I'm really lucky sometimes, a project like this reminds me of that.
The folks that have helped me find what's in my head were all the
perfect fit.
Anthony Hannigan & Olive/Woobie Cat Kitchens
I've known Cory Heller for a very long
time now, since the mid 80's I think. He was, as he is now, the man on
keyboards on the Reading Jam & rock scene. He's got a beautifully
expressive singing voice, and performs zillions of songs on a regular
basis with one of his fine groups NEO TRIO, but to me his greatest gift
is his intuitive piano & organ playing. He came in to Woobie Cat
Kitchens near the beginning of the project and played through each song,
then again. And I had all my keyboard backing tracks. Then he did a
series of one take leads and went home. He plays on all tracks on the
album but stands out (imo) on Traveling (organ), Long Way from Home
(electric piano) & especially Morn In The Morrow (piano). He was
brilliant, and I sat there next to him and watched him be that.
Bill Stetz, Julie & Olive
Anthony Hannigan is another one of these guys. Mando champion at some ridiculously young age, and insanely proficient on fiddle, banjo & guitar as well, Anthony and I have Garcia Grass together and I love every single time I get to perform with him, which isn't often enough. I asked him if he would lend his fiddle skills to 2 tracks, Morn In The Morrow and the album coda called 'Pasture'.He did not disappoint on either. Olive was mesmerized...
Olive is also a big Bill Stetz fan as we all are here at Woobie Cat, I've been personally playing with him since 1994, and we've done a ton of shows together over the years. Our acoustic duo at that time blossomed into what was Kris Kehr & Stone Poets and he recorded some beautiful stuff for my first album Long Year as well as Notes From the Crossroads ten years later. The acoustic duo still performs occasionally although more often recently with the addition of my wife Julie (who I will talk more about in a sec) and sometimes as the Kris & Julie Kehr Trio. Bill also performs with Garcia Grass and was one of my best men at my wedding (two bassists & a merch guy), so I love the guy. When I started conceiving of the coda as a lusher instrumental piece, I started hearing the upright bass of Saturday Sun by Nick Drake, which was played by Danny Thompson, in my head. Bill and I saw a bunch of great live music together while I lived in State College years back, but one of the best was Richard Thompson & Danny Thompson at Lancaster's Chameleon Club, which was masterful & ridiculously inspiring and influential to our acoustic duo. Bill recorded a series of bowed tracks that were mixed together, then took a separate 'Nick Drake take', plucked that nailed it all.
Julie at work
Julie is my secret weapon, I am so lucky to have her at my disposal. My wife Julie & I first met in the Recipe as I may have previously mentioned. I have a lot of respect for the type of singing she does, from a place of power and confidence. Fronting that band took balls and she could really let it fly, eventually to the detriment of her vocal chords. Later we started doing acoustic duo stuff, a more delicate soul/folk mix that still allowed for that her fronting prowess.
With this project, I knew I wanted a response harmony with the lead vocals on Long Way From Home and so Julie readily and easily, in one take, nailed that first. I have long been a fan of the vocal production on albums by Queen, especially the first couple. Many, many nearly identical vocal parts stacked on top of each other and panned around the stereo spectrum until it sounds like a cathedral. That and the Glyn Johns book that Julie got me for Christmas inspired me to find something new for myself and try the stacking process on Anymore and Shining Through. I did several on the lower register takes myself then had Julie do the upper harmonies....many times. The result is something cathedral and lush, and I'm very happy with it. It took the both of us a long time to find that special thing that was needed and I'm thankful for her patience.
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.
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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.....
When I started conceiving of the coda as a lusher instrumental piece, I started hearing the upright bass of Saturday Sun by Nick Drake, which was played by Danny Thompson, in my head. Bill and I saw a bunch of great live music together while I lived in State College years back, but one of the best was Richard Thompson & Danny Thompson at Lancaster's Chameleon Club, which was masterful & ridiculously inspiring and influential to our acoustic duo. Bill recorded a series of bowed tracks that were mixed together, then took a separate 'Nick Drake take', plucked that nailed it all.
