After all the dust settled, somebody put it perfectly:

2 wardrobe changes, 3 locations, we laid down some tracks for somebody else’s project, and ended up knee-deep in Greenlake. All in just over 2 hours!

Always an adventure, Allison Tullos, Ken Nottingham, Dave Forrrester, James Apollo, Caithey, and myself met up at Sam & Jame’s house for a whirlwind photo-shoot for various upcoming Harborrats releases. Some photos in the house, on the porch, and in the backyard. Then on our way to Crackle and Pop studio to take more shots and redub some gang vocals on James’ new album (a recovery of choir tracks that were erased unkowingly), and finally to Greenlake where we got wet waitstaff style.

Highlights: Jamming on the front porch and answerring the Greenlake public phone only to be asked if we wanted special favors.

Thanks again Sam for leading us in fun adventure.

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Headed down to South Seattle to record some fiddle and mandolin tracks. The artist is a 15(?)-year-old with a sound similar to Avril Lavigne and/or Taylor Swift. A buddy, Nathan, is producing her album and invited myself and pedal steel player, Randy, down to countrify the first tune on the project.

Ends up the studio is at the house of the Walkabouts singer, Carla Torgerson. The place is a sort of compound – long driveway, lots of private property signs, and various organized piles of to-be-used building materials. It is/was also the residence of friends BLVD Park – through whom I made all these connections.

Showed up at 12pm on the first gorgeous Sunday of the spring. As is the custom with many studios, we sat around for a while shooting the shit, slowly getting things set up, and waiting for everybody to arrive. I’m not sure how this became the standard studio culture, but I must admit I really prefer the get in, lay down some tracks, and then, only after the playing is over, sit down and relax vibe. It reminds me of that old saying about bluegrass festivals: “Come for the music, stay for the people”. First time I heard that all I could think was how I prefer to come for the music and stay for the music. Sorry folks, but there’s good people everywhere to hang out with. If we’re sitting around with a bunch of instruments, spare me the conversation and let’s play. I really do enjoy human contact, trust me, its just that opportunities to jam with people are much rarer than opportunities to make small-talk. Anyway, after about 3 and a half hours I finally got to lay some tracks. After two fiddle takes and two mandolin run-thrus we got what we needed and called it a wrap. Here are some pictures from the day.

The girl whose project this was for definitely has some potential. She arrived at the session towards the end and seemed to be very positive on everything. Great heart poured into the song as well. I’ll pass on her info when something gets released…

Here are some pics from the day.

Random building materials

More building materials

The gear - in the control room

Wasps waking up in this old Japanese 'Willy'

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Sam Russell and Johnny Sangster at Crackle and Pop

Session #2 with Sam Russell, tracking for the 7th edition of his Blue Moon Bible project. Once again we headed back to Johnny Sangster’s Crackle and Pop studio in Ballard. The first session was intended to be a one-shot/nail-em-all experience that culminated in completed base tracks. Since that session, Sam and I have played a couple casual live sets and I noticed that the music was so much better when I just closed my eyes and followed Sam’s energy. While some of the songs take some interesting melodic twists, they’re generally predictable Sam Russell fare. Therefore I let the ‘notes’ just come by autopilot and tried to concentrate on the energy. This, along with being healthy and in a much better mood, really made the session productive and fun.

Interesting note: Sam has developed a whole rule-set for this album’s recording. The idea is that no one person can record more than one overdub at a time. In theory, the resulting music will both sound like it came from four people as well as allowing everything to potentially be duplicated live.

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Went in to Crackle and Pop studios with the stripped-down Harborrats (Sam Russell, Ken Nottingham, and myself) to potentially record the 6th album in Sam’s Blue Moon Bible series. Two days before the session, the three of us met up at Sam’s house to get introduced to the songs and run through them once or twice. The idea was to keep things rough – capturing mostly first impressions on disk. Overall, Sam was going for a rough and stripped-down vibe from the songs, performances, and recording.

Unfortunately things may have been a little too unrehearsed and we didn’t end up having that perfect session with good takes of all songs. There were multiple issues, but it mostly came down to preparation. I think if you’re going to try and do a session with very little prep, then it is key to: 1) keep it simple, the songs, that is; or 2) provide excellent charts. And above all, maybe avoid allergy season when late nights feel later than usual.

On a positive note, the songs are really great. They keep the general feel of the rest of the albums, arrangement-wise, but have a flavor all their own – lots of  ‘feeling’ chords: major 7ths, diminished, etc…

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Another Scott Andrew video – from the same session that produced the Gravel Road video.

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