I rounded out my work week with Hannah Gillespie, and in fact by the end of the week, we were able to work at a fairly casual pace (not scrambling to cram everything in like in many cases), taking our time and not having to push Hannah’s voice too hard. The main room of the studio wasn’t air conditioned, unlike the control room, and with temps in the mid to high 80s and no ventilation (it’s a closed space, for purposes of sound) it actually wasn’t that easy for Hannah to be in there too long. Me, for my parts, I didn’t mind. But I have come to realize that I am basically a lizard. Dressed in black, long sleeves, etc. most of the time, I was absolutely happy with the heat. In fact, as I write now, on my way back to Paris, I am ever so slightly nervous about my first encounter with weather other than tropical for the first time in weeks.
When we weren’t in studio, our routine was that Hannah would come and pick me up in the late morning, and we’d go *do* something, something not to do with being in studio. We visited Canberra’s Botanic Gardens, which replicates as many types of vegetation zones as can be found in the country--scrub, temperate rain forest, etc. To my delight, the place was populated by a kind of blue iguana called a water dragon, who were accustomed to human presence to some degree--at least the big ones showed a mix of confidence and laziness that made them approachable.
In terms of cuisine, Duncan, owner of the studio turned us on to
Brodburger, which operates out of a bright red caravan in Bowen Park, which is a nice spot, with black swans paddling in a flat lake (pretty much any standing body of water in Canberra is sure to be man made. In fact, the city sits astride an enormous man-made lake...and the structure of the Parliament House is integrated with actual living turf, all odd choices in what is essentially a drought stricken chunk of arid scrub. Ahem. Getting back to Brodburger--I ate there twice--and it is superb, any patriotic feelings for the homeland were erased when I realized this rivaled my beloved Red Mill in Seattle for top burger on the planet, and this place is co-operated by a FRENCHMAN. Which led me to think, why are hamburgers so awful in France, when this is the potential? It’s not like French people don’t eat them--MacDo’s abound--but....nothing that I’d want to eat. I had the BrodDelxue for one meal--two patties, juicy red in the middle, topped with bacon (the Australian kind, which we yanquis would call “Canadian”), and, the stock model comes with a fried egg but I opted out on mine. You have to choose your cheese, and the next day I went for a regular Brodburger--single patty, no egg, but bacon for an extra buck and in all cases you choose your cheese--and for my reg’lar sized burger, I figured all that sizzling beef wasn’t harmful enough from a coronary POV so I chose BRIE. You haven’t tried it = you haven’t lived.
As I mentioned, getting our work done was not a problem. We went back & forth between the analog tape and Digital Performer, added stuff to the basics, including backing vocals from Hannah’s sister Briohny, who has a wonderful voice, which does those fancy little country trills...yeah! Twas a ‘trill to work with her. We had Tony the banjo player, a groovy older cat who ‘flailed’ along (his words). He’s a great banjo player, and evidently and even BETTER dobro player but we didn’t have time to find out. Hannah’s cousin Ben, who plays a lot of far-out jazz, came up for an afternoon from Melbourne, and we assembled a section with him (trombone), Matt, our bass player (alto sax) and Cameron, a horn player. We got them on a song that Ben actually wrote, that really sounds uncannily like classic British folk girl kinda song. Ben is a sensitive soul...awesome. Ben also played on a song that we had tracked 100% live--Hannah singing in the room with us, me on Wurlitzer, Matt on bass and Kev on drums--I took Hannah’s kind of rock arrangement and deconstructed it to a kind of spacey jam, and then had Ben play the song’s only overdub--he played trombone into a mic that fed a delay pedal that was split to two guitar amps---delayed signal out one and direct out another, with amp reverb and all kinds of stuff...perfect addition and rounded out the track.
Temperatures hovered in the low to mid 30s C, (hi 80s F). At one point, Hannah took me one morning to a swimming hole--a lazy bend in a river a short drive outside of Canberra. The ACT was created in an area with not a hell of a lot of stuff around it, so, even now a hundred years later, you leave Canberra and its satellite cities and you are in ranchland and bush pretty quick. Hannah grew up here, so she knows all the spots. In this place, a brown river trudged gently around a little sandy beach on one side, and a small mountain/big hill shot straight up the other side. There was one bloke swimming, cooling his jets, when we showed up, he was in his clothes, baseball cap & all. He left, and we had the joint to ourselves, and got to swimming. As we did...a storm came in. FAST. It was beautiful--a wall of black clouds came over the hill, but the side facing us was still lit by the departing sun--thirsty grass (there’s been a bad drought for months) blazed yellow and the occasional trees were ghost gums so silver and eerie. Then wind came up, and actually made chop on the tiny little eddie we were in...and then lightning and thunder started to kick in, and it was time to get out. The wind was really strong, it was actually taking effort to walk back up the trail to the car. I had to stop to inspect a dead spider a little smaller than my hand if its legs had been extended. Then big drops of rain fell. Locusts with brilliant yellow wings shot out from bushes, fat drops started to fall, and at one point we had to stop driving because the rain fell with such ferocity we couldn’t see. Truly marvelous. From then on, it rained a lot, and Canberra needed it. It was delightful to get back to the house at night, and listen to the rain beat the crap out of the tin roof on the front porch. I fell asleep to that nightly. Yum.
And then it was done--on the last night, we put the last vocals and a guitar track down, started moving everything to my computer so I could take it away and mix it at home (but we mixed one track while I was there--straight off the live take’s multitrack master, no overdubs--on to 1/4” tape). My friend Anthony who works in the Parliament and also is a bird-oriented naturalist in his spare time came by, and Peter, a journalist at the Canberra Times and KS fan, came by, and a couple of Hannah’s friends came by to hear Hannah’s stuff and the new Disciplines mixes which had been arriving in my laptop every day as new mixes and updated mixes were being done in Tromso by Jon Marius.
I bid my farewell to the recording team--Matt the bassist, Duncan the studio owner who did much of the engineering, and engineers Tim and Cam. Wow, great people. That’s the best thing about music I think--these trial by fire situations are bonding experiences for all involved, and you make friends, and good friends, fast.
Saturday, my departure day--my interview and a huge photo ran in the Canberra Times, on page 5--meaning, in the real news section. That’s pretty cool, when you think about it. Coupled with the fact that Reuters had run a piece on my Asian tour, there was a LOT of press coverage on KS this week, all over the world.
Then, it was time to go--surreal, always, when I have been away for so long. At last on this trip my girls in Paris had a webcam set up at home so we could communicate daily and see each other...this is great. But still, I miss ‘em and the prospect of going home...wow. Add the fact that it’s St. Valentine’s and it’s all the sweeter. My flight from Canberra was in the afternoon, I got there early and they put me on an earlier flight since they were experiencing lots of delays as now the rain was quite intense. But still, I ended up in Sydney with hours of down time, then boarded my Etihad flight to Abu Dhabi. 14 hours of flying time meant I could watch two movies, listen to the D’s album and sequence it, listen to Hannah’s mixes and rough mixes, listen to the Sad Knights master V4 and still get plenty of sleep. I had a two-seat row to myself. We landed at Abu Dhabi in darkness, at 5am, and now I am waiting to board my Paris flight, which is late (lots of fog here this morning, which made for a surreal landing). And into the arms of home, and a little (very little--lots of stuff coming up) rest.
Love
KS
Abu Dhabi Airport Terminal 1.
