the strings at the tail of the bridge of the guitar.
TUESDAY 11 SEPTEMBER
We knew Tuesday was going to be a bit mad, as it was the last day that we had to record and the last day that Dan or Vic could be in the studio. The first part of the morning was taken up with Dan doing organ overdubs. He also added a terrific piano part on ‘Ghost Town’. At around 12:30, Garrett Costigan arrived to do some pedal steel parts. Garrett is one of the most amazing pedal steel players I have ever heard – you might know his work from Tex, Don and Charlie’s first album. Anyway, we were all pretty nervous when Garrett arrived. He started out with Smile – and within seconds had broken our hearts with his pining playing. Noodling through a couple of takes, his playing just completed the song perfectly. He then laid parts over ‘September’ and ‘Ode’. It was around this point that things started to sound complete. The afternoon was a bit of a rush – Dan was leaving for Darwin in the evening, so he had to rush to get the last of his parts complete. By 6:30 we had done all the recording that we were able to do.
We left Dave McCluney to start editing and mixing. I dropped Vic home, picked up Dan and drove him to the airport. Dan had looked so stressed all through the sessions, but he had done an amazing job. This record is a very keyboard heavy one, and Dan really took control of a lot of the rehearsals and sessions. I think a lot of the recordings are very much testament to the sensitivity and delicacy of his playing. In the car I asked Dan if he was excited about his holiday in the Northern Territory. He replied, “Yeah, but I’m more excited about the recording”. I was really glad to hear Dan say that – he had looked so stressed and nervous during the process. During mixing, listening to one of Dan’s takes, Dave McCluney noted, ‘You’re really lucky to have someone like Dan – he takes so much care with everything he plays.” Too true.
WEDNESDAY 12 SEPTEMBER
Dave McCluney has spent a few hours working on Tuesday night to start the mixing, so that when I arrived at 10am on Wednesday, he had pretty much finished the first song. It was the epic ‘September’ – which he has spent several hours getting to a polished final state. It was really nice to be able to walk right in and hear something completely done. We made a couple of minor adjustments and it was done.
Then we moved on to ‘A Million Ways’ – we did a little bit of editing to this song, shortening the ending and fiddling around with a few bits (particularly the harmonica solo, which I was less keen on than Dave was). It took a little longer than we thought, but we were still roughly on track. Fancy arrived around 12:30 and we did the mixing for Smile, before Fancy had to leave to attend to some matters regarding the financing of his new home.
Dave McCluney and I turned our attention to mixing ‘Progress’. We knew this was going to be one of the more difficult ones. We had wanted a fade-in, and had played an extended introduction. Putting it all together was something of marathon, but finally I think it all came together. It wasn’t quite the long epic introduction that we had planned, but I think that it works much better and is much more coherent. Dan’s organ line (a last minute thought of his) really pulls it all together. We did a mix, and then I suggested to Dave that we put a really big slap-back reverb on the vocals in the chorus. All up, I was really happy with how this song came out – although I think it is a song that is yet to find its voice.
After ‘Progress’ we mixed ‘Ghost Town’ – one of the simpler songs to mix, and we did it quite quickly. At this stage we were running out of time. Another band were coming in around 7pm, and we had been mixing all day. We rushed through “Ode” and “Parting Glass”, with Vic arriving just as we finished. Dave burnt us off a CD and we drove home listening to it…
