I definitely wanted to share that news that a couple of our favorite collaborators were honored at the Grammys this year. Gavin Lurssen, mastering engineer extraordinaire, walked up with T-Bone Burnett and the gang to receive the Record of the Year award for Robert Plant and Allison Krauss’s album “Raising Sand.” Jay Bellerose played drums on the album and live at the Grammys, and Robert Plant himself included Jay in his thank-yous. Both Jay and Gavin are incredibly lovely people, and both worked on my most recent album, so I am honored all over again to be in their company. Read the rest of this entry »
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Mike and I went to hear Joe Henry live at Largo on Friday night – he just released his new album, “Civilians” and this is one of his rare appearances. Though I’ve known of him for a while, I didn’t know much about him or his music until Mike and I met Jay just shortly after he’d recorded “I Believe to My Soul” with Joe (which we promptly bought at Starbucks one cold Grand Rapids day after it came out). I’ve been listening to a lot of his music and music he’s produced since then. We were also aware he’d been recording because we used (almost) the same team that he did for my album. We obviously like the same musicians. Apparently, we’ve got some other random things in common, too, like English degrees from the University of Michigan…
:)We’d heard from Patrick himself how amazing this record was going to be and we had been listening to the tracks available on his website, so we were definitely excited for the show. They stuck us in the middle of the front “row” of tables, so close to the little stage that I could read the setlist, most of it, anyway. Which I tried not to do-it felt sort of wrong to remove the element of surprise-but it was almost impossible. We were so close that when the band was all getting on stage and tuning, there was some kind of feedback when Joe plugged in his guitar and he looked down at me and joked, “was that you?” Pretty funny.
Needless to say, we were VERY attentive, which was certainly not hard considering how great a show it was. The band included all our favorites – Jay Bellerose on drums, Patrick Warren on keyboards, Greg Leisz on guitar, etc. (“everything else” as Joe put it), Dave Piltch on upright bass and Jen Condos on electric bass for just a song (what a sweetheart. And I love watching her play. My hero…ahem, heroine). There was an incredible energy in the room – an energy that was almost intimidating – it was like VIP night there, with all my favorite songwriters and musicians on stage and in the audience. And the band played perfect arrangements for each song. I couldn’t help thinking about what I know about Joe as a producer, and how “well-produced” the whole show was, while still so natural and relaxed (which seems to be his production style, too). His lyrics are incredible and sitting about two feet away while he sang them allowed us to catch every nuance!
Do yourself a favor and check out his album. As I mentioned, he actually has some tracks available on his website, amusingly titled www.joehenrylovesyoumadly.com.
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I keep saying I’m going to get better about regularly blogging and then I don’t – or I do, but in fits and starts. In my defense, we have been BUSY planning and promoting the CD release party. Mike and I are the street team, the publicists, the promoters, etc. :) More on that in the next blog. First I’ll catch you up on my recent musical activities:
1. Guitar lessons. I’m taking lessons from Tim Young when I can squeeze them in. He’s teaching me how to improvise and solo more. Lots of blues and pentatonic scales and other scales in different places on the guitar. I’m playing electric, which is really fun (and easier on my fingers, frankly). Who knew I could bend notes? I’m trying to get out of my ruts and expand my skills and songwriting – and ultimately, be a girl who can wail on the guitar. There are definitely some but far too few out there. Hopefully I’ll be shredding in no time…
2. Our show at Cafe Cordiale on the 23rd. Lots of fun, friendly people, and we made some new fans! One of them even pre-ordered a CD. One of my favorite parts might have been when this woman actually leapt up from her dinner to applaud me after I sang “Careful.” But she also full-out danced in her seat when we played “Comfort,” so that was a close second. Perhaps I’ll be a dance-pop star yet…ha ha ha
3. Rehearsing for the show on the 6th – and more on that in the next blog, as I said. But playing with Tim, Mike, and Aaron this last week was so fantastic. I’m always suprised by how gratifying it is to hear what other people do with my songs – they always become something different and better than I can even imagine.
4. Hearing Aimee Mann at Largo again – along with Paul Bryan, her bassist and, these days, producer. You should check him out on MySpace and go listen to his song “Houdini and Celia” and cry like I do. :) Jay Bellerose and Jen Condos played with him – it was the first time I’d seen Jen play, and it’s very inspiring (see my above comment about girls and guitars…). She’s the sweetest, as is Jay. And we even saw Ryan Freeland, our album engineer/mixer, too. It was a fun reunion and I got a little emotional, especially watching Jay play with Aimee Mann. I still sort of can’t believe that he’s on MY album. I am a very lucky girl. :)
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I’ve been meaning to blog for a while, and since I haven’t I’ll have to do a bit of an overview. I realize now that it’s been a rather momentous week.
Thursday, Feb. 15 – Worked on a new song…it’s a little depressing (I was in a funk) but it may have potential. I’ve been writing lots of little half-songs recently, which is odd for me, but this one I basically finished the form of.
Friday, Feb 16 – We went to see Aimee Mann’s “Valentine’s Revenge” show at Largo. I really love the whole “variety show” format she’s into these days. Well, in my eyes she can do no wrong, but nonetheless, it was really a very well put-together, entertaining show. She had Paul F. Tompkins (funny-and who knew he could sing?) and Morgan Murphy there, and she had Grant-Lee Phillips do a couple songs (his voice is just perfect, always). Paul Bryan, Jebin Bruni and Jay Bellerose comprised her kick-ass backing band. I’d never heard Paul play before and I see now why Mike is so into his playing. It was so good to hear Jay play, and equally great to see him and catch up a bit. I’ll never get over how nice he was and is to us. He even asked Mike to come back on Saturday night to see the show again and, apparently, to throw back some scotch. I had to work…but I shouldn’t be greedy. I really can’t complain (though I did, let’s be honest).
Saturday and Sunday, Feb 17-18 – Worked most of the weekend: more Mozart mania with LACO! What I caught of the concerts was lovely, and I had a good time post-concert on Saturday night at Charles’ Billiards in Glendale with Pulse, the ‘young professionals’ (for lack of a better term) group we young LACO staffers are building. Addie and I played a very hard-core game of table hockey.
Monday, Feb 19 – A day off, and a full one…rehearsed and grabbed some food with Mike and my favorite half-Romanian Steven Nistor. Steven is hilarious and rehearsals are always really fun. For some reason having to leave home and have official ‘rehearsals’ has gotten me much more motivated and focused as far as my playing and singing go. I feel like I’m getting back into it, whatever ‘it’ is. Mike and I also hiked and went to see “Music and Lyrics,” which was kind of silly and cute. I thought the more satirical parts of it…like the little quasi-Britney character…were spot-on. We tried to catch Maria Bamford at Tiger Lily and she was nowhere to be found…
Wednesday, Feb 21 – After work I drove to Hollywood for the end of our mastering session with Gavin Lurssen. He, like everyone else who’s worked on he album, is incredibly nice. He talked me through a lot of what he was doing, and it was like going to ‘mastering class’ with a very insightful teacher. And the album sounds GREAT! (If I do say so myself, har har). Then we scrambled back to play with Steven for the SoCal Music Live competition at The Derby. There was a decent crowd there overall and our set, while short, was really fun and seemed to sound pretty good. I love playing with a band! Love it. It was also really great to play for and to meet some new people who seemed to dig the music. That’s always good…apparently, score-wise, I’ve made it into the ‘top 5 females’ in the competition. Woo hoo! I do like to win. At table hockey or music competitions. Ha.
Friday, Feb 23 – Heard a beautiful concert with Steven and Mike, given by the young and incredible Calder Quartet. I went to support the efforts of their PR people, who I know through work, but enjoyed the music so much and was really glad I went. They did some late Shostakovich and Thomas Ades, and I used not to like contemporary composers all the much, but I guess my ears have stretched – I loved it all.
ok, enough for goodness sake…i need a nap, and this is becoming War and Peace.
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Happy New Year, everyone! I hope that you had a lovely holiday season surrounded by family and/or friends. Mike and I went down to Florida to visit my family for Christmas, which was amazing. Just to be able to spend time with my family is such gift, and then the bonus is that the weather was gorgeous. Not that I can complain about CA weather, but we actually have to use the heat at night a lot recently, and I couldn’t kick this cold I had. Florida cured me instantly, which may have to do with the fact that the air feels like it’s being pumped out of a humidifier. I found it delightful. It did rain on Christmas, but it was one of those cool Florida sun shower things. We spent a lot of time outside and went fishing…Mike caught a shark! No joke, check out his page.
Then New Year’s day came and went…Mike and I went hiking and made a pact to do it every Sunday from now on. We’ll see what the wind is like tomorrow – it may be movie day instead. :) Crazy Santa Ana winds! When will it end?
The most exciting thing the year has brought thus far is…my album! After months of being too booked to work on it, Patrick Warren added his magic to 4 of the tracks. If you don’t know or haven’t heard of Patrick, you’ve surely heard his playing on something you’ve heard on the radio. If you listen to what I listen to, you’ve definitely heard him with artists like Fiona Apple, Sam Phillips, Aimee Mann (oh, speaking of which, her Christmas album, which he’s on, is awesome!). And then you certainly know how amazing he is. We went over to his place on Wednesday to listen to the tracks and to let him know what we thought, and each one blew us away. It was all as beautiful as we expected, but each element was different and even better than I would have imagined. But at the same time it’s almost scary how perfect his parts are; they just capture the individual moods of the songs and lend more richness and character to all of them.
Just like everyone else we’ve worked with, Patrick is incredibly kind and humble. And funny. With fantastic decorating taste. His house should be a on TLC makeover show or something.
I’m just still amazed that Ryan, Jay, and Patrick were involved at all with MY record. A lot of it had to do with Mike and how much he believed in me – that I even deserved to work with such kick-ass people – and he might still believe it more than I do. But it DID happen! Soon Ryan will be mixing, then comes mastering, design in the meantime and finally the release. I certainly feel it’s been worth all of the wait, and I hope others will, too. :)
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…you know what I mean!
While we all know I’m neither gorgeous nor even tall enough to be a real model, I did spend all weekend feeling like one. Our friend Sara Remington, who also happens to be a kick-ass professional photographer, took some wonderful shots of me (and of Mike, looking all cute with his bass) for the album and for promo materials. Along with the album, I’m not yet ‘unveiling’ the shots, but they’re fantastic pieces of art. As time went on with the shooting I forgot all about my insecurities and just let Sara do her job. I look at them and forget it’s me–interestingly, that’s similar to how I feel when I listen to the album. I get carried away by something Mike or Jay is playing and forget about myself…which is a bizarre but very rewarding experience.
You can check out her stuff at www.sararemington.net. I’d recommend her to anyone. She takes a lot of still-life photos of food, so, seriously, make sure you’re not hungry when you visit the site. :)
Otherwise, just gearing up for Thanksgiving. I really am counting the days ’til I get to go freeze my butt off in Michigan…can’t wait to see Mike’s family. It’s always good to get away and have a little change of scene to clear your head, and I can’t wait to hang out with my little future nephews and niece. I’ve missed family time out here, and eating too much of someone else’s fantastic food (yay Mike’s Mom and sister!).
Before I go, I’ll be playing solo (Saturday, Nov. 18 should you want to come party with me!) at the Borders in Glendale. It’s been a long time since I’ve done one of those quasi-background music gigs, where’s it’s always awkward to talk to the crowd as if they chose to come hear you play when they walked into Borders that night…but I’m actually really pumped to play. Should get some good foot traffic, and have fun re-visiting my high school days as a bookstore cafe singer. Seriously, if you have any requests and will be there…let me know. I have 2 hours to fill!
Right now, off to hear Dave Palmer and (we hope!) Fiona Apple, after our Largo snafu last night. See Mike’s blog for details on that ridiculous affair…
Happy Thanksgiving (soon), people…soon it’s just a warp speed hurtle through the holiday season, which I love.
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I am sad in a really weird and not entirely justified way. It was fun to be a rock star last week.
The record isn’t really done, and there’s certainly plenty to do and be excited about. But it all seems a bit dream-like as life goes on as usual. I love my job and my LACO peeps (did I just use the word peeps? ok, I’m tired) even if I am a bit buried under that avalanche that seems to have occurred right over my head there at work. I am digging myself out of it. It’s to be expected. Oh and everybody–check out the comment on my page about the LACO Pulse kick off party! You can come bang some drums with us! It’s going to be a good time.Speaking of banging some drums, I’m kind of trying to stay up to watch Conan and see Jay play with Ray LaMontagne. This is a little silly, but we have no tivo or other technological advances at our disposal, and it’s not every day that the super nice guy who recorded with me last week is on Conan. I like Conan anyway, but I feel somewhat like I am a small child up past my bedtime, trying to pretend like I’m not crazy tired because I promised myself I’d break the rules and stay up late. I also just ate some ice cream, so I guess I’m breaking rules all over the place… :)
All right. Conan awaits! Sweet rock star dreams everyone…
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So, Thursday was our last day kind of recording as a band, with Mike, Jay and I all there–Jay had to go out of town for more tour dates Friday! It was kind of amazing how much we got done–we laid down songs 9 and 10 before it was even really lunchtime and were done. We had such a great time, I was sad to see him go, but I’m sure I have not seen the last of him. And I get to listen to his kick-ass parts over and over on the rough mixes we’ve got. :) We don’t even know him well and he’s already been such an incredible friend to Mike and I–like he’s sort of taken us under his wing or something, althought I think it’s just natural for him to be so kind.
I wouldn’t say I was dreading it, but I was definitely almost more nervous about going in and doing the clean-up work. There’s some stuff to fix and in some cases just add in the bass parts, and there are some vocal things to clean up, or at least re-record a few times to give myself options. But Ryan’s fantastic, with such a great sense of when to just push someone gently to keep trying, when to crack a joke, when to take a breather. Basically, he just really gives you whatever you need. He’s very into keeping everything natrual and capturing truly good performances, but is also lightning fast at cleaning little things up.
Mike really did the hard work yesterday, though, slaving over a bunch of kind of tricky bowed parts for a while and then creating some really fantastic new bass lines too. A couple times Ryan and I just looked at each other and raised our eyebrows, like, ‘wow, where did that come from?’ :) Mike has thought about and worked so hard on this album for so long, really. I’m very lucky to have his support and creativitiy on my side…honestly, I think just working through so much stuff and getting feedback from him over the last couple years made it so much easier for me to just go in and really feel prepared, especially on my guitar stuff. It was really no sweat compared to all the work we’ve already put in.
I didn’t actually do any singing yesterday, and I’m amazed Mike was able to get through such a long day of basically all bass. So much intense listening to small segments of songs got me into this place where I was starting to hear my vocal in such a weird way–like I wasn’t even sure if what I was hearing was reality anymore, and I was getting really nit-picky in a way I hadn’t been thus far. So I think it’s quite wise that we took today off to relax. Plus I wish we didn’t have to make Ryan work on the weekend anyway, but my job situation kind of demands it. I’ll go in tomorrow and re-do some vocal stuff and hopefully be able to resist the urge to over-think things.
After tomorrow we’ll pretty much be done, but we’re going to be sending some files to a keyboard player Jay referred us to (an incredible one. I so want to drop his name but won’t lest I jinx it). Jay seemed to feel really strongly that we should get him, and it looks like it’ll happen. Hell, I’m not complaining. Then we’ll move into the mixing process. I’m not really in a rush after having waited over 3 years to release a new album. I want to feel as good as possible about it!
In other news, we signed a lease for our new place, we’ll be moving next week, and my parents are coming to vist. Yikes! What a month.
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I’ve finished up two days of tracking for my new album with Mike, Jay Bellerose and engineer Ryan Freeland. We’ve got a couple more days, although just one more with Jay (sniff sniff). In my wildest dreams, it could not have gone better. The vibe has been completely relaxed and comfortable, I have loved everything Jay has played, and Ryan gets beautiful sounds out of everything. There’s a warmth to everything that was exactly what Mike and I had in mind, and the songs have turned into what I’ve hoped they would become. Please let me not wake up to find this was just a good dream… :)
(I’m such a dork. I feel like Chris Farley in those SNL sketches where he interviews famous people he admires, like, “Um, Jay, yeah, remember when you did that thing with the mallet? Um…remember when you played that tambourine? Yeah…that was AWESOME.”)
For those of you interested in how it all goes down…we’ve been tracking everything live, with Jay (and all his crazy drums/shaker things etc etc) in one room with the door shut, Mike off in the back room with his bass, and Ryan and I in the main room where he’s running everything. There’s a little camera on Ryan and a little camera on Jay, so we can see him and he can see us, and of course we’re all communicating through the headphones. We didn’t really rehearse anything because of Jay’s touring schedule right now, but it hasn’t seemed to matter–he picks up on everything, even the nuances, so damn fast (see, gushing again, can’t help it!). Anyway, when we’d start a new song, we’d all gather in the living room–ahem, control room–and Mike and I would play it for Jay and Ryan. Then Jay would go and mess around with some sounds, and eventually I’d start playing through the form again a time or two and then we’d just start doing takes.
Sometimes we’ll do something like 4 takes in a row, then listen, then do more and other times the 2nd take will just feel really good and be full of great stuff–sometimes happy accidents–and we’ll just quit there. Jay then often will go in and add some shaker or whatever else the song needs, and Mike and I watch him on the screen from the other room, thinking through things. Very entertaining–Jay TV :). Mike and I will probably overdub and/or add a few things in the end, and I’d love for Ryan to do some keyboard stuff on a couple songs, but I probably won’t re-do very much.
I knew how nice both Ryan and Jay were going in, but they’re also hilarious. They’re friends anyway, and they’re very funny together. It’s a nice side benefit to be able to thoroughly enjoy yourself while not playing, too, and it allows me not to take myself too seriously. In fact, partially because the vibe demands it, and partially because everything already sounds so good to me, I just haven’t been that picky about anything. It’s a little out of character for me not to be overly perfectionistic, but I just trust that I’m in good hands and have just played and sang and then sat back and enjoyed it.So, more to come…I’m just too exhausted at the moment to summon anything. It’s been quite a couple of days…