Session Log: 12.12.06

Tuesday, 12.12.06: 12:00p - 6:00p
'Listening to NRBQ' - basic track + keyboard solo overdub
Studio: Miriam Audio - Philadelphia, PA
Producer: Jim
Engineer: Pete Donnelly

Today we began work on the only song on this album that I've already been playing out live - 'Listening to NRBQ'.

Songs are like kids - you don't have "favorites", except that you kinda do. I'm very fond of this one. It operates on a few different levels lyrically and is sort of the blueprint for the thing I'm trying to do with the lyrics on this album. This song is very personal, but in no way autobiographical, at least not in any way that anyone other than myself can figure out.

I've already cut a demo of this tune (hey Jake and Dan!) and the band played it at the Beta Hi-Fi Festival at World Cafe Live earlier in the year, so there was a lot less time needed to get the tune in shape, basically just a few run-throughs for everyone to remember the tune and we were ready to cut it.

But music is weird.

You have the basic requirements that you have to get together, everybody playing the right notes, playing in time, that sort of thing - and then there's . . . that other stuff. The thing that happens where it all coalesces into something beyond the notes being played. It's "feel", but it's also something else beyond that. And it's delicate and elusive. I think a lot of it has to do with the physical and mental state of the musicians playing and whether they get in sync (which is not to say 'N-Sync - no, let's not say that).

So here's how this session went. We came in and played for about four and a half hours, cutting multiple takes of the tune with everyone playing the right notes and it just went nowhere. It's such a frustrating thing, because there's nothing you can point to - "oh, if I just remember to play the B minor going into the bridge everything will come together" - it's just . . . "well, let's try another one." Maybe it was doing a daytime session - I know I was definitely struggling with low energy through a lot of it.

Some days you just have to accept that that's how it's gonna be and come back to fight another day. I thought we were maybe at that point, and Mike said "let's just try one more".

And then that magical thing happens where it all comes together and it was night and day from everything else we played earlier and we got the take and I love it. Everyone's playing is so alive and connected to each other, playing off of each other, taking it somewhere else.

So basically, we played really well for exactly four minutes and fifty-one seconds (the song won't be that long, but once it finally felt good we had to stay there for a while and vamp on the outro) of a six hour session. And because of that, it was a great day in the studio.

Music is weird.