You know how you hear about those tracks that are pure inspiration, those creative lightning strikes that happen magically in a single perfect take?
This wasn’t one of those.
The writing process for the song was relatively smooth. The recording of the track, not so much.
I’d been doing some doodling myself. I had the song and the feel. At the end of a session with my co-Comet Buck, I played him my rhythm track and asked him to take a run at a guitar track while I sang the tune live in the room. He did a track, or two, or three, or four and went home to his warm bed and his cute cowboy jammies.
I left the track, as I often do, to revisit it in the cold light of the next day. When I ran the previous night’s work, I was pleased and then concerned. Oh, the guitar tracks were good. They were full of good ideas, too many good ideas. I loved them and had no idea how to use all of them. And I was in no mood to choose, so I set the song aside. For about a year.
About a month ago, I agreed to play at Gathering Stateside in Cleveland. As my partner Buck has previous commitments, I will be doing the shows solo. I’ve been trying out tunes that I could do at the Cleveland show. Flipping through my songbook, I rediscovered UNLOVED UNDONE.
But now I had another problem. The solo version I’ve been working on is intimate and the track was huge. It had piano, organ, bass, 3 percussion tracks, an oboe (!), a power chord guitar (samples played from a keyboard) and Buck’s four guitar tracks. And I wanted my acoustic guitar and vocal parts from the solo version on there as well.
I can’t tell you how often this happens, that the mix is a process of reducing the parts on a song and not just balancing them. The oboe and the power chords went first. Then the piano and organ were trimmed so that they weren’t both playing all the way through. Percussion got the same treatment.
Buck had done one guitar pass playing arpeggios because I asked him to. I love arpeggios but this track took up too much real estate. If I was going to strum my way through as well, it had to go. Three electric guitar tracks were left. I lined them up and tried to make them occupy the space of a single end-to-end guitar track. I failed. As it stands, it’s about a track and a half!
OK, the track was set. Time to go to the vocal. I did a guide take early on and as is often the case, grew to like it as the process went on. Time to mix. As I mixed however, I began to find fault with the vocal. So I stopped and did another. The next morning, I went back to mixing. This time, I had reservations about the new vocal! So, I comped the two into one, the one you hear on the tune. I did a mix and sent it to Buck.
So, weeks after we thought it would be done and a year after it was started, here it is. It almost got the better of us. But it didn’t.
Now, I’m telling you the inside scoop about how it almost defeated us but I expect you to keep it to yourself. And if anyone asks me from this point on, I plan to say,” Yeah, man, pure inspiration, lightning stuck for a magical, single perfect take.”
I expect you to back me up on this, too. After all, I’ve told you all of this in confidence!
David Partridge