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New Song Alert! “Someone Came To Help Me”
Well folks, we finally have some new material to share with you. “Someone Came to Help Me” is a tune that was inspired by patients, donor families and caregivers at The Methodist Hospital Transplant Center in Houston.
We played acoustically at a “Donate Life” event at the hospital in 2007 and 2008. Both years we performed “Here Comes the Sun” and “Let My Love Open the Door.” Both great songs, but the event really needed its own tune. I came up with the words and melody, Jeff added some chords and we played it at the 2009 event to a very enthusiastic crowd.
This song started it out as a demo with Jeff programming drums and playing acoustic guitar and me singing just trying to get something together for the folks at Methodist, but we decided pretty early on we should produce it as a band.
Jeff and Chris cut the basic tracks in October, which included organ, bass, acoustic guitar and Chris’ great electric guitar part that weaves throughout the song. When that was completed relatively quickly, we tried a number of different vocals sessions afterward trying to get the right sound, but it just wasn’t coming together. After some time away from it and listening to some Steve Earle for inspiration, I completed the vocals at end of January. Chris and Jeff did some further tweaking to the instrumentation on the song as well.
Mixing commenced at Chris’ Rogers Recording in early February and after a number of sessions to fix the groove and the acoustic guitar track, we all felt like something was missing. Was it a guitar part? Another vocal? Then Chris found a trippy keyboard sound that felt like a mixture of a bunch of different noises and that did the trick. Jeff played it all the way through, Chris added some excellent effects and it really turned the track in the right direction.
This was our first try at mixing our own material and Chris really knocked it out of the park. He upgraded his entire studio last year and it has really made a difference in the overall sound of the band. We are almost done with a bunch of songs we started last summer with drummer Leesa Harrington-Squyres, our former drummer and current drummer for Lez Zeppelin. We hope to have those ready to release digitally in the next few months.
The song is also available for download on Rhapsody, Zune, Napster, Lala, Limewire, Nokia and eMusic.
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Making a Record: Gimme Some Rivum Guitar
When you start making a record and you’re doing so without a drummer, the songwriting process can be different, especially if you are a rock band. After writing a huge batch of new material in the last six months, we knew we were going to have to arrange these on our own with little or no rehearsal.We finished up the first batch of drums last week and decided our first instrument after that should be rhythm (rivum for you slangsters) guitar. We made a conscious decision on this record to stay away from too much acoustic guitar as it tends to be a little sonically messy. We wanted a tighter, more focused sound.
As an experiment, we decided that I should play one batch of electric rhythm guitars. Not only would it be a different approach in tone and in style from Chris, but it would be simple enough that George could easily reproduce it live on electric – something he’s been working on.
So, Chris and I sat down tonight to get started. We both felt his Fender Strat was the guitar to use since he’ll be using his Les Paul and his Gibson 355 for most of the record. The Strat is a nice contrast.
We also really wanted a very raw, barely distorted and kinda nasty sound for me. Think Neil Young or Tom Petty or Jeff Tweedy – something that would fit but also make sense for a front person. We got some really great, bright and biting sounds running the Strat through Chris’ Mesa Boogie tube distortion and his Fulltone Full Drive, alternating between the two. As usual, we ran through his 100 watt Boogie combo amp with a Sennheiser mic in front.We managed to knock off five songs and they really sounded great. Adding rhythm guitars really helped to bring the songs into focus as ROCK songs, not just skeleton outlines of acoustic guitar, bass and drums.
It also re-emphasized just how great the drums are going to sound with the rest of the band. They are SO different from what we’ve done in the past, but the fit in SO well with what we are doing now and the whole thing just makes sense.
I’ve got a couple more to go in this batch before we’ll move on to other stuff and get ready for another batch of drums, but the results this time were really promising.
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