January’s Downloads: Subway Demo & Acapella Snipit

This song, “Subway” pays homage to groundbreaking radio DJ Rita Houston, a New York City legend who passed away from cancer in 2020. I met Rita in the ’90s and she was so dynamic—at a time when there was so much homophobia, she rooted for artists in the queer community and ended up driving a lot of people’s careers. I was thinking about New York City. I was thinking about Rita. I was thinking about how liberated I always felt in New York City as a young queer person just starting to get comfortable with myself.

This is the demo Jeff Fielder made, after I sent him a recording I made at my home studio. I can’t remember what order things happened in, or who played what. A lot of the time, the band would all pitch in parts and then Jeff and producer, Brian Speiser would comb through things and sort them out over email.

I would put my two cents in, and redo the vocal and guitar as needed. And if anything was missing or needed to be replayed, Jeff would just do it all himself.

This demo contains a string mock-up Jeff did as well. Ultimately, Gabe Dixon from Tedeschi Trucks Band wrote an incredible string arrangement, which was recorded live to tape by a 4 piece string section, with the full Amy Ray Band a playing live as well. It was quite a day! What came out was what you hear on the studio record, with an incredible harmony section sung and built by Brandi Carlile. She did her harmonies remotely, and we synced it up and transferred it to tape.

I have included a bit of the song with just her vocals and mine, because it allows you to really hear all the vocals she did-it was a chorus of Brandi’s.

December’s Download: North Star early ruff

This was the first version of “North Star”. I made this recording with Jeff Fielder at his studio, he played the banjo and ac guitar lead. We did the basic tracks in one take, and then he added the banjo and maybe played some more guitar…some magic at any rate. I like this early version, it’s very much in the mountain music Americana tradition, but I felt like it wasn’t quite getting the full spirit across, so I called my friend Phil Cook and asked him to help me get it into the gospel arena. Phil had me send him a vocal only and rewrote the chord voicing’s (playing them on piano) underneath the melody to make the song what it is on the record. But this recording is a very true representation of my heart when I first finished the song. I might add that Brian Speiser, the producer had already sat down with me, and taken the song apart to help me put it in the right order and make the most sense. We did that in Atlanta, when he had a day off from running Front of House sound for the Tedeschi Trucks Band. He came over to see me, and we went through a bunch of songs and wrestled with chords and arrangement, this is one that really benefited from that meeting.

November’s Download: Chuck Will’s Widow: My Grass is Blue Again

While the majority of the record “If It All Goes South” was recorded live to 24 track 2 inch tape, three song recordings are digital vestiges from the covid lockdown days, when the band and I were trying to make some music to keep the thread with each other. When it came time to look at the song, “Chuck Will’s Widow" for the album, we completely disassembled the original lockdown recording, including me re-recording the lead vocal. We asked “I’m With Her” to collaborate on its re-creation, and that’s what helped the song really find its way. When we got the tracks from Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan, Jeff Fielder did a quick mix so I could hear what they recorded. This was the 2nd mix he texted to me, titled by Jeff, “My Grass is Blue Again”. I was blown away and so happy to hear the song reflected back to me this way. Sara, Sarah, and Aoife had made their tracks separate from each other, and with not much direction from us, in fact they had recorded to a band mix of the song, so had no idea we were gonna strip us all away and leave the song with mostly their tracks as the core. They brought the magic.

On his early demo mixes of Chuck Will’s, Jeff included the original accordion from Dan with dobro, mandolin, and percussion parts that he played himself.

For the album track, we added an upright bass from Kerry and some more percussion from Jim.

Jeff spent days and nights in his home studio making mixes of demos of all the songs on “If It All Goes South" to help craft what we would do when we got into the studio in Nashville. He did a myriad of demo/trial mixes of the digital tracks for Chuck Will’s to help prepare Bobby Tis for the final album mix-this is one of my favorites.

October’s Download: From This Room

Part of the process of making “If It All Goes South” was demo'ing the songs and working through emails in the digital realm to come up with arrangement ideas. I had a few occasions to actually sit down with bandmate, Jeff Fielder at his Seattle studio and record quick live versions of the songs right as I had finished writing them. Jeff would take the song, and start the process of ideas by recording other parts he heard, then send it around to band members and the producer, Brian Speiser to work on. This is the first version of the song “From This Room” that Jeff worked on before everyone else in the band weighed in on it.