Later, Louie said, “I isolate the parts in my head, thinking of which guitar player I’m being during each take. All live, without listening back to the other before trying the next. We listened from the control room as he recorded another one, two, three guitar parts, building the arrangement in real time. He said, “I’m just gonna’ add another guitar to this, okay.” His southern drawl sounded as authentic as the guitar he was laying down.
The most astonishing moment for me came next, as everyone would head to the control room to listen to a take, Louie would remain. There was no other discussion or rehearsal, just these three days repeating this process.
After only a short time jamming, Louie would lift his head from his guitar to look to me and the band and say “Should we try one?” We would then play the song a few times until we got a full live take. In the studio, we had drums, bass, guitar and some simple piano. There was a brilliant simplicity to it and the music instantly felt good. I played everyone a reference track to guide creativity, but otherwise, after this quick meeting, the band stepped into the studio and started finding a vibe. Before we hit record, we sat in a circle looking over a simple chord chart and listening to my acoustic demo as Louie gave us pencil notes for arrangement direction. Louie ran the three days like a Motown session, based on his time with the Wrecking Crew and other artists in the ‘60s & ‘70s. Tip #2: If you want your album to feel retro, approach the recording process as they did from the time period you’re aiming for. We selected two local musicians to fill out the band and cut 10 songs in about three days at the Recording Oasis Studio on the Gold Coast, one of the top studios in the area at the time. Louie emailed back “Your songs have potential. He had produced records for artists like Seals & Croft, and played guitar on world famous records by Jackson 5, The Monkees, Lionel Ritchie and many, many more. In 2013, I wrote an email to Louie Shelton, who had moved to the Gold Coast (Australia) from Los Angeles (USA) in the ‘80s and brought with him decades of music-making. Tip #1: Hire the right people, with the right experience, for the job. The project would eventually span 10 years, and be completed during the worldwide Covid pandemic.
or even how I would know if I’d been successful when it was over. I knew I wanted to make an old-school retro album, just like my idols did in the ‘70s, but I didn’t know what that meant. When I set out to record Worried Minds, my debut album, I had no idea what I was doing.
0 kommentar(er)
