THE CRAM
This week I finished the album for Bud Reichard, that we started in November. The last days we were mixing, including a completely insane dixieland jam that Bud recorded in Seattle. For one verse it suddenly turns into a gramophone playback--and I had to engineer that sound. Bud had found some vinyl surface noise, but to the entire track had to be EQd authentically, and the mix had to change to sound like a one mic mono mix. I also recorded just the sound of the line input with my mic pre turned up all the way, to add some white noise, the hiss you hear on these recording. Turned out astonishingly realistic!
Not one to rest on my laurels (or rest at all for that matter) I went straight to work mixing
Billy & the Firm, who sent me about half their album to mix. I will have just enough time to get it done.
On Monday I took the early morning flight to Toulouse for a photo session and lunch with the label for the Sad Knights, and also to present the masters for the single I mixed. A vinyl single should be out late spring. It was insane, I was mixing Billy & the Firm til 3am Sunday nite, slept for one hour, and had my taxi downstairs at 5. Incredibly, with my driver's absolutely reckless (and, thankfully, wreck-less) driving, we made it door-to-door, my flat to Orly, in *thirteen minutes*. This drive normally takes 40-60 minutes, depending on traffic, and of course, at 5am, there was none. Not that the airport wasn't busy--it was full of activity.
We shot the photos at the main building of the astronomical society, which lives in a park, the park of the Obelisk commerating the Napoleanic battle of Toulouse, in which 4500 Sixth Coalition and 3500 French troops were killed or wounded--despite the fact that Napoleon had abdicated the previous day and the war, in fact, was over. Later in the 19th century an observatory was built, and now there is a small library there, that's the building on whose front steps and in whose foyer (by a Foucault pendulum) we shot the photos. Rain had limited our choices, in a good way. Photographer Adrien Despeyroux, who is one of the partners in Bang Records (not to be confused with BANG! records the 60s home of Van Morrison, Neil Diamond and The McCoys) took some very arty shots of what is not an ostensibly arty band, being a roots/Americana kind of thing.
We had a 12 martini lunch, and while I was record shopping I had the remaining sobriety to realize it was 3.30 and my flight was at 5. Eric from the band drove me in his van, and I made my flight no problem. I thought I would be the only jet setter (can you be a jet setter when you fly EasyJet? Dubious.) going down and back in 9 hours, but I recognized a few faces from the queue in Paris that morning.
Beyond that, it's been a crazed rush of interviews, preparatory and follow up emails, packing, buying supplies, and trying to squeeze my daughter all in advance of what will be a nearly forty-day odyssey to the USA & South America. Plus mixing. Last night I finished mixing a B&TF song at about 10.30, and was surprised to have the chance to enjoy a few non-working moments. Aden was already asleep, and Dom heading that way. I sipped a bit of Courvoisier, and listened to the noise of our next door neighbor's birthday party (our bathroom is the room that abuts his flat, and it was really smelling of smoke form the merrymakers next door). At 3 this morning I was awakened by the sound of a fight of some kind down on the street below. This is not an unusual occurrence--when the bars close, and there are LOTS of bars in my hood, esp. rue de Lappe, has some sketchy ones, there are often fights and mayhem. It passed, I passed out.
Reading: when I have time, the excellent book The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers. Highly recommended meditation on music, 50s/60s America (and race relations) and human life. One of the few books to really describe the nature and motion of music in real time, and done with real beauty and endless variety. This book was recommended to me by the fine folks at the Red Wheelbarrow (check last week's post for URL).
Love
KS
Paris
