Joey and I went to the studio today ostensibly to continue work on the tracks we put down last month and specifically to work on one particular song, "Crying Town" which was co written by me and Tommy Byrnes.
Tommy (a ridiculously talented guitarist, songwriter and producer) took charge of the session (at my request) and decided that what we had wasn't worth him adding his two cents to and suggested (strongly) thtat we scrap the existing track and start from scratch.
Which is exactly what we did! Working seamlessly along side Josh (the engineer) I watched (with my jaw dropping further and further to the floor) as he built up a fantastic rhythm track (sans bass and drums!) and then coaxed an emotional and touchingly believable performance from Joey, taking the song somewhere I never would have thought of on my own. In fact, I made a point of not interfering with his vision because he knew exactly what he wanted from beginning to end and knew how to get it, from himself and from us.
Now I always knew he was extraordinary but I have never seen him working like this and had the privilege to observe and (hopefully) learn from him. I guess that's why he earns the big bucks, cause he totally knows what the fuck he's doing!
When we reconvene with him (next month or so) we'll add bass, drums, 12-string and slide guitar and strings along with background vocals and then this will be (as far as I'm concerned) a REAL LIVE READY FOR THE RADIO ADULT CONTEMPORARY POWER BALLAD!
In the meantime, we will continue recording the other songs using our "almost live in the studio" method and I'm sure they will come out sounding fine but this experience has taught me something which I should have known all along and that is; small details are more important to the overall effect of a song than you would think and the only way to control those details is to spend alot of time listening, doing and redoing a track till you get something awesome, and that's exactly what Tommy has begun for us with this one.
No comments:
Post a Comment