The sixth winner of Acoustic Guitar’s Homegrown CD Awards
comes from the Haoles, a Brooklyn-based retro-Hawaiian-bossa nova-lounge-swing
band whose charming, expertly played and recorded, uncategorizable combination
of smooth and swinging sounds immediately caught our ears. If there
were any question about the band’s win, the final two tracks on Modern
Stone Age Music—recorded live on an Edison cylinder recorder—cinched
the award. The Haoles’ approach to recording is as original and well defined
as their music.
The band was formed about nine years ago with Hank Bones on bass, renowned
multi-instrumentalist Fats Kaplan on steel guitar; Andrew Hardin on
guitar, Larry Eagle on percussion, Mike Saccoliti on ukulele, and Hardin’s
wife, Alison Young, on vocals. "Andrew and I both lived in Hawaii
when we were kids," says Bones, the band’s songwriter and lead
vocalist, "and we were sitting around the house one day with Drew
Zingg—a really great guitar player who’s played with Steely Dan and
Boz Scaggs—and we realized how much more fun we had playing acoustic
guitars than we did in our real bands. So we decided to have a pet project,
and it became the Haoles. We started out performing in little dive bars,
playing really slow Hawaiian songs as a novelty, but after a while slow
songs become boring, so we decided to work out some jazzy arrangements."
As Hardin and Kaplan got busy with other work, Young began to play
ukulele, and Bones took over on guitar and a host of other instruments,
including steel guitar, cornet, and vibes. Vince Giordano, who was playing
bass, tuba, and bass sax, quit in the middle of the recording, so Bones
and his old friend Rick Palley split bass duties on the rest of the
album’s tracks. The result is a delightful blend of vintage acoustic
music that defies labeling but will charm anyone who enjoys smooth,
unmannered vocal duets and acoustic swing.
The Haoles’ enjoyment of their music is evident on every track. They
lack the self-conscious irony of the lounge music revival (though their
covers of "Something Stupid" and "The Lonely Bull"
reveal a sly sense of humor), and their swing influences go far deeper
than those of swing bands that have simply married a taste for vintage
clothing to a rockabilly beat. Bones’ and Young’s duet singing and acoustic
guitar and ukulele are at the core of the Haoles’ sound, but what is
most distinctive about the Haoles’ music is Bones’ fully formed original
songs. "My Town," "Let’s Take a Walk," and "Serendipity"
sit perfectly next to standards like "Tico Tico" and Johnny
Mercer’s "Dream."
All the tracks were recorded in Bones’ home studio in Brooklyn, using
a combination of new and old technology to achieve a natural sound.
Bones’ guitars, a 1938 Martin OM-28 and a Tama nylon-string, were recorded
live with the rest of the instruments onto ADATs using vintage tube
mics, and the vocals were overdubbed later. "I think stereo miking
is the way to go with acoustic guitars," says Bones, "but
on this record I don’t think we did that. I usually use an AKG C 60—a
tube predecessor of a 451—and occasionally I use a Beyer 260 ribbon
mic. When I record the guitars in stereo, I use a couple of Beyers or
a couple of 451s. Or I’ll mix and match. People get hung up about matched
pairs, but to me it doesn’t make any difference. If it sounds good,
it is good. For the vocals I use a Neumann M 49 tube mic or occasionally
an RCA 44BX. We record in one medium-sized room. I’ve got a couple of
little baffles, but ‘let it bleed’ is the optimum phrase. I do the engineering—getting
it together and then running into the other room. It’s a way to get
some exercise." Bones says he will probably use part of his $1,000
gift certificate from Sweetwater Sound to add a Neumann KM 105 mic to
his collection.
Bones runs the signals into Pultec, RCA, and Symetrix mic preamps and
then straight into the ADAT. But he says, "For all my love of sexy
equipment, I’m a believer that the equipment doesn’t matter as much
as other things—like the room and the tuning. A lot of people are obsessed
with things like ‘How do you get that great drum sound?’ Well, you stick
any microphone next to a well-tuned drum, and it’s going to sound good.
I have a bunch of ASC [Acoustic Science Corp., www.tubetrap.com]
Tube Traps in my control room, which are very expensive and very good.
They help me mix a lot, because I put them around in an attack wall
configuration, around the backs and sides of the speakers. Room treatment
is definitely the way to go."
Bones mixes to two tracks of an ADAT using a Yamaha 2408 mixing board
and an SPX-1000 reverb. "Then I dump it onto a Technics quarter-inch
reel-to-reel, because it really does sound better coming off tape,"
he says. After some bad luck with other mastering facilities, he mastered
Modern Stone Age Music himself. "A lot of people don’t know
what this kind of music should sound like. I guess the big boys do,
but they’re much too expensive. And the medium boys—they screwed things
up. I’ve got a couple of ADL [Anthony DeMaria Labs, www.adl-tube.com]
tube compressors, and I like these solid-state JBL 7110s compressor-limiters.
I also put it through a couple of Klein and Hummel German tube EQs from
the early ’60s—massive 60-pound mono EQs."
The last two tracks on the album were the result of a meeting of like
minds. "This DJ, Rich Conaty, has had a show on WFUV for 25 years
now," says Bones. "I sent him a cassette a few years ago,
and he came to see us. He plays a couple of our songs on the radio now
and then. He was giving a course at Fordham University, and he had a
cylinder specialist at the Edison Labs bring in an Edison wax cylinder
recorder and a playback machine. He needed somebody to demonstrate the
machines, and we were the most likely candidates."
The Haoles’ cylinder session clearly influenced Bones’ next recording
steps. "The next CD will be recorded almost all live in the studio,"
says Bones. "I’m going more and more in that direction—trying to
capture a performance. The things people want to fix are usually what
I like best about the recording. I want to keep any cue that there are
human beings in there—that’s what makes it fun. The trouble is the singing.
If you’re singing and playing it’s better if you use just one mic—you
really get a picture of someone standing there and singing. I can avoid
phase problems by using figure-8 mics. We’re going to do more of that,
although it’s tricky with things like the bass. You have to be willing
to sacrifice control over the volume levels. But in the kind of music
we do, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. On all my favorite
old records, things go in and out and it doesn’t really matter. It does
consign us to non–major label commercial viability, though. We’ve got
stacks of rejections. People from record companies tell me they love
us, but they have no idea what category to put us in."
While they’re resigned to never making it big, the Haoles are all professional
musicians, and the band plays in the New York area two or three times
a month at weddings, parties, and bars, including "a little dive
bar in the East Village called Manitoba’s." Modern Stone Age
Music and the Haoles’ other CDs are available on their Web site,
www.haoles.com.
—Scott Nygaard
Acoustic Guitar’s Homegrown CD Awards is a year-long spotlight
on CDs recorded and released by acoustic musicians. Winners are profiled
in the Stage and Studio department and receive a $1,000 gift certificate
from Sweetwater Sound’s music technology catalog. The deadline for application
was September 1, 2000.
Excerpted from Acoustic Guitar magazine,
November 2000, No.95.
Check out the other
winners online.
