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.


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