Sitting a JFK I’m thinking back on this busy month of June that is ending…
The month long European Summer Tour of Lou Reed and his great new 8 piece band (for which I’m doing FOH) starts tomorrow in the UK.
Less than 24 hours ago I was still in the studio with John Zorn, Bill Laswell, Rob Burger and Kevin Norton recording the soundtrack to a Polish theater production of Nosferatu that, as you can imagine, sounds sinister and creepy at times but also surprisingly different at other times (the presence of Bill brought some dub to the soundtrack!).
The day before I was recording the legendary drummer Bernard Purdie with Universal Japan recording artist Chihiro Yamanaka. Bugsby had some incredible stories about people he worked with, places he’s been and things he’s done as an adult and a kid. He was telling us about growing up in Maryland in the days of openly racist America and how he was the only black kid to eat at the white eatery and the first black student to graduate from his school. Of course his music stories were amazing. They would do a version of a standard picked by Yamanaka and Purdie would point out that he recorded the original that they were covering. This happened for three or four of the five tunes he recorded at EastSide Sound on Monday. Incredible!
The week before that we spent in the rehearsal studio with Lou Reed, the band and the crew preparing this tour down to every detail. It’s gonna be a great production, a great set list and a great bunch of people on the tour bus!
The week before that week I had a bunch of other sessions at the studio (such as the recording of Bojan Vuletic’s new piece) and another John Zorn file card piece recording and
prior to that I just returned from recording and producing the new Preachers Son album in Ireland.
Tomorrow morning I’ll be in the UK driving to our first gig up north and the Lou Reed tour will have officially started!
I am lucky to be working with all these amazing people and time is literally flying… at least it was until I got here to JFK!
