Oh to be a record producer. What a glamorous and glitzy life...
I spent tonight in the dingy smoky upstairs room of The Waverley Bar in Edinburgh's Old Town recording the first seven (should've been eight) artistes for the next Out of the Bedroom CD...
Each artiste has just 30 minutes for me to get a take on their sound and then to record their song(s) and I then take all the recordings home and make a judgement about which song and which performance of the song is the best one...
This is the third CD I've produced for the club and I'd kind of forgotten how to do it, having been recording exclusively with the computer for around nine months...but I soon got back in the swing...
This is Volume IV. Volume II was recorded around this time two years ago (Cloudland Blue Quartet was on that one) and Volume III in November 2004 (James Jamieson had a track)....
This time round, due to my now rather infrequent visits to the club, I am unfamiliar with many of the sixteen acts involved...
As you might imagine, I have to try my best to run a tight ship on the night....
The first act, Susanna MacDonald was due to start her session at 6:45. I had to nip to Jamie's to pick up an extra mic and stand before driving to the bar and arrived with around 15 minutes to spare to set everything up...
I'd seen Susanna a couple of times a few years ago but not since. She's much better now, even though she told me her songs stemmed from around that time. She plays spots around 3 or 4 times a week and her effortless delivery was testament to this....
A good start...
Next up was Pol - who presented a bit of a challenge. He doesn't strum or pick his guitar but hits it rhythmically whilst applying normal chord structures to the fret. He plays this through an amp with some reverb....
The results, using just two mics, are just fine and dandy...
Aaron Wright was next. He looks and acts like a rock star from the late sixties. Thankfully, he does, however, have the songs to match. Unfortunately tonight, he turned up with no guitar. He'd e-mailed me at 6pm to let me know - at that point I was in the car heading to the venue...
Luckily Pol let him borrow his guitar. Aaron's friend Alan played a mean harmonica and it'll be difficult to pick between the two excellent songs the duo provided...
The next band was nowhere to be seen but the act due to play after them, Callum Haddow was in the bar so I took him next. His songs are "quirky" and have a tendency to go from being very, very quiet to VERY VERY LOUD in a second. So he kept me on my toes. He takes the award for most songs recorded at five...
The Angel Conversation came along with one strangely tuned 12 string acoustic, a lovely-voiced girl lead singer and two further girls who usually play drums and bass but who tonight provided harmonies. At one stage I got the three girls to sing on their own and it sounded, as the name befits, angelic...
They took the award for most versions of the same song - around five or six of the one song they want to be on the CD..
Davy Watson, who played on the same night at the Fringe last year as Jamie and I, was next and he'd had his 2nd guitarist call off at very late notice - but brought someone else - who didn't have a guitar. ...
Angel Conversation's guitarist would've lent his but as I said above, it was a strangely tuned 12 string acoustic - and he was late for his next appointment, having recorded 30 minutes later than he'd expected...
By their last song, Davy's replacement guitarist had managed to borrow a guitar (I had to provide a battery) from the next act. The accordianist was an island of calm amongst Davy's tirades against ill-fortune...
The music was good though..
With Neil Pennycook missing in action I moved on to the last act of the night The Victorians - great dry wit, great harmonies, great guitar playing...
What a good way to end the night...
Packed up and home by midnight to an apologetic e-mail from Mr Pennycook - I advised him I can give him 5 minutes next week - now that will be a test...
Highlight of the Day : Realising this new OOTB CD might just be going to be on a par with the last two I did...
2 comments:
Mr CBQ,
Out of interest, what are you recording on to ?
I have been doing some mobile recordings over the past couple of years, most recently with Lindsay Sugden, and wondered what your preferred "weapon of choice" was.
Les Makin
The new CD sounds brilliant already Cloudy. I love all the stuff about musicians not bringing guitars and expecting everything to be there. That used to happen quite a bit when OOTB ran Acoustica at Cabaret Voltaire.
I look forward to the next installment.
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