Recording - March 2012 - 16

GR: There were a few songs I tracked drums on for the initial take, like “Goodnight Old World”, because Jay played keyboards on that track. This album contains a lot of unique instrumentation, like vibes and brushed djembe instead of snare drum, lots of spacy atmospheric guitar, and more. Did that experimentation happen on the spot during tracking or in overdubs? JJ: It’s a little bit of both. Giles and I are always going for something different. There is a song, “Darlin’ Kate”, where he is playing the piano strings with a guitar pick and an effect on it. He’s kind of a little mad scientist... GR: It doesn’t call too much attention to itself and yet gives it kind of a hammer dulcimer, old-timey feel. We’re not traditional session musicians; I consider myself more the character actor rather than the lead in a production, but that allows

JJ: In the process I think there were probably moments. You know, she’s the boss, but she encourages creativity and she’s a musician first; but, yeah, there was some give and take here and there. In “The Road”, the arrangement I had in my head was different than how she was hearing it, so she was a little hesitant, but as we kept going it was like, “You know, this feels good!” GR: For me it was on the song “New Orleans”—we were trying to get a New Orleans-style drumbeat in it, and I kept failing miserably at it. All I heard in my head was a Motown beat and my brain kept saying, “Wrong town!” Luckily it ended up working and she was open to it. JJ: For the most part it wasn’t a hard record, it was very easy fun and effortless. Your engineer Jason Hall gave me a gear list and walked me through some of the usual setups [see Jason’s interview below—Ed.]. Did you audition mics and such when Emmylou got there, or did you have an idea of what you wanted to use beforehand? JJ: Well, we had recorded before with Emmy; I think we used my Lawson U47 and felt that was a little too woolly and dark, so we talked about it and chose the U69 because it was a bit brighter. Do you choose the setups or do you leave that to your tracking engineer?

“The person that you are when you sit in your room by yourself and write that song and sing that song, you need to be able to have that feeling when you are in the studio. You need to be comfortable. If you are with a band, the band has to augment that and make you feel more comfortable.”—Emmylou Harris
me to be myself... that meant just doing the first thing that came to my mind after hearing a song, and Jay was always open: “Just try it.” That’s part of a fearless approach, that if it sucks we won’t use it, but let’s give it 100% on the try! If it doesn’t work, aggressively let it go. JJ: We weren’t looking to do a rootsy traditional record; we were looking to experiment, it’s more fun! Any other odd instruments and trickery you guys might care to share? GR: On many tracks I am playing the bass on a Moog Little Phatty synth; a very simple, very dark filtered sawtooth with a long decay like a bass guitar and a tiny little filtered attack for the pluck. The sound is so dark and big that it kind of hides itself in the mix. It’s of one of the dark horse elements for me. Listening to her past discography, I am guessing Emmylou was pretty open to experimentation... but was there anything she pushed back on?
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RECORDING MARCH 2012

JJ: Giles, Jason and I are all engineers and have been working together for years; we know what we’ve got and what would sound good on this and that, so we all just jumped in there. There wasn’t a lot of talking going on. There is a lot of trust, and if somebody thinks a particular mic sounds better it’s typically OK. Jason mentioned to me that you used a sampled kick on the drum kit? GR: I have a Roland standalone trigger pedal, and Jay got the inspiration to use a triggered kick. He’s always off on these interesting tangents; other people would be more concerned about triggering the snare or something, but of all things it’s the kick he thinks of to replace! JJ: Yeah, we were going for an odd smaller tighter drum sound with a big kick drum. Like I said, we like to experiment a lot! Jay, your guitar playing style features prominently throughout the record—anything about your sound and style you’d care to share?

Recording - March 2012

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