What's An Artist To Do? Follow Your Muse
Monday, August 1, 2011 at 09:18AM The Trials and Tribulations of Ripe Four Distraction Coming Into Being
I spent the latter part of the 1980’s on the road as the opening act for Steven Wright, the comedian. We toured the length and breadth of the land in a big bus and I evolved an hour of music that was consistently effective with the audiences. This caused them to clamor for my CD’s, which I shameless hawked in the lobby, using my well known phrase “Over here, meet the artist, thrill of a lifetime”
Upon coming off the tour, as Steven had retired from serious personal appearance tours, I set out to make a recording of these same songs that went down so well on tour. I invited my favorite bass player, Ken Lyon and my favorite keyboard player, Jim Ehinger to my studio. We sat around and played the songs for several hours (actually about two hours per song) and I recorded us every time. I was acting as the engineer as well as the producer and was playing and singing live to insure their responding to what would be happening on each song. I only recorded their parts. After they left, I recorded my guitars and vocals. Then came the “sweetening”; the background vocals, the strings, horns (Rob Kyle), synths, and percussion. I programmed the drums myself.
I mixed the album for several weeks and when I thought I had it, I went into a mastering lab where I spiffed it up. Evening out all the volume spikes, bringing out the vocals where they were lost and putting the vocals back where they were perhaps, too loud.
I went to Europe and the company putting out Beachwood Recordings went bankrupt. The last thing they did was to mail out my recording to radio stations, thereby assuring that I couldn’t put it out ever again without it being a reissue. The recording of the best songs I had, done as best as I could do them rose to #38 in the nation on the adult contemporary charts without any help. But, because the distributor had gone bankrupt, no one could buy the CD. So I let it languor for years and sold off the few that I had salvaged from the bankruptcy.
Then, last year, I decided to put the recording back out. I listened to it and also decided that I didn’t like the version of Don’t Go Talking To Strangers that was on the original. It didn’t seem to fit in with the recording. Everything else sounded organic and that sounded sequenced. Plus I had been immersing myself in the Pet Sounds CD by the Beach Boys and was enchanted with stacks of vocal harmonies. So I recorded some acoustic guitars and some new harmonies and back ground vocal parts and remixed the song. Now it fits into the album.
Then I went to a mastering lab and proceeded to enhance the sound of the recording by giving it more punch on the bottom and more clarity in the midrange. Now the recording sounds like I always wanted it to and even though it made no economic sense to redo it, I am happy. You must follow your muse.
Reader Comments (2)
Nobody is gonna stop a guy following his musa is just a natural inspiration!
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I love great music pics and you just nailed it with this one.