These days, the typical
acoustic musician is just as likely to conceive, produce, and distribute
his or her own recording as to sign on with an established label. It's
not merely an inability to catch the ear of commercial labels (although
that can be a part of it); putting out one's own CD is also a celebration
of the artistic control that inexpensive recording technology now affords.
Rather than having an A&R executive telling them how to shape their
material for the most mass-market appeal or to fit in with a particular
niche, musicians can create their own masterpieces, at home or in a
rented studio, to their own unique specifications.
A couple of years ago, Acoustic
Guitar celebrated this relatively new creative outlet with our first
Homegrown CD Awards contest. The outcome was astounding. We received
hundreds of high-quality recordings from artists all over the U.S. and
beyond. Singer-songwriters, bluegrass flatpickers, classical guitarists,
rock bands, fingerstylists, jazz cats—just about every kind of
musician we feature in our pages was represented in those submissions.
So we decided to run a second contest this year and once again were
bombarded with a wide variety of excellent CD packages.
The
three winners, Irish steel-string and lap slide player Clive Barnes
(www. clivebarnes.com),
jazzy singer-songwriter Erika Luckett (www.erikaluckett.com),
and solo fingerstylist Sean McGowan (www.seanmcgowan.ws),
were chosen based on the quality of their music, the recording, and
the packaging and liner notes (roughly in that order of importance).
The award-winning artists, each of whom will receive a $500 gift certificate
from First Quality Musical Supplies (www.fqms.com),
approached their recording projects from different angles, but they
all had to contend with low budgets, and they all made a series of decisions
that resulted in excellent, professional-quality CDs.
Clive
Barnes
Welcome
to Farewell, a collection of original songs, is a moody recording
that captures the intensity of a live performance. Barnes says that
the title really sums up the whole album. "I was finding myself in isolated
towns in the middle of nowhere," he recalls, "walking into a town and
saying good-bye nearly before I said hello. I had no grounding, no roots,
for a long time." Upon first listen, we were struck by the CD's resemblance
to the work of solo steel-stringer and lap-slide master Kelly Joe Phelps,
and indeed Barnes counts Phelps as one of his main influences in recent
years. "I heard Roll Away the Stone on an obscure radio show
and tracked down the album," recalls Barnes, who had previously focused
on bluegrass music. He also cites Jerry Douglas, David Grier, and Russ
Barenberg as musical role models and describes himself as "probably
the world's biggest Tom Waits fan."
Barnes
used to play with a flatpick and only got into fingerpicking when he
picked up lap slide. He performs as a solo act, and his first self-produced
recording, Shine, is a solo effort, but this time out he enlisted
the help of bassist Garvan Gallagher and violin and mandolin player
Paul Kelly to add a bit of depth to about half of the tracks. In keeping
with the live, spur-of-the-moment vibe he was going for, Barnes was
careful not to lock the other musicians into specific arrangements.
Instead, he sent them a rough tape of himself playing the songs, scheduled
a couple of presession rehearsals, and then "got into the studio and
just played."
The
studio in question was the Cauldron in Dublin, an all-tube (or "valve,"
as Barnes describes it) setup run by engineer Ciaran Byrne and guitarist
Bill Shanley. "I picked that studio because I wanted to go with good
mics," says Barnes. "I decided to go in, set up the mics, and just record
everything that happened as quickly as possible." His limited budget
allowed him two days in the studio. He spent the first day recording
the ensemble tracks and the second on the solo (guitar and vocal) tracks.
"I had a vague conversation with Garvan that he would put the reins
on me if I started losing the plot, but it was never called for. Thankfully
my Prozac worked that day," says Barnes with a laugh. "It was so easygoing.
Nearly every track was recorded live with no overdubs. Every song was
either first or second take."
The
musicians set up in different rooms and couldn't really see each other
during the session. "I play with my eyes closed most of the time anyway,"
Barnes quips. He played three guitars during the sessions—a Gibson
CL-30 flattop, a custom-built Mike Regan 12-string, and a custom-built
Regan lap slide (a dreadnought with a wider neck and raised nut and
bridge that Barnes strings .056, .046, .036, .026, .020, .018, low to
high) and miked them with a Røde Classic and an AKG C 1000, both
positioned close to the guitars and pointed toward the back of the soundhole
(closer to the bottom of the guitars). Vocals were recorded with a "beautiful
old" Neumann M 149, the bass was recorded with a Countryman DI and an
AKG SolidTube mic, and the fiddle and mandolin were recorded with the
AKG SolidTube mic on its own. "It sounded so warm," says Barnes. "It
was beautiful."
When
it was time for mixing and mastering, Barnes stuck with the less-is-more
approach. "I wanted absolutely no effect other than very slight reverb,"
he says. He used two Lexicon reverb units, the PCM 90 and 91. He had
no trouble determining the order of the tracks, because he'd written
all the songs as an album and had mentally worked out the sequence long
before he heard the songs on tape. "I had the pacing in my head," he
recalls. "I think I only had to move two tracks at the end."
Barnes
has a degree in art, so he took a special interest in the artwork and
packaging. "I didn't want anything overtly bluesy or overtly 'Mr. Guitar,'"
he says. "I wanted something a little bit vague and even a bit weird."
He hired a photographer, who provided blurred black-and-white shots
of Barnes in motion, and used two-color printing to cut down on the
cost. He also opted to include only snatches of the lyrics for each
song. "I think that when the lyrics are written out, people don't listen
as closely," he explains. "They just read the lyrics."
All
of the Homegrown winners describe their projects as a learning experience,
but Barnes was generally happy with his approach and the outcome. "The
lesson I learned is that simplicity is best," he says. "Overplaying
and being finicky is not good. When you use the stripped-back approach,
you end up finding your real sound. And when you don't have a huge budget,
it's difficult to put in the kitchen sink without it sounding terrible!"
He plans to follow a similar course for his next CD and is thinking
about incorporating drums and possibly flute. Barnes hopes to tour the
East Coast of the U.S. this August and may be teaming up on the road
with Boston-area singer-songwriter Peter Mulvey.
Sean
McGowan
Like
Barnes, fingerstyle guitarist Sean McGowan of Rockport, Maine, opted
to go totally live and natural on his first recording, River Coffee.
In fact, he too is a fan of Kelly Joe Phelps' music and recording style.
"His sound is so big and honest and wonderful," McGowan says. But unlike
Barnes, McGowan decided to vary the styles of the tracks he recorded
and tie them together—make them "more digestible" for the listener—by
playing them all solo on his Brad Nickerson FC3 acoustic steel-string.
"I love seeing artists of all kinds perform solo," he says, "whether
it's Bobby McFerrin singing all by himself or a writer reading his own
work. It's unfiltered."
McGowan
wrote most of the all-instrumental recording himself, and his compositions
touch on everything from Windham Hill—style jazz to funk, blues,
and even ska. He also included a few of his favorite jazz pieces: Miles
Davis' "All Blues" (the opening cut), Thelonious Monk's "I Mean You,"
and Duke Ellington's "Single Petal of a Rose."
McGowan's
style incorporates a lot of right-hand fretting, where he uses his index
finger to fret a note while shaping the chord with his left hand and
then strums, plucks, or arpeggiates the chord with his right-hand thumb
or pinky. He developed these techniques, as well as some open tunings,
out of necessity when he was attempting to arrange the jazz covers.
"I had to go low to capture those real rich bass notes and get those
really high things, too," he says. "I needed to [create] chord voicings
that I could never play with one hand, or I needed to play two or three
different parts at the same time."
When
he was ready to begin recording, his friend Tuck Andress suggested that
he use Will Ackerman's Imaginary Road studio in nearby Vermont. "I kept
thinking about guys like Robert Johnson, who would just sit in a room
and record," McGowan explains. "That's what I wanted to do."
At
Imaginary Road, he had access to a great sound engineer, Gary Henry,
and to Ackerman's own modified Neumann microphones and preamps. "I only
had the budget for two days in the studio, so I had to just get in there
and go for it," says McGowan. "Gary was wonderful to work with. He was
my sounding board, helping me decide which takes to use."
The
Neumanns, a pair of 1960s KM 256s that engineer Corin Nelson describes
as having "microthin diaphragms with vertical orientation within the
capsule and upgrades to the tube electronics," were customized by German
Masterworks' Klaus Heyne. Heyne says that his goal is "to avoid any
form of phase shift in the circuitry that would appear as midrange harshness
to the listener." One mic was positioned in front of the fingerboard
and the other behind the bridge. These special mics paired with custom
mic preamps created a clear, full tone. As McGowan discovered, however,
their ultrasensitivity presented something of a challenge. "All of the
percussive stuff, like on 'The Hugbuggy' and 'East 7th Street,' was
just destroying the Neumanns," he recalls, "so Gary busted out these
AKG 414s, which seemed to work a lot better."
Another
unexpected challenge for McGowan was keeping quiet in the studio with
the microphones positioned so close to his mouth and hands. "Gary listened
back to my first take and was like, 'Wow! Are you aware of all the noise
you're making?' I was keeping time by clicking my tongue against the
side of my mouth, and it was really hard for me to turn that off. Also,
I was wearing long sleeves, and every time I reached over to do a right-handed
thing, you could hear my sleeve going shhh over the top of the guitar.
I had to basically hold my breath for the next take!"
Despite
these minor technical difficulties, however, McGowan was able to record
most of the tracks in one or two takes. "A lot of the vibe is lost after
you do more than two or three," he says, "and I didn't want to sew stuff
together."
The
bigger hurdles came in the form of
sequencing and mastering. McGowan spent weeks tearing his hair out over
the sequence of tracks. "Tunes definitely have a different impact depending
on the order they're presented to the listener," he says. And he was
bowled over by what he learned in the process about mastering. "Trying
to figure out how loud to make the record was hard," he explains. "Commercial
recordings are totally compressed, so there's no true dynamic range.
Mastering engineers hate that. And what I had always conceived of as
a natural acoustic guitar sound [on other artists' records] is in fact
totally fabricated."
McGowan
arrived at the sound and volume he wanted by bringing some recordings
he likes and some he doesn't to the mastering session. "We had recorded
everything totally dry with Pro Tools," he says. "It's amazing what
you can do with Pro Tools. And then I had AIFF files to take to the
mastering. Typically, people will add compression and EQ, but we didn't.
I felt that a lot of the nuances I had worked on getting naturally would
be lost when compression and EQ were added. So all we did was add some
reverb with an old Lexicon PCM 60."
He
also took a hands-on role in the CD's packaging, which uses a folded
cardboard design rather than the standard jewel case. Creating the artwork
and liner notes was strictly a family affair. McGowan's girlfriend,
Andrea Antognoni, took his photograph and also supplied drawings (as
did her seven-year-old son), and a buddy wrote the liner notes. McGowan
drew the logo for the record company name, and the graphic designer
he hired to put it all together was also a close friend. "It was a labor
of love," says McGowan.
Despite
the success of the project, McGowan plans to do things a bit differently
next time around. His next recording will be an electric record with
a jazz trio, what he describes as an "old-school, Grant Green, Kenny
Burrell type of thing." And he plans to experiment with a variety of
signal feeds, mixing different pickups, microphones, and miked amps.
Erika
Luckett
Where
McGowan and Barnes made simplicity their motto, blues/funk/Latin jazz–style
songwriter Erika Luckett went out on a limb to create her second solo
recording, My Little Crime. Luckett fronted the San Francisco
Bay Area seven-piece world-jazz band Wild Mango for years and is used
to working with many different instruments. "I wanted to create arrangements
that would bring in different colors and textures to highlight the uniqueness
of each song while still maintaining a consistency throughout the album,"
she explains. She effectively and subtly mixed a wide range of sounds
into the tracks, including requinto, steel drums, vibraphone, horns,
and Hammond B3.
She,
too, took advantage of the freedom that producing one's own CD allows,
combining a variety of musical styles into her all-original set of songs.
"A commercial label probably would have said, 'You're not targeting
your audience clearly enough with this material,'" she says. "Doing
it myself, I can really be myself."
Luckett
chose to work with coproducer Ethan Allen in two different studios,
one in Emeryville, California, and the other in New Orleans. They laid
down the basic tracks in California over the course of about ten days
and then recorded overdubs. Dennis Hoff played bass, Chet Smith was
on drums, and Julie Wolf (from Ani DiFranco's band) contributed keyboards.
The other elements, including vibes and horns, were layered on top in
New Orleans, which is also where Luckett did the guitar and vocal overdubs.
"That's the advantage of using Pro Tools," she says. "It's completely
transportable. We took all the Pro Tools data and plopped it into the
other system in New Orleans."
In
the Emeryville studio, Luckett set up in a different room from the rest
of the band but was able to see them through a glass door. Her Taylor
312CE guitar was recorded with a Neumann U 47 microphone, mixed with
the signal from her Fishman Blender. She used a variety of different
vocal mics, depending on the sound she wanted for each song. For the
"gritty blues" song "Can't Keep a Woman," she sang into a Shure SM58.
"That's just a workhorse live performance mic," she says, "but it really
added a grittiness that worked well for that tune."
Luckett
reveled in the flexibility that the smaller band allowed. "When I was
recording with a larger band, we had to rehearse and arrange all the
tunes so exactly," she says, "so that when we went into the studio it
was an exact replica of what we rehearsed. Doing it on my own, it was
great to give myself and my collaborators some room."
In
preparation for the sessions, Luckett recorded a simple two- or three-track
demo of all the tunes, which she sent to Allen. "I have a very strong
vision of what I want," she explains, "but I collaborate. I lay out
the framework, but as soon as the creative process starts, everyone
who's there is part of it." She had a particularly strong rapport with
Allen. "We have a great sense of trust in each other," she says. For
"Besame," Allen suggested that she try Nashville tuning (where the lower
three strings are replaced with a lighter gauge and tuned up an octave
to create unusual chord voicings) on her requinto. "It was really interesting,"
she says. "It sounded like a thick cuatro."
The
recording sessions went extremely smoothly, except that one of the songs,
"Lulu," was corrupted at the last minute due to a temporary lack of
space on the hard drive they were using. Because of time and budget
constraints, they decided to try a live take, which turned out to be
better than the version that was lost. "It's a very intense, emotional
song," Luckett explains, "and we ended up getting a stronger rendition."
The
tracks were professionally mixed by Allen and mastered in Los Angeles
by Joe Gastwirt at Ocean View studios under Luckett's close supervision.
All sorts of effects were added, including EQ, compression, and reverb,
and the result was a big, full sound. Luckett describes mastering as
a "mystical" process in which the engineer works on the specific frequencies
that will add shimmer and a feeling of completion to the songs. "I want
it to sound as true as possible to the vision I had for the album,"
she adds, "but I can't get hung up on making it the perfect, perfect
recording."
When
sequencing the tracks, Luckett paid close attention to pacing. "I approach
it like a theater piece or a whole story," she explains. "You start
in one place, and there's momentum that builds and carries through the
album, so it makes sense listening to it in one sitting." The look of
the package contributes to the whole as well. Wanting the artwork "to
be relevant to the content of the album," Luckett hired a photographer
and worked with a graphic artist friend to create a package that is
warm and personal, with a South American flair that reflects her heritage.
Luckett's
next project will be a live recording in New Orleans that will shine
the spotlight on her guitar playing. "When you have a lot of other colors,
it can detract from the guitar work," she says. "So I'm looking forward
to a simpler approach. I'll be doing three performances, and I'll edit
together the best parts of those evenings."
Grow
Your Own
So,
there you have it, three great recordings conceived, recorded, mixed,
mastered, and presented by the artists themselves. Clive Barnes, Erika
Luckett, and Sean McGowan were lucky enough to win the $500 prizes from
First Quality Musical Supplies, but all of the musicians who recorded
and submitted their home recording projects enjoyed the process, learned
a lot about how to improve on their efforts, and ended up with a product
they could be proud of (and sell at their next gig). So, if you've got
a bunch of songs you think are ready to be immortalized and you're tired
of waiting for Sony to come knocking, think about putting together your
own recording.
