2 - Adapt & Grow/Guests Part 1

The Recipe circa 2003

   In the spring of 2002, I was asked to do some shows with the touring slamgrass jamband known as The Recipe.  The experience was a revelation to me in more ways than I care to count here but paramount amongst the many high points are two things: meeting, working with and ultimately falling in love and marrying my wife Julie who was the bands' lead singer, and forming the touring duo LOWdOGS with the bands' bassist Chris Kew (Q). Both of those things heavily affect the vibe and literal sound of the Telectro album

Lowdogs - State Theater/Alexandria, VA - 2004 photo by Clicks Photography

   I'll talk about Julie's part more later, but as I was parsing the basic tracks I had made and contemplating my next step one thing became clear- I needed to get my old partner in LOWdOGS involved. This project was unlike anything I had done in the past, more of an electric sound with the spry and organic drumming of Zak Achenbach and the use of my GNL Telecaster/Fender deluxe combination.

MNP-Lancaster, PA - photo by Zack Balko

Lowdogs - Richmond, VA circa 2004 - photo by Scott Elmquist

Chris (Q) Kew - Asheville, NC - 2014

Q is a Boston boy who started out his career in the Jiggle the Handle (later just JIGGLE) amongst others (who are coincidentally working on a new album right now as well..) I first saw him play at the Crowbar in State College in the late 90's in the touring jamband/klezmer act known as Hypnotic Clambake (think polka/klesmer on acid). And when I think of his playing style I would say that some sort of bluegrass/rootsy version of Jaco Pastorious wouldn't be out-of-line. He had been touring most of his life by the time we started working together in The Recipe and I must say he ended up being one of those players who I feel is always present there for me, always interested in where the music takes you, one of the very best of sounding boards, an incredibly talented musician with a sharp and educated ear and certainly one of the more intelligent & accepting people in my orbit.

   After the Recipe's demise the two of us remained behind in the Asheville, NC and decided to move forward as a duo. More miles on the road and together playing resulted in a live album called 'In the Tall Grass' and a few great writing/jam sessions; Q came up with a bass line that I put lyrics to that we called I Gotta Gun.

I got a gun down in my pocket

I got a big one in my van

I’ll tell you boys I got a gun wherever that I am

I got a gun, You wanna see?

I gotta a gun good people wherever I might happen to be

I got a gun down in the cellar

I got a gun out in the yard

I gotta a gun up in the attic

Just to makes things a little hard

I had a gun and went to prison

They snuck one in and now I’m free

I never did understand if

It was him or it was me

                                                    'I Gotta Gun' - March 8th, 2005

    Later in the summer of 2005, Julie and I moved from North Carolina back north to Pennsylvania where we live today. When the Magnetic North Project began looking for more songs I introduced I Gotta Gun which began heavy rotation in the bands' sets. When time came for album production it lacked Q's distinctive bass part that inspired the song in the first place. The original lyrics were inspired by the ridiculous conversations I was often subject to as a seasonal helper in my dad's Pennsylvania taxidermy shop, but also growing up where I did in general, and reading and traveling. I thought the song worked by itself but lyrically didn't really fit into the Telectro oeuvre. I decided to ring Chris Kew up.

    He had been through a few things since I moved north, including serious brain surgery. Although we lived far apart at this point I kept my eye on him and his recovery, and tried to stay in touch. That became easier as he convalesced and by the time I reached him late in 2013 he was doing pretty well and starting to pick up his music career again in earnest. He agreed to revisit the song although by this point I was in the process of rewriting the lyrics into a completely different song called 'Poison in the Well'.
   Early in the spring of 2014 we made plans to get together here in Pennsylvania on his way to a Jiggle reunion up north but time constraints started clouding our plans. Up until this point I had all of the album's tracks on ADAT, an antiquated digital format preserved on SVHS tape. As I explained previously, this process allowed for me to use all my old equipment and mix easily in a live fashion. My hard drive is limited in speed so the thought of doing this album on a computer never occurred to me. Also, I was taking delight in having only spent less than $200 on equipment upgrades to accommodate 16 channels. I only had one ADAT recorder, which has 8 channels, when I did the basic track recordings at Zak's parents house; 4 drum channels, two guitars and bass with an open channels for cuing the band through the headphones as we were playing. Originally I paid somewhere in the neighborhood of 1500 for my Alesis ADAT machine in 1997. When I searched on ebay for a matching machine to slave with mine and create 16 channels, I was surprised to find an exact partner for $75, which was ridiculous to me at the time...in a good way. Partnered with my Mackie 16 channel soundboard mixer I spent that winter through the year adding other instruments to the mix, and creating bass demos with the lines I wished to hear on these songs as well. I added mandolin, banjolin, various acoustic guitars and a few new electric guitar tracks to accompany the ones I had already recorded, including those of MNP guitarist Zack Roth, as well as rewriting and refining much of the lyric content.

Woobie Cat Kitchens/Leesport, PA - 2014

    But to get Q's offerings it became clear last summer that we needed to take another approach and I had to start figuring out a way to use bass lines he would record at his home in North Carolina and sent to me via the internet. I began transferring all the ADAT tracks I had amassed to hi-res wav files via live mix/recording sessions with my ZOOM recorder. These I transferred to my PC and used the mixing program Audition, which I was mostly familiar with.
.

Chris Kew in his home studio

   The bass line Chris sent me was wonderful, and served as the stepping off point for my change in production. Remember, zero budget for any of this. The individual tracks transferred nicely, I basically mixed the songs then transferred the tracks one-by-one. Working with Q was a wonderful breath of live air as I was completely resigned to doing this myself by this point with little sounding board existing. And Q is a great sounding board. I believe he felt the same way about working with me again and so we decided he should play on most of the rest of the project. Throughout the summer and into the fall of 2014 he'd send me new bass tracks via dropbox that I would add to the mixes accordingly.

Q's Can of Worms Studios/Asheville, NC

     My conversations with Q throughout his time sending me tracks helped greatly as well, and his suggestion to include our mutual pal Scott Murawski on the protect now seemed like something I could accommodate since I was now fairly adept at mixing on hard drive. Scott is the guitarist and leader of the long-term jamband stalwarts Max Creek, huge on the scene in the New England area. Also as a long time friend with Phish bassist Mike Gordon, he serves as his songwriting partner for his solo projects and guitarist in his own touring project The Mike Gordon Band. He's always been most kind to me, and one hell of a guitarist. As of writing this blog he is currently working on his contributions so I'll speak more of Scott's stuff later. Q was also working with guitarist Boob Coons recently and was able to corral a few guitar adornments for the album as well but I'll talk about the rest of the players next time.....

TELECTRO Facebook Page

Kris Kehr website

Kris Kehr on Facebook

Kris Kehr Reverbnation Page

Download Kris Kehr on itunes

Kris’s album downloads on Bandcamp

Listen to live Kris Kehr on Archives

Listen to select, rare& new tracks on Soundcloud

Kris Kehr on Youtube

1 - The Beginning

Hello Everybody-
   Kris Kehr here. I've been working on a new album called Telectro for almost two years now and I've decided to start this blog to talk about the process.

   It's been an interesting trip so far, starting with the formation, growth and ultimate dissolution of the electric band called The Magnetic North Project. It actually started a little before that...

Jawbone! Kris Kehr & Jason Zarecky at the Phyrst 2000

   Many years ago while driving around with my old buddy Jason Zarecky I pontificated endlessly on my want to start an electric band that used the songs of J.J. Cale as a base but grew into its own thing - driving, bluesy and yet original. He and I started the short-lived band Jawbone, an off-shoot of my country-rock band Kris Kehr & Stone Poets.

MNP at River Street 5/30/13 - photo by Frank Stacks

  After a major turn of events in my life (I'm glossing over a lot here, including moving from State college, PA to North Carolina, getting engaged then married, touring nationally in a jamgrass band, the breakup of that band, a move back to Pa., buying a house, getting out of the music business briefly, losing my job & getting back in the music business then changing focus and moving on) I ended up living back in the area I grew up in - Leesport/Berks County - and looking to spice up my post-touring life decided to revisit the original thought. This time I started from the ground up, enlisting bassist Ray Hoffman, guitarist Zack Roth and drummer Zak Achenbach and starting with the music of J.J. Cale, the bluesier side of the Grateful Dead, Willie Dixon & Muddy Waters and some of my own older stuff that seemed to fit. 
   

   As my daughter Liliana was born in January of 2013, the band began playing some nice gigs thanks to the booking work of Casey Scherer and really started to gain steam. We got together every week and jammed in Zak's parents garage (a HUGE thanks toKaren & Mike Achenbach for putting up with THAT!! -and their unending kindness), and as we did I was able to sharpen up a body of new original material.  Some jams led to other things (Long Way From Home but not all our songs came out of the regular jam recordings I was making. Traveling & Shining Through I wrote inspired by playing with an electric band. I had also resurrected and eventually completely rewrote a few things from my past (Anymore, I Got a Gun). 

   Through the summer of 2013 the band started feeling like it had run it's course with nature though I still hadn't gotten decent studio multi-track recordings of any of the original material, which was wrong. Both of those things. Most of these songs, or at least these particular versions of them had come about because of The Magnetic North Project. I had an absolute blast playing with the guys and still feel bad it burned out so fast, or there was nothing more I could do to prevent it. I am so very proud of the material we produced, and the process of getting there we all shared up to a point. Every Tuesday night in Mohnton for the longest while, it kept me sane. It made me insane at times too, but that first year with Lily at home, I am glad I had a few predetermined hours of music every week to let my mind go. I feel like I started a new chapter in my musical life as well as personal, corny as that sounds. I felt these songs deserved the very best I could give them, and I added to my personal challenge by not spending any money on it. It felt like I needed to make an expression of who I really was musically, and how I got there. This all started to become clear to me as the band was ending so I needed to set up some recording sessions and get the songs down, at least the basics

    I moved my 8 track Alesis ADAT, antiquated as it was, and Mackie mixer into our usual rehearsal space at Zak's parents house in the garage and mic'd the drums with 2 over heads, kick and a snare, a 57 on Zack's PEAVY in one corner, another on my Deluxe in the other corner and Ray's bass direct in through my Joe Meek rack processor. That left an open channel for a room mic for cues and scratch vocals. The recording came out surprisingly well, especially the drums. The session marked the official end for the band, I think we only did one gig in York after that. I decided to take the recordings back home, reconstruct Woobie Cat Kitchens with my old equipment.

T-Bone & bird/Woodstock, NY - 1998

   In the late 90's while making my first official album Long Year I purchased what was then state-of-the-art portable digital recording equipment in the form of a 16 channel Mackie mixer and an 8 channel Alesis ADAT recorder, which uses SVHS tape. It mixes in real time and I became pretty accustomed to using it, mostly because of the experienced expertise I was fortunate to receive from one Tom 'T Bone' Edmonds, live sound mixer for Lenny Kravitz with a music history as long as the list of artists who passed through Woodstock's Bearsville Studios with a coupla Stones tours thrown in. T-Bone was very giving with his incredible knowledge and I consider that time to be amongst the most valuable in my career. With his 8 Track ADAT we set about making Long Year and after I used the 8 tracks for all my demo recording and a few other things.  Nowadays (boy, that word shows your age) most recordings are made direct to hard drive and mixed piece-meal on a program,  usually protools or something of the like. I decided to keep using this 90's technology not just because I still owned it and it worked but because of the freedom to mix back on a board in such a small undertaking. Plus, to my ears the recording made onto tape are far better than direct-to-digital.

T-Bone (w Woobie Cat shirt) & Lenny Kravitz in France around 2011

   At that point I planned on adding some different instruments and finished vocals here in my home studio (Woobie Cat Kitchens) and mix down live but the thing started growing....more than I could imagine, and I had to further adapt.


TELECTRO Facebook Page

Kris Kehr website

Kris Kehr on Facebook

Kris Kehr Reverbnation Page

Download Kris Kehr on itunes

Kris’s album downloads on Bandcamp

Listen to live Kris Kehr on Archives

Listen to select, rare& new tracks on Soundcloud

Kris Kehr on Youtube