H.O.G INTERVIEW-cont

Q: You must have lots of unused tracks if you ended up just using the demos.

A: There are a few, but I don't have a large backlog of unreleased stuff. The record changed a lot during the recording so I have a couple that never got finished. For example, Tony Markellis, probably my favorite bass player in the world came in and recorded bass parts for three tunes. One tune didn't make the album at all, and the tunes changed so much that I ended up redoing the bass parts myself on the other two. I hope to work with Tony more in the future, though, he's got an incredible touch. I had a few tunes set aside for a couple of friends to play on that for one reason or another we never got to do. That left a gaping hole four songs wide in the record that I had to fill.

Q: Who else is on the record with you?

A: My buddy Ray Brunelle plays drums on "Because of You, This" and he's great, really creative. Randy Roos plays some very spooky electric guitar on that one, too. Randy's just an incredible musician and player, and having him here in my studio was just a thrill. He totally got the concept of the tune;

I can't think of another musician in the world that could have pulled off what he did with that one. Randy's a true Jedi.

Q: "Because of You..." is probably the, for lack of a better word, "weirdest" pieces you've ever written, but it still sounds..like you...

A: Yep! Weird! I had most of that one in my head for a couple of years. The title comes from a street guy in San Fransisco. i was driving through with a friend a few years ago. We were stopped at a light and this guy on the sidewalk  just kept yelling at me over and over, "Because of you, THIS!!!" It just stayed with me. I recorded that one using the plastic Maccaferri guitar, which was really well suited for the gritty, weird sound I was after.

Q: What's next?

A: I've got a couple of records in mind, but I don't like to think too far ahead. It really depends on the material. I'd like to do a simpler, mostly solo guitar type record, and I've been thinking of another "concept" type album. We'll just have to see, I guess.

TECHNOBABBLE

Q: Let's hear about how you recorded this album. It seems like recording cheap pawnshop guitars could be a bit of a challenge.

A: Well, I really thought for a long time about how I wanted the record to sound. I didn't want to try to pretty things up too much, but I didn't want to limit my choices. So basically I treated the guitars the same as I treat any guitars when I'm recording. I just try to make the sound I want rather than create it through massive EQ.

Q: There's a good variety of tones on the record. How did you capture them?

A: Thanks. Most of the guitars were recorded with a pair of Neumann KM 84s, though sometimes I'd use KM 140s if I wanted a little more edge. The plastic Maccaferri sounded best with a single 140 pointing straight at the guitar from about 18" out. Guitars sound really, really good in my room so I was able to pull the mics back a bit. On some of the guitars I used magnetic soundhole pickups; there was a Sunrise, a Fishman Rare Earth Humbucker and an old Bill Lawrence. The Hawaiian guitar got a Sunrise for the rhythm track on "Shallow Brown." For the melody lines I used the Rare Earth. It just sounded a little more solid. I also used either a Sunrise or Rare Earth, I forget which, on "Promised Land" and "Farther Along."

Q: Did you experiment with different microphones or unusual  positions?

A: Well, I'm always up for trying new stuff; you can always go back to what's worked in the past if you get stuck. Basically I was just trying to capture the sound of each instrument as it was, and I tried not to change the sounds too much in mixing. There are countless ways to record a guitar, and it's always gonna sound like a guitar. I don't have any secrets or tricks. Just make the sound you want to hear. If you're making it you're already most of the way there. Having a great sounding room made it a lot easier for me to get sounds I liked. Being able to pull the mics back a foot or two was really nice.

Q: That plastic guitar sounds very unusual.

A: Yeah! As I mentioned, I just used a 140 on it. That guitar has some kind of weird sympathetic vibration that comes out occasionally. Something is rattling in the guitar, and it produces this really odd distortion that sounds like clipping. It reminds me of the kind of clipping you'd hear on an early R&B record where the lead vocal is just killing the mic pre. On "Wayfaring Stranger" I added a touch of chorus to that guitar and it made the distortion come out in a very strange and beautiful way.

Q: The slide guitar on "I Just Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes" is really funky, too.

A: That's this little Oahu , it's about a "OO" size, and it sounds really

amazing. The strings were just totally dead, so I used the heaviest metal slide I have and just beat on it. Different slides can give you radically different sounds, believe it or not, so I keep a bunch of them around. That's one of the tunes where the sound of my room really comes through.

Q: Are you still using EMU/Ensoniq PARIS?

A: Yeah, all the tracking and mixing was done in PARIS. Keeping everything 24 bit was taxing on my old G3, but it sure sounds good. PARIS got kind of glitchy here and there, but ultimately it worked out okay. I'm still a little new at recording on a computer, but it really works for me. I just  think of the computer as a big tape recorder now. For me the PARIS system is a perfect way to work. The C-16 control surface is great- you get to actually mix with faders as opposed to one track at a time with a mouse.

Q: It must save you a lot of time...

A: (Laughs) Actually, I have so many more options now that what used to take me four hours now takes me thirty six! At first I really went nuts, recording take after take after take, figuring I could edit all the good stuff together. What I ended up doing was amassing about thirty gigabytes of stuff I was never gonna listen to again. I found that for me, making decisions too late in the process was slowing things way down. I learned to commit a lot sooner, and not just pile up countless takes of something. I felt like that little bit of pressure helped.

Q: Don't we usually try to avoid pressure?

A: Hey it's my studio, so I can do things any way I want! By pressure I mean that I'm trying to play the stuff for real, not just wanking away. That's what I'm looking for in a performance, and you can't, or at least I can't, create that in the computer. You gotta play it right.

Q: Thanks for your time, ED.

A: Thank you!