Recording - February 2017 - 14

JEFF HAMILTON RECORDS
It's a great romantic view of live
recording, but maybe not realistic.

Yeah, exactly. But I was all for doing
all acoustic instruments and no overdubs.
I've always wanted to make a record with
them like that, so the record is completely
live lead vocals and all with a few minimal
overdubs. Literally Gordon would show
us the songs in the studio-"Here's the
chords, here's the changes"-and then it
was "OK, let's go, let's play it." On the
record you're hearing two, maybe three
takes, tops, of the songs.
Now, that said, there are three songs
that were put together piecemeal. Gordon
had already worked on a few in LA, but
they had all this slick production going
on, Hip Hop beats and so on. So I
ended up stripping all of that down to his
acoustic guitar and his lead vocal, and
then I had Brian and the drummer and
myself put on headphones and play live
to his original tracks.

What was the typical tracking setup?

Brian on acoustic bass (4-string acoustic
bass guitar, not an upright), Gordon on
acoustic guitar and lead vocal, and Brian
V. on the standup kit. Then I or one of the
guys would have to decide right then and
there after hearing the song what I was
going to play on it: mandolin, banjo, guitar,
percussion? On the Nashville session, we
also had Kevin Hearn from Barenaked
Ladies. He played the accordion, acoustic
guitar, and he added piano and organ
overdubs on a few of the songs. Blaise
Garza was in the room as well, playing
saxophone, and the Femmes' current
drummer John Sparrow was playing
cajon on some of the sessions.

ended up using the beat-up guitar, just because it translated so great in the context of
the songs and the context of the band. The
other guitars were just so beautiful-sounding, we said, "No, this is wrong!" So we
ended up using the lower-fi guitar, if you
will, and that dictated the guitar sound of
the record.

Since it was recorded on tour, at
many different studios, how did
you keep the album coherent?

It was primarily all acoustic and it
was always built around the core of the
three guys, and it always live with lead
vocals at the same time in the same
space as the instruments.

Tell me about the studios.

We started in Brooklyn at BC Studios,
with engineer Martin Bisi. He's got a really
cavernous cement warehouse-type space.
We ended up cutting four songs there with
just the original two guys and Brian the
drummer. I set them up where I thought
it would translate the best in the room.
There we tracked "Memory", "Untrue
Love", "I'm Not Done", and "Big Car".
We overdubbed backing vocals, some
handclaps, and Gordon also overdubbed
two guitar solos on those basic tracks. We
also recorded Vig's drums for "Foothills",
"Issues", and "Holy Ghost", which were
Brian's stripped-down LA tracks.
The next studio was Brown Bear studios
in Nashville with engineer Mark Zellmer.
Brown Bear is just one big square room
and this is where we had Gordon, myself,
Brian, Vig, John Sparrow, Kevin Hearn,

and Blaise Garza, all cramped in this one
room... a really small room with seven
guys in there. It was kind of like the old
Sun Studios or Motown. We cut "I Can Be
Anything", "What You Really Mean",
and "Traveling Solves Everything" there,
along with Kevin Hearn's piano and
organ overdubs.
At this session we tried to record the
contrabass sax live in the same room
with everyone else, but it just took over
all the mics. So we ended up overdubbing it later at Village Recorders in LA
with Gabe Burch. There at the Village,
we also did overdubs of backing vocals
and baritone sax.
Lastly we finished tracking at Hamtone
Audio in Milwaukee [Jeff's personal studio].
There we did Brian's bass for the LA studio
songs, as well as a few electric guitar and
mandolin overdubs. One night when Brian
Ritchie was on his way to track his bass, he
ran into Paul Cebar [a well-known Milwaukee musician whom Jeff had produced in
the past] and invited him down. Paul was
sitting on the couch plucking away, and his
riffs caught my ear, and I told him to get
in the studio and plug in. He looked at me
shocked and said, "Why? I'm just messing
around!" So he ended up adding the fast
trebly electric 12-string riff on "Foothills".

A right place/right time happy accident!

Yes! Then, after some editing at my place,
we mixed the record at Altitude Studios in
Boulder, Colorado, with engineer John
Agnello (Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr.) and
finally we mastered at Sterling in New York
with Chris Gehringer.

So the low end kick drum thump
on the album is cajon?

Correct, the kick drum-sounding stuff
is a cajon.

This record has a cool clattery sound
to the acoustic guitar. What kind of
guitar did Gordon play?

We brought a collection down to the
initial sessions: a pre-war Martin, a nice
Takamine, a Gretsch, a Taylor I think, and
then this beat-up something guitar. We
14

RECORDING FEBRUARY 2017

Jeff Hamilton, Brian Ritchie of the Violent
Femmes, and mix engineer John Agnello at
Altitude Studios, Boulder, CO.
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - February 2017
