I finally put together this video of the recording of Red Headed Stranger. This is the actual footage of the recording of the song. The audio is the mixed version from the record. We did vocals and guitar live which is not the way either of us likes to work but this project was supposed to be loose and spontaneous.
So this past month has been a month of classic country music for me. I saw Willie Nelson twice in really amazing venues. I saw Merle Haggard for the first time. And I made a short record of Willie Nelson songs.
I had the idea to do this near the end of last year but with all the struggle to get out a record of originals, we just never got around to it. Then in February, I told Allen I’d written my annual country song and asked when he had some time to record. I booked him for two nights.
In the intervening time, I decided I wasn’t keen enough on my new country song to lay it down. So I proposed going with our original idea for the Willie record and doing a really stripped down recording, getting vocals and guitar live. The first night we did just that. The second night, we made a few attempts at putting down other rhythm guitars but song-by-song, we decided we didn’t want anything else in there. So Allen played solos on three of the songs and we finished.
Allen did the mixing and mastering. I posted it all up to Bandcamp. You can download it right here for free.
After my show at the LAB a couple of weeks ago, a friend asked me the question framed in the title above. It came up because I’d said a few things about my new record during my set. It’s a really interesting question me because it’s loaded with information and preconceptions (mostly on my part).
1) Social media obviously doesn’t work. I mean, I know I’m a terrible self-promoter. But apparently even when I’m trying to step up my self-promotion and really nag people, it doesn’t work. I thought I’d been posting about the record at an almost irritating amount on Facebook and Twitter but apparently, this sample group of one friend hadn’t seen anything about it.
2) It’s going fine in the sense that it’s out. I don’t have any expectations for a record that I release. It was a huge effort to get it out. The last two weeks of that push to get it all done were rough. I felt like I was working all night every night after my day job. And this was after all the recording, clean-ups, meetings and mixes.
I have a huge checklist of people I should try to get the record to and ways I should try to promote it. But trying to line that up to accomplish at the same time like I’m some big artist with a team of people behind a launch is asinine. So I just work every day trying to check off one thing at a time.
That’s how it’s going. The record is really good. And it’s only $5. Go ahead and buy it.
I’ve made that rookie mistake of not writing about something for a while because I keep thinking it’ll be finished any day. But here’s what’s been going on since the last update: Allen sent me new mixes that we both liked. I sent those on to Alex McCullough at Yes Master Studios in Nashville where I’ve previously mastered with Jim DeMain. I’ve gotten the masters back so I’ve been listening to my new record for a week or more now.
Eric Koda is finishing up the art. He sent me a teaser a few days ago and a tease of that teaser is what you see above. As soon as Eric wraps up the art, I’ll put the whole package together and make it available to you. In the meantime, I’ve started a TinyLetter email list to let people know when the record is out. You can subscribe by scrolling all the way to the bottom of this page and entering your email address.
Allen sent me a batch of mixes for the EP a week or so ago. I listened to it non-stop on several pairs of headphones and a couple of sets of speakers. I only heard a couple of things that bugged me. One lead guitar was too loud and one wasn’t loud enough. But Allen’s a pro and he heard things that bugged him in a different way. While I say “too loud” or “too soft,” he heard the EQ isn’t right. Once he started remixing the EQ on the main acoustic guitars, the leads popped into place like they should. I went over to his house last week and watched him work his magic and talked about the mixes and all things rock ‘n’ roll like we do.
Allen and I have been working on this project since July and it’s been a really awesome experience for me. Once the final mix is done, I’ll have mastering to get done and cover art from Eric Koda to put the whole EP together properly. Can’t wait.
And here are some pictures Allen took of the process.
Todd A's songs and videos on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License