Fred and Gerri Ann drove us to the airport in Minneapolis today as we left Fred’s project for Dallas. (We did manage to get three games of pool in before we left on an otherwise busy schedule.) At security, they had trainees, one of whom spoke so fast and in a mumbly American accent that I didn’t understand him, his supervising officer didn’t seem to be bothered by that, probably thinking I was deaf, I’m not sure if he knew I was a foreigner, it didn’t come up. Anyway, it became obvious that they were taking the training to an exaggeration point as he informed me he needed to search my ‘groin area’. “Go for your life,” I muttered back. There was allegedly some alert on the big machine. I was wearing shorts, and had nothing in my pockets at all, not even a plectrum. It was almost like they were making it up to put the trainees through a rigorous sesh in the field. I saw one girl having her (what looked like) hand cream tested with little spurts of chemicals, like a cocaine test, she was not amused, whilst I wasn’t bothered.

The flight was an easy two and a half hours and I listened to Best Of The Pretenders (2008), Taylor’s country album (2006), two halves of Willy Deville songs that my iPod had trouble with, and four songs from ZZ Top’s Degüello (1979). I’ve forgotten how to get new songs onto my iPod, Olivia has managed to download new albums onto her phone, that’s what I need to do so I can listen to contemporary albums in this captive space. I still haven’t got to Daughter’s new album Stereo Mind Game, Feist’s Multitudes, Fever Ray’s Radical Romantics, or Boygenius‘ The Record to name but four, all new.

After picking up our luggage we went out to meet Sarah who was kindly picking us up and encountered Texas heat. It’s a different climate down here and I was glad of those shorts and T-shirt, this is not the weather for clothing. We drove into Dallas and straight to Thai Thai for dinner, followed by Kroger’s for groceries, followed by home away from home above the garage for writing and sleep. Tomorrow is mystery album day.

Music today was Lana Del Rey’s Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard, a peculiarly uncommercial record for such a commercially successful artist.

Music Of The Daze

Last day in the studio with sessioneer Fred Argir in Minneapolis today, a week has gone so fast but I suppose 12-hour recording days will do that. Wake up, record, sleep, eat, and shower somewhere in the middle. Producing and playing guitar on Fred’s record has been a pleasure and we are looking forward to bringing it to you at some point in the future. There’s still a way to go. We have the backing tracks, that is drums, bass, guitars, keys, piano, and percussion (I played some tambourine today) but we only have guide vocals, so that’s next. We fly back to Dallas tomorrow to continue working on the mystery album for two days before we start with sessioneer Jed on Saturday and Space Summit 2.

Before we went to the studio today we stopped off at the famous Electric Fetus. This record store was one of the first places to support the ex-band in America and that led to Minneapolis being a place where we would play two shows when we played one everywhere else. (We made the Reptile video here at The Guthrie Theater.) I spoke to Dawn from the shop who has been there for 30 years. These are the treasured people that make all the difference in the tricky world of selling records, dedicated tastemakers, true music lovers. Thank you, Dawn and everyone in every record store around the world that makes a difference to musicians because of their passion and enthusiasm for the music.

Back at the studio, we didn’t have so much to do today, we knew we had one song to look at and nine to listen to to check that we had all the guitars and violins down before we left town. I knew I had some nylon string to play which I did successfully and then we moved on to listening. We got through about five songs and on the sixth realised that something was missing. Olivia suggested EBow on the track which I tried and it worked out perfectly, wait till you hear it. On the ninth song, I heard a tambourine that wasn’t there and found about ten tambourines in the drum room, chose one and we were done.

Whilst Fred, Todd, and Gerri Ann packed up, Olivia and I went outside to take some photos in some key interesting spots. It’s America, there are a lot of interesting cultural observations to be made, one of which you’ll notice on today’s pics. So we got home earlier than usual, got some take away and now we’re off to bed and preparing for tomorrow’s flight to Dallas. By the way, I have a horrible sore throat and I’m hoping that $26 jar of manuka honey I bought at the grocery store near the studio is going to help me sort it out.

Music today has been Rob Dickinson from the Catherine Wheel’s solo album, Fresh Wine For The Horses (2005). It’s a limited edition of 2000 copies and I play a succinct guitar solo on one track, Oceans, check it out.

Music Of The Daze

Please take a moment today to remember our friend and bandmate Steve Knott who we worked with in Atlantæum Flood and who unexpectedly lost his life two years ago today. He left behind his wife Lynne, also a member of the band, friends, and family. Dare, Olivia, Lynne, Steve, and I made a much-loved record and we were on our way to making another one when the pandemic hit and we had to cancel the sessions, and then tragedy struck and Steve was gone. Please take a listen to the record. There are still copies available on vinyl (and CD) through Schoolkids Records.

First of all thanks to all for your contributions to the In Deep Music Archive GoFundMe campaign, we’ve made it to about half of the Phase Two goal. More updates when I get a minute. What happened today? Well, every day in the studio is an adventure and we began by trying to figure out what to do with the intro to one of the songs that we were working on the day before. This is where having a range of instruments comes in and I’d been investigating the instruments that Jason the studio owner had hanging in a room. One of them was a Dan Electro baritone (tuned with the bottom string to C). Sometimes the last thing a song needs is another guitar or a keyboard, it just wants something different, and a baritone is just that, still a guitar but different.

Another song we worked on today turned out to be quite glam, it must have been the fact that I was wearing a T. Rex – Electric Warrior shirt. The song was quite simple, up-tempo, and ended up being one of the most time-consuming, it’s often like that. Those harmony guitars are so cool, a mixture of perfect and absurd. On another song I imagined Olivia accompanying herself on multi-tracked violins. Block multi-tracking of the violin with all root notes and harmonies, strings make for beauty and emotion, the violin – and Olivia – are secret weapons.

Other secret weapons we have in the studio are two Vox AC30s from 1964, three Fender amps, a Super Reverb from 1963, a Deluxe from 1964, and a Deluxe Reverb 2 from 1982, plus two Marshall heads, a 20W and a 50W, both from 1972. We also have humans – Todd Fitzgerald is engineering with Braedyn assisting and Fred’s amazing guitar collection and his songs, it all adds up to something great.

For me as the producer and guitar player, the days have little space for anything else, that’s why there are shorter blogs and although I could share more secrets of the project, we should wait till the project is done and share them then.

Music today has of course been following the T-shirt model and T. Rex‘ Electric Warrior (1971) is a regular choice, doesn’t get old.

Music Of The Daze

A cloudy morning and outside the window below the bird feeders, four turkeys and a squirrel. Fred and I had an early morning conversation about the shape of the universe and we headed off to the studio and were first there waiting for Jason the owner to open up just before 11 AM. We started the day with Olivia playing violin and ended the day with me playing one of Fred’s Les Pauls on the same track. In between we had Mellotrons, real ones and fake ones, Leslie speakers, Marshall amps from the seventies, Rickenbacker 360s, Fender Telecasters and Stratocasters, Vox AC30s, Fender Twin Reverbs, and my one grey Jim Dunlop .73mm plectrum, if I lose it, none of these other items will matter.

We’d let everybody know via the blog that we had some In Deep T-shirts left if anyone wanted one. As it happened Jason Stebner – St. Paul local – got in touch, perfect, we’ll bring you the shirts, save the postage. So we invited him to the studio today to get the shirts and hang with us whilst we worked on Fred’s record, a first-hand experience of what it’s like making an album. Later Space Summit Jed came over and we worked on songs overdubbing the electric guitars into the night. Intern Braedyn played the Mellotron and we really got some great sounds down throughout the night, using all this classic gear.

During the day I went over to the new trendy restaurant across the road for some takeaway pastries for late breakfast and ended up paying ten bucks for two croissants, I’ve been paying less for two brand-new CDs, how is that even possible? The value of things is subjective, Banksy anyone? This is why I gave up drinking, every pint of Guinness was a secondhand album.

A very intense and busy day in the studio. I got back home and fell into the darkness.

Music today has been Nico – Chelsea Girl (1967) in celebration of the T-shirt I was wearing today.

Music Of The Daze