News Songs at Wine On Third

We had a great time as always at Wine on Third last night and at the Clarence Coffee Center on Friday. Thanks to everyone who stopped out to listen and for all the compliments and love we felt. We debuted a couple songs that were new to our set list this weekend - Patty Griffin's You Never Get What You Want and Stevie Nick's Rhiannon. We'll be back at Wine On Third in a couple of weeks and for next go round we hope to be debuting a new original song as well as a new one we've been working by Sarah Mclachlan.

Thanks again to everybody at Wine on Third who braved the rain to come out and listen last night. As always, we had a great time and we really warmed by all the compliments and great feedback we received throughout the night. We're thrilled to be hear we'll be coming back, Saturday November 10 and again on Saturday, December 1! And the request was heard...we'll be listening to the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack before we make it back. :)

Bouncing out Stones

After a summer full of shows, the end of August has rolled around and with the gig calendar looking thinner, it seemed like a good opportunity to set some time aside to do some recording. Having recorded several previous demos on a few different pieces of recording hardware, we had yet to come up with anything that was even close to capturing our sound. This time we tried something different - the back room at my shop, Westside Stories. While it still might be far from studio quality work, we were pretty happy with the end result as it felt the closest we've come to recreating our live sound.

We've added several new songs to set and at the end of August we set a night aside to record two of them: Moving Stones and Bounce. We've been playing both for months at our shows now, and the two were written in tandem at our rehearsals, but evolved in very different ways.

Bounce was a riff that had been literally bouncing around my fretboard for years but I had done nothing with. I sent Jackie a rough recording and showed up at rehearsal one night to find she had worked out lyrics and melody. It all seemed to fit almost seamlessly.

Stones on the other hand evolved out of a more jam band influenced riff I had been playing with. I wrote the lyrics and made a recording of me singing the melody and sent it over to Jackie for process I've come to appreciate as "translation", whereby Jackie translates it from near monotone gibberish into music. The lyrics came to me during the day while I was working at the bookstore, at the time reading Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections".

I've received a few questions about how we got the sound on the recordings, so I thought I'd use this post to talk about some the hardware I'm using. The space in the shop is basically a rectangle surrounded by bookcases.  This picture is Jackie and I sitting in the back corner of the shop, looking "natural."

Our hardware is pretty straightforward - I used an AT4040 mic on the guitars and vocal trax (though I did switch to an AKG for Jackie's backing vocal track). I felt like I was getting a real deep guitar sound, so to mitigate the boom I was getting I ended up positioning the mic pretty far up the fretboard, but pointing towards the sound hole. The mic was plugged into an old mBox2pro, which was connected to my iMac, running Logic Pro 9. Both of us recorded two parts on each song. I played a basic rythem pattern on each and recorded a lead line over it and on Bounce added a third muted guitar line that just plays lightly in the background. Jackie recorded the melody and then overdubbed some backing vocal harmonies in each song.

I wanted to add some percussion, but didn't want to deal with digital drums and certainly wasn't bringing a full drum kit into the store. Being a second hand bookstore, people regularly stop in asking if I buy books. A few weeks earlier, one customer also asked if I wanted a washboard, which I took and still had handy in the store. Using a guitar pick on it, I used the AT4040 to add a swooshing percussion line to Bounce. For Stones, I was envisioning Ramble On inspired tapping pattern, which I accomplished by drumming on a book.  I found James Patterson's Kill Alex Cross to have the best tone. At least it's good for something.

Heard a song I loved, but it wasn't the one playing...

I've never been much of a country music fan, but I've been slowly warming to it over the past 10 years. Perhaps it started as long as 20 years ago when I finally started to "get" the Grateful Dead, which inevitably led to a greater appreciation of Jerry's bluegrass roots and the wider world of country music. Or maybe it was just watching "Walk the Line" that finally got me listening with open ears.

A few weeks back I heard a country song that was both exciting and a little heart breaking for me (pardon the forthcoming bad pun). I'd never heard of the Eli Young band before, but they seemed to be getting quite a bit of airplay with their new single, "Even if it Breaks Your Heart", linked below.



I gave it a second listen, as I knew the tune, but not the Eli Young Band version I was hearing. It turns out the song was penned by Will Hoge, a musician I'm a big fan of, but an artist that most music lovers I know have never discovered.  Over 10 years ago, I worked as an activities director at small college in Memphis. We brought lots of up and coming bands to the campus, but Will Hoge was one of the few that made several appearances during the few years I worked there. I loved working with him and student response was always great. Always pleasant, his band played a straight forward brand of rock that was reminiscent of the energy and earnestness of early Springsteen, a novel rarity in a time when the polished rap and punk/pop rock of Limp Bizkit and Blink 182 were ascendant.

Hearing his set, I was certain Will was going to be a star one day and that we were fortunate enough to catch him on the cusp of breaking. But Nostradamus I am not and his major label debut didn't get the airplay to "break through". Atlantic quickly dropped him. After hearing the new record, I can't say I was surprised. It didn't capture the raw rock energy that I had grabbed my attention, instead feeling more bland pop rock to my ear. I left Memphis for work in Brooklyn, but would still go to see Will when he came to town for his annual visit to the Mercury Lounge. But by this time it was evident that Will's rise to stardom was not inevitable, and becoming less likely with each passing year.

Over the years I lost track of Will's music and career. A serious accident slowed down his touring and recording and his predominently southern touring schedule would never bring him to my new home in Bufalo, NY.  But the discovery that someone, Eli Young, was playing Will's music brought all those songs back to my listening rotation. Moreover, the Eli Young cover brought a real sense of joy. After all these years of touring and writing, to see that Will is finally enjoying a pay day and has a hit on the radio was thrill. It has been long overdue. My wife and I had been routing for him all these years to make it. He might not be playing arenas, but finally he has a bona fide hit song. And it felt like a partial vindication of my musical sense. Maybe Will is not destined for stardom as I thought, but at least his music is.

Acknowledging my strong bias, I listen to Will sing this song and am struck by how much more powerful and soulful his version sounds. The Eli Young Band song sounds good, it's well produced and clean sounding. But after you listen to the Eli Young version above, play Will's below. Perhaps it's the style of laid back country that Eli plays or the highly polished and sanitized production on his track, but Eli's full band lack the power of just Will's voice and an acoustic guitar.

I can't help but wonder if this is an example of what ails the music industry nowadays. Find a songwriter who writes a great song, and drain it of all energy and soul. Make sure it is bland enough to cut across several genres of listeners; in this case ensure that it works as a country song and a pop rock song.

But the people have spoken, and their verdict is in. I'm not only lousy at predictions, but I'm not cut out for a job at the record label: the Eli Young band has 3.5 millions hits on youtube. Will's version just recently cracked 300,000 hits.

Perhaps this is finally the beginning of big things for Will Hoge. I heard he's been nominated for a CMA this year for writing this song. Either way, I'm glad he's enjoying some success and grateful that he persisted all these years through the constant touring small clubs, continued to put out original music. Check out his music, besides this track, I really loved one of his oldest recordings - Carousel. Ms. Williams and Don't Let Me Be Lonely great, upbeat rocking tracks worth a listen if you like what you hear.