Better Than I Remember

Pleasant surprise today.

Today I opened up the Pro Tools file for “All In,” for the first time since we’d left the studio. I had bad memories of this song from Eldorado. Some tunes just go down without a hitch. Some tunes are band songs through and through. Everyone knows their part, everyone plays it down. Feels great, sounds great, next song!

All In, if you think about it, is a pop tune masquerading as some sort of Southern Fried Swaggering Rock Anthem. It’s supposed to be fun, it’s not supposed to cure cancer. It’s the kind of tune that will work great with a band in a live context, but requires some additional poppy sauce to get it to sit in the right place on tape.

So, instead of one perfect guitar part, I have six that need to be put together. This is one of the places where having a studio on lockout for two months comes in handy, as you (and the guitar player) sit and just try any and all tones and see which ones jigsaw together the best.

When you have six days for the whole record… you sit there and yell every idea you’ve had on a particular tune, and blow through them. You know the parts are cool, but after a few minutes, it all turns to soup. It takes time, patience, editing, good EQ, good choices, and a producer’s ear to stitch it all together. We didn’t do that at Eldo.

So, the memory I have of this song from tracking week was that there was a lot of cool stuff, but that it wasn’t ready to all hang together yet.

So, the weeks pass, and we pick off songs to open up and track vocals on. Feel Good. Yes. That one went down easy. She Goes…. went like buttah. Two Years Ago… sticky funk, let’s do that. All In… let’s save that for another day. Today was that day. I opened up the two biggest challenges of the album, this tune, and one you guys haven’t heard yet. Sure enough.. they were soup.

However, I’m quite pleased to tell you that with a little love and elbow grease, and some EQ and a couple of carefully selected sections muted, both songs are starting to come together quite nicely, and we haven’t even gone in with the scalpel to clean up little things that fuzzy up the picture.

I’m enjoying listening to these tracks again. I can’t wait to sing on them.