EQ Magazine - August 2008 - (Page 17)

Here I Am Again ?uestlove and Crew Bring Retro Styles and Modern Beats to a Soul-Renewed Al Green he voice sent shivers down your spine, and, if you were in the right mood, it also stirred feelings of romance, sensuality, and sexual longing. Throughout the ’70s, Al Green was one of soul music’s most successful artists, and his smash hits—“Tired of Being Alone,” “Let’s Stay Together,” “I’m Still in Love with You,” “Here I Am,” “Call Me,” and others—were crafted by producer Willie Mitchell with open arrangements that showcased the singer’s voice by staying out of its way, while simultaneously presenting slinky grooves, dancing guitar lines, lush background vocals, tasty horn punctuations, and super-smooth string and organ pads. But after an infamous tragedy in 1974, where a girlfriend doused Green with boiling grits while he was preparing for a bath and then killed herself with his gun, the singer began embracing his faith and ebbing away from secular music. By the ’80s, Green was more or less a gospel artist, although he continued to dabble from time to time with soul music. Now, 38 years since Green’s soul masterpieces began thrilling audiences, Blue Note Records has released what is arguably Green’s finest record in decades, Lay It Down. It’s an album that hits the spot in your soul that only Green can reach. Before the singer belts out the first note on the title track, the listener’s ears are shuttled T back to the sound of his classic, Mitchell-produced records of the ’70s. The late, great Chalmers “Spanky” Alford kicks off the tune with the same “church” guitar that Mabon “Teenie” Hodges brought to Green’s classics, and when the pillowy kick drum and sparse strings enter, you can practically smell the polyester. Green and Anthony Hamilton sing a few hook-y choruses, and by the time Green starts to solo, it is clear that the master is back—and with him the music that helped inspired a whole generation, providing fodder for countless samplers. But Lay It Down is no mere exercise in retro. Instead, it was meant to represent contemporary musicians, engineers, and producers paying tribute to the music that was such a major influence on today’s hip-hop, R&B, and neo-soul genres. And that’s why, when the time came to assemble Lay It Down, Blue Note flew in one of hip-hop’s most highlyregarded musicians/producers—the Roots’ Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson. The drummer/producer believed that, with Lay It Down, he and his crew could introduce Al Green to a new audience à la Rick Rubin with Johnny Cash, or Jack White with Loretta Lynn. So with co-producer Richard Nichols, guitarist Alford, keyboardist/co-producer James Poysner, and engineers Russell Elevado, Jon Smeltz, and Jimmy Douglass in hand, ?uestlove set out to revitalize the Memphis master. “They assumed I would give him the neo-soul makeover,” ?uestlove says. “But if Blue Note thought they were going to get Al Green does John Legend, they were wrong.” W hen the initial tracks for Lay It Down were recorded at Electric Lady Studios in New York, the original idea was to work with a purely analog signal chain, so ?uestlove and Green’s engineering team started by recording directly to two-inch tape, using the studio’s Pro Tools rig only as a backup. “If you have to switch a tape reel mid-session, you lose whatever precious moment was happening during that switch,” Smeltz explains. “For that reason, even if you aren’t looking to record to Pro Tools at all, it’s always smart to keep the DAW running as a virtual second tape machine.” This preemptive approach proved prescient, as, indeed, one of the band’s first takes would otherwise have been lost in a reel change. It was after this narrowly-averted disaster that the team abandoned their tape machine in favor of recording the rest of the album’s jams entirely in Pro Tools. Despite the vintage grit that tape could have added to the overall sound—especially on ?uestlove’s drum tracks—Smeltz By Michael Ross Photographs by Ginny Suss www.eqmag.com AUGUST 2008 EQ 17 http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - August 2008

EQ Magazine - August 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Lyrics Born, Fink, David Kahne on Working with Paul McCartney, What a Future with no Record Industry looks like Tool Box ?uestlove Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Cakewalk Sonar 7 Apple Logic Pro 8 USM Mic Round-Up USB Mics Chameleon Labs 7720 Sounds Room with a Vu

EQ Magazine - August 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.