Back at OTR Studios
The right tools for the job: Taylor Guitars, Elixir Strings and Neumann Microphones
Man, it was good to get back in the studio with Cookie Marenco and the gang at OTR Studios yesterday. The session last week was fantastic and really productive, but I had sort of a rough week/weekend since then with an unfortunate, unexpected blast of volume to my left ear leaving it dull, damaged and ringing (hoping things recover soon), a hefty fall on my mountain bike, and a few other things that seemed to be trying to knock me off course, so to speak. Hurdles be damned, I made it back to OTR Studios yesterday with a few bruises and some fashionable, bright, blaze-orange ear plugs and got after it from 4pm until about 11pm. We tackled a few remaining songs that needed some guitar work (“A Thing Or Three”, “It Don’t Matter”, and “Thought I’d Never”) and then did a bunch of live takes of one of my favorite new songs, “Hole In My Heart”. We tried all sorts of stuff with that one and it just wasn’t quite clicking, so at Cookie’s urging, I did a number of live takes with just me and my acoustic guitar – no click track, no headphones, etc. The lights were off, we were all pretty wiped out, I think, and as a result, we ended up getting something pretty darned good on tape. Funny how that works… I have yet to listen today with fresh ears (“fresh” being a relative term, lately, it seems), but I was pretty darned excited about it last night. In any case, lots of fun down there, as always with Cookie, Mike, and Patrick in the control room. Can’t wait to get back in there and work on some more vocal tracks! From there, it’s on to some pedal steel, organ, electric and acoustic piano, some background vocals, and there’s even been some talk of strings. We’ll see! Still lots to do, but we’re making some pretty great headway, I’m proud to say, so stay tuned for more updates soon!