1/21/08  The Appalachian Memoirs session was this past weekend.  Jason and I have been talking about it for awhile, and last Thursday all the talk stopped and it was time for the physical manifestation rule to take over.  Its one thing to talk about a weekend where you spend hours and hours cutting tracks and putting it all together.  It's and entirely different story to stand in the center of it, delirious from mass quantities of coffee and a little sleep deprivation, counting up the tracks that you have covered and looking down the barrel of dozens more on various instruments that you have only owned for a couple of weeks.

Thursday 1/17/08  As the evening settled in, Jason brought up a large supply of food and beverage and we started discussing the approach.  Sitting down that evening, it was a bit intimidating, looking over the track list of 12 songs that encompassed 104 individual tracks of drums, bass and guitar, as well as the approximately 70 tracks of additional instrumentation which consisted of harmonica, lap steel, banjo, mandolin and vocals.  We had a game plan for getting the tracking down, and had set a couple of lofty, unrealistic goals for ourselves.

We set up the drums and plugged in the acoustic, and off we went.  There were a couple of songs in the set that were fully arranged, but the majority of them existed as only a set of lyrics (some yet to be completed) and an idea for a melody.  We had a list of the tracks, so we simply began plugging away, arranging and discussing, writing and playing.  By midnight we had 7-8 of the basic tracks of drums and acoustic down, and were able to finish up the rest by around 3 a.m. or so.  We spent a little time listening back and looking at structure to make sure that we had something we could work with.  After insuring progress, we retired for the evening about 4:30 a.m.

Friday 1/18/08  Time for Bass tracking this morning.  Coming into this project, it had occurred to me at a couple of points that I had never tried to write bass for any of these songs.  I have only owned a bass for a few months, but have been in training, working with JRhodes and the Jampon project.  This turned out to be a long day of bass tracking.  As we worked through the lines, we were happy with the result.  Bass is a beautiful place to set a melody, and I am sure that this process would have gone a bit faster if I would have gone straight at the songs and not look for the extra note here and there.  But then again, we did not want to short this sound.  In between my tendencies to complicate lines to the point that i could not play them well and Jason's voice of reason telling me to calm it down and simplify, we were able ot get all the bass lines set in.

We spent the last few hours of the day building the mixes into the computer.  It takes a bit of time to transfer everything out of the HD24 and into software for mixing, but it provides a very stable platform, which is key.  We placed the drums, bass and guitar into their projects and got a glimpse of the music bed that we would be working.  We spent some time here cleaning up the guitar overdubs that were worked on Thursday night, as well as bouncing out stereo mixes to record to the next day.  We called it a day at around 3:30 am and Jason headed back to his homestead to see the wife before her weekend journey.  He had to spend a couple of minutes with Edger the cat also.  Edger gets mad when Jason's not around to let him out to visit his lady cat friends.

Saturday 1/19/08  So Saturday at 10 am brings the middle, the center of the weekend.  We had consumed the last two day's sessions with recording all the basic tracks and getting them set up for everything else that we were going to attempt to play on this record.  The lap steel had only been here for a week or so.  The mandolin I purchased a few weeks before that, and the new 6 string banjo was picked up from it's tweaking on Thursday afternoon. 

I must give great thanks to Steve and the crew J. Thomas Davis Guitar Maker for tending to my banjo emergency.  Short story is that I ended up with a new 6 string banjo on Wednesday afternoon.  It was not properly set up, and had intonation deviance, rendering it unplayable for the record.  With great desperation, I called J. Thomas Davis hoping to find salvation, and Steve and the guys delivered me from evil intonation and the wrath of a useless service contract. 

After coming out of the haze and into the morning, I gave Jason a call.  Sluggish but conscious, he was cleaning up and heading back toward the browndogs to cut today's tracks.  I also caught up with Dan Rees of Smokestack Lightning.  I had mentioned the "Appalachian Memoirs" project to him, and asked if he could stop through and sprinkle a few songs with his harmonica stylings.  We decided on 3:00 in the afternoon to work the tracks.  Jason and I had worked through the timings for the songs Dan was going to record on the night before, so we were ready to give a relative direction for parts and placements.

This is where the recording process got really interesting.  We would proceed to cut all the instruments to the guitar/bass/drum mix that we had from the night before.  Due to the scope of the project, we did not have time to import the new parts as we cut them.  We ended up recording every instrument, outside the basic three, without listening to any of the tracks that were being cut previous.  For example, if a banjo part was recorded for a song, and then a mandolin, the mandolin would be cut without monitoring the banjo part.  What we ended up with in the wee hours of the Saturday night/Sunday morning transition were around 30 different instrument tracks over the 12 songs that are basically all just dumped together, and then we hit play, and prey, prey hard.  But we'll get to that.  It's still early Satuday morning, and there is nothing but bass, gutar and drums right now.

I had about an hour before Jason would return, so I thought I would take a look at the lap steel.  We had a basic map for the instrument tracks for the day.  We had simply spread the instruments out over the 12 songs.  There were certain instruments that we wanted to use on certain songs, so we made a little grid and just recorded whatever instruments were listed for that song.  The lap steel experiment first thing in the morning really settled us in.  I worked four songs are so, and that particular instrument lends itself to that older country sound, no matter what you are playing.  As long as you're sliding, you get that feel, that timber, that slow slank.  It helped give us a little taste of where it could go, and I think that is all that we needed to push through the remainder of approximately 60 tracks that needed recording over then next 36 hours.

Jason arrived and we took a listen to the lap steel tracks.  We spent some time laying out the tracks and timing that we needed to get the harmonica for when Dan arrived.  At this point we recorded a couple more lap steel tracks and cleared the drum room of mics and drums, setting up a few mics for the instrument recording for the day.  Rees caught up with us about 3:00, and we worked through 6 tracks of harmonica.  Rees, whiskey and harps in tow, really hit some great lines for us, and hit them fast and hard.  I think we only spent a couple of hours on harmonica recording.  He would take a listen to the bass/guitar/drum mix, we'd talk it through and just call the changes to him as he cut the track.  Thanks so much Dan for stopping through and adding your touch to the tracks.  We really appreciate it, and you being born and raised thick with the Appalachian culture and countryside, it is good to have you on there with us.

Rees headed home in the early evening, and Jason and I took and hour or so to eat some chili that Kgirl made for us.  It was yummy good, and greatly need to sustain us for the evening.  We headed back into the studio about 8:00 in the evening, and kept cranking and spitting out instrument tracks, over and over.  We recorded about a dozen banjo and mandolin tracks as we filled thorough the songs, writing little melodies and nonsense as we went.  It was extremely challenging in the sense that everything had to be immediate.  Spend 10 minutes to come up with a part and cut it, that's it.  Missed it?  Go for the punch, or rinse and repeat.  We watched the clock and watched the list, making little marks and symbols all over the grid, marking them off one by one.  It is incredible to watch them fall so quickly when you are writing that way.  At the end of the day, there were so many parts written and recorded that were no older than a couple of hours.  At one point, we became so dizzy with tracking and hammering through that I could not remember what part I had recorded for what song, what instrument.  It was very surreal also because at this point we had not really listened back to the parts that had been recorded, and had not heard any of them all together.  Around midnight or so (I honestly cannot remember), we shifted over and started the imports.  It was once again time to slap all the tracks from the day's recording into the DAW project, hit play and prey, prey hard.

We worked the tracks through one by one, cutting and pasting, editing and blending.  As we chased into the wee hours of Sunday morning, the tracks were coming together, and we were very pleased and also surprised at what was coming out of the monitors.  Recording in this manner, somewhat blind, and with a great majority of the songs only manifesting in structure and lyric in the last 36 hours, we not really sure what was going to happen, or what we were going to hear.  Fortunately the blind instrument recording worked out, and many of the parts sat down into the song as if their placement was predetermined, which for most of them was not the case.  Yet the group of songs as a whole seem to have cohesion in form and function.  We finished placing the parts in, getting some rough editing done, and then exporting the mixes with all the instrument parts one more time for the vocal recording that was to begin on Sunday.  It was about 5:00 in the morning, and we needed a couple of hours sleep to get through the next day's session.

Sunday 1/20/07 Kgirl gave me a kick about noon and let's me know that it's time to get up and get to work.  Jason and I slugged down a couple cups of coffee and headed into the studio to start the vocal sessions for the day.  We had alot of ground to cover today, but we were determined at this point to finish.  We had spent about 40 hours in the last three days/nights recording all the instruments and it was important to finish off the project today.  So once again we referred to our grid and began to cut them one by one.  The fact that a number of these songs were fresh written, we were arranging some of the lyrics and finishing of writing as we went.  We would run a couple of straight tracks and then try and work a harmony or two.  It was great fun to wade through them.  Jason is really funny with his lyrics at times, and we're always cackling at that humor.  It makes the whole thing fun.

We worked the lyrics and recording into the evening, and finally called it a day (for recording) at about 10:00 in the evening.  This also was a surreal time in the project.  It was just about 72 hours since we first walked into the basement, with the thought that we were going to record and album over the next three days.  And there we stood on Sunday night, done tracking, glazed over and exhausted, wondering what was going on and where we were.  We took a short break to refocus from the thousand yard stare, and then started the import for the vocal tracks.  Oh notes of tracking and times, how you so saved our project from becoming misguided confusion.  The notes that Jason ran all weekend were another key factor in getting all the tracks together and having bearing on what was where.  It allowed us to work the transfers, imports and edits much more quickly.  Time was ticking away and the allotted project time was quickly coming to a close.

We ran some rough vocal edits and set up things for mixing.  During our break after finishing vocals, Jason and I decided that there was no way we could finish out a mix.  It was 10:00 Sunday night, and we would not have time to get even the most basic of tasks completed for a decent mix.  The goal was to completely finish everything including mixing by this time on Sunday.  The songs that we set out to record were done, and we agreed that there was to be no more recording for this album.  What we got by Sunday night is what we will use in the mix, period.  Lead us not into temptation, for it will only delay the project completion, and that would defeat the purpose of the fundamental idea of recording the entire thing in one weekend.

We sat down and got a quick listen to the vocals set into the mix, and got another chuckle out of the idea as a whole.  We got it recorded, the whole thing front to back was there.  All the tracks sitting in, all the janky little mandolin and banjo, lap steel and guitar, bass and drums, it was all sitting there.  Taking into consideration that there were only two of us, along with Dan Rees adding his harmonica to the songs, it was a great accomplishment for us.  Never in my life have I written so many parts on so many different instruments in such a short period of time.  It was the physical manifestation rule, alive and well, sitting in healthy in the 6% of ideas that come to light.

After Jason's departure Sunday night and spending an hour with my ever so tolerant of my rediculousness wife, I headed back into the studio with the intention of getting another listen to the tracks.  This was about midnight, so I was thinking that I would go to sleep by 2:00 am, which would be the earliest bedtime by a couple of hours in the last four nights.  But once I was in, and looking through tracks, the minutes turned to hours, turning to the latest night of them all.  I wanted to get things together enough to get mixes to Jason.  That is the only major goal that we were not able to achieve this weekend.  And so I worked to get the exports completed, spit out a new Google Group for the project and uploaded the set so that Big J can get a listen before we sit to mix.

What's next then?  We are going to gather up through the next week and get the mixes squared away.  There are a few touches that I would like to get to, getting a few last little pieces of this and that arranged.  We will be spending some time blending vocals and working instrument levels and the like.  The goal is still the same, to get it done quickly.  We put in a huge effort on the front side to get it recorded and written, so we are very consiencious of letting it sit for any period of time.  We will have it completed within two weeks, call it done, and carry out the construction of the myspace site for Billy Two Shoes' "Appalachian Memoirs".  We will send out a few announcements when the tracks are uploaded and ready for your listening pleasure.

I think that it is a fair statement to say that we learned alot form this project and venture.  We learned how fast we could really work, how quickly we could create recordings, write songs and arrange parts, cut instruments that we don't really know how to play.  How long we could sit in the same space and keep driving along without deviating from the path was really incredible.  That was an extreme exercise in determination, with the end result being just what we were looking for.

Thanks to all of you who are taking interest and actually made it this far through this scribbling.  There will be postings on the Browndogs Studio site when the record is done, with links to the Billy Two Shoes site.  We'll keep you posted... 

1/11/08  Jason and I have been kicking around the idea of doing a one weekend, it is what it is session, and by Sunday, finishing it off the record and calling it done.  After a few reschedulings, the Appalachian Memoirs session is starting next Thursday.

We have a few more songs to write, and we will be ready to go.  We have recently aquired a few junk instruments to play on the recordings, including a mandolin and lap steel, which we've been learning to play over the last week.  Actually the lap steel was just aquired yesterday, so I've spent about 5 hours in my life playing one.  But that is the point of the project really, to do what we have not yet done.

We'll post an update with links to the music a couple of weeks from now.  Billy Two Shoes is on the run.  I am sure we'll see J Bird and Goat Boy a couple of times that weekend.

1/14/08  We heard from Dan Rees of Smokestack Lightning, and he will be stopping through the "Appalachian Memoirs" sessions to add a little harmonica for us.  We'll be glad to have him in, that boy can sure play that harp.  Jason and I got together last friday and worked on one more song, as well as playing around with the lap steel and some fiddle.  We became convinced at that point that we would sucessfully pull off this recording.  We will know in a week.