Today seemed like a good day to sing, so I sang, then Olivia sang and then I sang again. It’s a privilege to be in the studio spending the day singing. I’m sure that singing is good for your health and you don’t need to have Colin Blunstone’s beautiful voice to enjoy singing. It’s like playing the guitar, you don’t have to be a virtuoso to enjoy playing, so I suggest that everyone starts playing the guitar and singing from today, if for no other reason than to stay alive. Having said that Salim told me that he’d recently seen a crazy statistic – 120,000 songs are released every day. Perhaps this simply means that people love singing, and creating and what could be wrong with that? The problem is how do you get listeners to pick you out.

We did another studio trick today. I’d played bass on a song, the part was good but it sounded a bit ‘plonky’. I’m not sure if that tells you much, but I suggested that we should re-amp it. This means taking the direct input signal and running it back out into the live room into an amp. We then mic up the amp and record the bass again. We then play it back either blending the direct signal with the re-amped signal or just using the direct signal in order to get a more appropriate sound for the track. The reason we had to do this was that when Tess came in to record the cello parts it made the bass sound ‘plonky’ so we had to address the tone and where the bass sat in the track in relation to the cello.

Jason came in later in the day to set up drums for the imminent arrival of sessioneer NJ Brian who is starting album two before album one is mixed, he’s just so prolific. We try to have a setup evening before the artist arrives. We get the drums placed where we want them in the live room, we get the sounds we want, we prepare the computer, adding the demos for reference or to play to. We draw up the whiteboard so we can see what needs to be done and we try and get an early night before the project starts, this one will be a straight ten days of at least 12-hour days.

Congrats to Luton Town who find themselves in the Premiership along with Burnley and Sheffield United. Fingers crossed for Everton, Leicester, and Leeds, two of which will join Southhampton in the drop. Boydie’s Plymouth Argyle topped League One and Dortmund blew it in Germany to hand the title to Bayern – again. FA Cup and Champions League finals will determine if Man City can do the treble. May the best team win.

Music today has been the Fabulous Poodles (1977) and Unsuitable because today I met Bob Suffolk who played keys in the band and now lives in Dallas and designs studios (I bought the album when it came out). He showed up today to discuss some ideas with Salim and Sarah for the studio. He showed up in a 1988 Bentley, see the pic on Instagram. This, their second album, was produced by The Who’s John Entwistle who also plays on the album.

Music Of The Daze

Today was seven hours of Tess. Who is Tess? Tess is the cellist. We love working with Tess, she started to play the cello when she was three and that grinding bottom cello C string is something to behold. In this sesh we had her tune it down to B so it was even deeper. It sounded like a three-funnelled steamer sailing into an Egyptian port in 1949.

Working on records with an array of different instruments is a real buzz. When we worked on the Space Summit record we only worked on drums and percussion for a solid five days, getting the beds down on 21 songs. Ok, we recorded some Salim bass on one song but it was a marathon of drum recording and Jason did an amazing job with his energy and ideas. Engineers Kevin and John made sure it all sounded good and we experimented with sounds and patterns with Jason hitting bits of metal (haha) as well as traditional drums.

But back to today, once we had all the cello parts down, my brain exploded. Working out parts for songs on that instrument is an interesting challenge because it’s such an amazing instrument that it sounds good whatever you do. So we have to really work on developing the part throughout the song and not just have it everywhere. There are other instruments too, guitars, bass, piano, and sometimes the frequency that the bass sits shares the same space as the cello frequency, it depends on which bass and the part but you don’t want them getting in each other’s way, like two strikers going for the same ball from a corner at the cup final colliding with each other and missing the ball.

After the cello we worked on some drum parts with John, we were replacing bongos with real drums, always a relief, haha. Next came tambourine and then John enticed us out of the studio to go to the Kessler Theater in Oak Cliff in Dallas to see his friends’ band Pleasant Grove. A strange mixture of country, moody desert sounds, and odd left turns. I’ve been here before to see Nick Lowe, it’s a nice place, a perfect size.

Music today has been Pleasant Grove’s Auscultation Of The Heart (2003), the album’s 20th anniversary was celebrated last night. You can go to their Bandcamp page here.

Music Of The Daze

Hurray, it’s the premiere of Under Attack, the third single from Salim Nourallah’s album A Nuclear Winter, due for release on June 23rd! The album was produced by me and Salim and features the Dallas Wrecking Crew’s core unit of Joe Reyes on guitar, Rich Martin on keyboards, Jason Garner on bass and drums, John Dufilho on drums and bass, Salim on acoustic guitar and vocals and me on electric guitar. Here’s an excerpt from V13’s premiere feature:

For Salim Nourallah, his new musical output comes with a large feeling of satisfaction, and maybe even a nice sigh of relief. Today, the singer-songwriter unveils his new single, “Under Attack,” the third track to come from his brand new record, A Nuclear Winter. It would be an understatement to say that the album has been a long time coming, but its final arrival date is June 23rd via Happiness (A Record Label) and State Fair Records.

“Under Attack” has a classic, late-1970s rock vibe about it, and Nourallah’s vocals and songwriting approach may very well remind you of the legend Tom Petty. Its origins extend back to early 2017, a song that Nourallah liked, but didn’t feel fit into what he was doing at the time. Fortunately, he made sure to store it away for a day when it may feel right.

 

In conjunction with its official premiere, Nourallah joins us today to answer a few questions about “Under Attack,” his songwriting process, and what he’s got in store for the rest of this year:

CLICK HERE FOR THE INTERVIEW

Last day in the studio today for Jed and Space Summit. The days go so fast but we have managed to get a lot done, concentrating on drums and percussion which we will build on in the coming months. I have discovered through working a lot in the studio that the whiteboard is your best friend. It tells you where you are at, what you’ve done, and what you’ve got to do, it shows your progress and the work ahead, you know where you are with a whiteboard, the most underrated piece of equipment in the studio.

Hank the raccoon was out today wandering around the garden in the daylight, fearless. I wonder if raccoons are the equivalent of the urban foxes we have in England, a wild creature looking for food in a built-up area. Where do they sleep undisturbed, how do they protect their young in this environment? I suppose they are considered pests, rooting through the garbage (do they do that?) but it’s just so cool to see them. It’s like the ibis in Sydney, exotic and always on the top of a garbage can, Cleopatra would be so disappointed.

We finished at 3 AM with all the percussion and drums done. Jed had an early flight so wasn’t bothering going to bed. I fell into bed feeling battered, I had my ‘eye thing’ beforehand. We had an Uber driver lady from Turkey giving us her perspective on Erdoğan and celebrating his likely win. The most important thing in my life beyond the music is sleep.

I’m not sure why it came up but we were talking about Ian Dury and Jed found a video of Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll on his phone, John and Jason were quite fascinated by it, they’d never heard of him or this song which surprised me but then again Ian Dury is quintessentially English and it might not have translated to America, but I was surprised that what is such an iconic song back home in England had no profile at all in Texas with people who know music.

Music today has been Ian Dury’s debut solo album New Boots and Panties!! (1977), a classic, this album was played a lot in my house when I was 19. Although it is considered a solo album, it featured ‘The Blockheads’ Charley Charles on drums, Norman Watt-Roy on bass, and Chaz Jankel on keys and guitar who would later be credited as Ian Dury and The Blockheads on future albums, mostly because they were a fantastic band of musicians that really took his music to another level.

Note – Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll was a pre-album single that was added to the American release of the album.

Music Of The Daze

It was a beautiful day in Dallas today rising to 86°F/30°C with a warm breeze, it was holiday weather but I have a studio tan, happily. It made me think about the Uber driver we had the other day. When we opened the boot (the trunk) to put in our stuff, he said, “Sorry there’s a suitcase in there, I’m off to Chicago tomorrow.” It transpired that he had won some kind of competition and was heading north to enter the International Mr. Leather pageant. It made me wonder how does he rehearse in this heat and what could rehearsing consist of? Apparently, there’s a Mr. Rubber pageant too, even worse.

A tricky day in the studio today. Jason had been trying to get the drums down on a track and was getting very confused by the arrangement. We decided to look at it today as it was getting late. Frustration ensued until we realised that the demo that Jason had been listening to was different from the version that was on the computer, he realised he wasn’t going mad and a wave of relief washed through the studio.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the In Deep Music Archive GoFundMe, I’ll be in touch when I get a moment, moments are hard to come by at the moment, but I will thank Chris Buckley here for his originality where he contributed by also going to Porto and sending a picture of himself outside the Archive gate, I wish I could have given him the keys to go inside and have a look at this early stage of the place.

Sessioner NJ Brian called me yesterday to tell me he’d picked up a 1967 Rickenbacker 12-string and he’ll be bringing it to the studio next week. It’s always special to play these old Rickenbacker guitars, Brian now has a sixties Rickenbacker 6-string and 12-string, like sessioneer Fred who has two 1966 Rickenbackers 12 and 6 which I used in Minneapolis last week, what a difference it makes playing these instruments, their playability, the quality of their sound, they talk to you. When you are using instruments like this they listen to the song, the song reaches out to them, and between them, they create the magic, you are a mere vessel.

The invisible mosquitos got me yesterday, not too badly, but how do I never see them or even feel them bite? All of a sudden there’s a red itchy circle. The spray system outside the studio is definitely working because the last time I was here, I was only bites. Dallas is like the episode of Star Trek where they arrive on a paradise planet only to find that the flowers are killers.

Music today has been Anekdoten’s debut album Vemod, I thought you might like to know what took them to Québec to wow the Québécois, this is it, on its thirtieth birthday.

Music Of The Daze