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Lou Reed Summer 2011 tour starts now

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!

June 29, 2011
Preachers Son recording sessions in Ireland was an absolute BLAST!

Just returned from the lush and green backcountry of Ireland where I spent 5 days producing the new album of Dublin-based band Preachers Son. We recorded at a beautiful residential studio an hour out of Dublin called Grouse Lodge and the sessions went really really well… We have a full album of rocking tunes with Brian Hogan (from Kila) on vocals and guitars, Emmaline Duffy-Fallon on drums and vocals and special guests session players Tabby Callaghan on guitars, background vocals, sweeps and jokes and Tanya O Callaghan on bass and background vocals.

The songs are absolutely DEADLY (as they say in Ireland) and we got amazing sounds form everyone. GRAND! (as they also say in Ireland…) ;-)

Working 18 hours a day for 5 days can be hard, but when the music is great and the people are lovely, you do it and you enjoy it too! It’s even more enjoyable when you have a guy like Tabby around. He’s one of the most hilarious people I’ve ever met, and to prove it to you, here are two great recording tricks courtesy of Tabby for all you engineers and guitar players out there to try:

Tabby’s secret for wild distortion:

Tabby’s secret for a rotating sound:

In a break between songs we asked Tabby, the count of Uisneach, to do us one of his movie trailer improv for us.
Here’s Tabby’s secret voiceover talent revealed (all three voices you here here are his, as well as the wind sound, no overdubs!):

Pull Me Along trailer version by Preachers Son

I’m telling you, this guy is the best guitar playing stand up comedian you’ll ever meet! Worth a trip to Ireland just to meet him… ;-)

Deadly! Grand!

June 10, 2011
Makigami Koichi’s Hikashu live and in the studio

I realize I haven’t posted anything in a while, not because I haven’t seen anything interesting but rather because I have been traveling and working a lot.
However I didn’t want to pass on the opportunity to mention the amazing performance of this historic japanese band called Haikashu at Japan Society tonight. Makigami Koichi’s unique singing and theremin-playing style is both improvisational and structured, wild and controlled… His band Haikashu opened the concert without Maki to support the first US visit of J-pop star Tomoe Shinohara, but I personally went to see Maki and the wait was worth it.
I’ll be recording Hikashu with Koichi in a few days at EastSide Sound and I’m very happy to have made his acquaintance (thanks to Zorn and Ikue Mori who brought Maki to my studio during the recording of her latest DVD release on Tzadik). It’s gonna be a memorable session… I’ll be lost in translation and totally dazzled by the music! Can’t wait!

May 14, 2011
Masada Marathon live at Lincoln Center

John Zorn’s Masada Marathon is hands down the best way to experience his musical genius and compositional versatility. John is such a complete artist, incredible organizer and catalyst for the NYC downtown scene. The diversity of his body of work is incredible and ranges from classical to metal passing through jazz, klezmer, world music. With 12 bands, 15 min each, 11 stage changes, 4 hours of live music written by Zorn, the Masada Marathon is the best way to experience all of this and probably one of the harder gigs I’ve done as a live sound engineer. Took a couple of months of pre-production and setting up the stage at 8am to be ready for a 1pm soundcheck. Considerate how lively and washy Lincoln Center can be with loud music (which it obviously wasn’t designed for) I’m pretty happy with the outcome, sonically speaking, but I am of corse my harshest critic.
We’ve done this in Milan and Montreal before and I can’t wait for John to do it again somewhere else in the world. Audiences are always delighted and blown away, as they should! It’s a pretty spectacular and unique show!

April 2, 2011
KODO live at Lincoln Center

Finally got to see Kodo live. Such a majestic show!

March 25, 2011
Lou Reed recording at Avatar and EastSide Sound

I usually don’t post about who, what, when and where I work with in the studio because some artists don’t want for that information to be out, at least not until after their recording is released, but since somebody else did, I’m happy to repost the article.

In this article on Sonic Scoop, New York City establishment Avatar Studios highlighted some of their latest clients and mentioned me in conjunction with a recording session with Lou Reed that we did there. The song (which the article also mentions) was subsequently mixed by myself at EastSide Sound Studios in New York City.

You can read the whole article here (http://www.sonicscoop.com/2011/02/14/lou-reed-kurt-elling-bobby-mcferrin-recording-at-avatar/)

February 19, 2011
Speaking of Grammy’s…

To set the record straight I just wanna say that the “Music is Life is Music is Life is Music…” motto has been my Facebook profile description for years now, and those who know me on FB know that. You can imagine my “oh shit!” moment when I saw the Grammy posters in every NYC subway station… It was probably used even before me but I still wish I had copyrighted that slogan! ;-)

February 15, 2011
Grammy slip away…

The beautiful “Homeland” album I worked on by the amazingly talented Laurie Anderson was nominated for a Grammy this year. Unfortunately we did not wind and Jeff Beck (whose guitar sound I had the pleasure to mix 5 years ago) got the Grammy instead.

My congratulations go to Beck for another win in his career and my best wishes go out to Laurie, one of the most ground breaking pioneers of new music, new technology and art out there!

February 15, 2011
What busy feels like? Working on 4 gigs in less than 48 hours!

To be clear, am NOT complaining, I am thankful I have work when a lot of talented colleagues are struggling…
Today I worked 9 hours with Lou Reed in the studio mixing a song at EastSide Sound… then I went to dinner with my lovely girl for her birthday and at 9pm I went to do live sound at a gig for a lively up and coming band called Pants Velour who rocked the house… Now I’m on my way home to do some more show advancing for a gig with the Swiss-American band Grand Pianoramax at SXSW festival in Austin… and finally tomorrow I have a 10am load in for a 10.30pm show with Bryan Ferry in the city so it’s gonna be an early and looooong day.
In the middle of everything I found out that Laurie Anderson is up for a Grammy Award for a her latest and amazing album on which I did engineering work, so I wish her all the best, not only cause it would bring my Grammies to four, but because she is one of the most amazing artists out there and deserves all the recognition and praise!

February 11, 2011
Take a walk on the snow side…

I just finished a late night recording session with Lou Reed that went really well. We did a cover of an old song for a tribute record and great musicians accompanied him. Now I’m walking home in the snow from the studio and I’m thinking: say what you want, complain about the puddles and the slow traffic, but I love NYC covered in snow: makes the city look even more special and unique, even more so at night.
A few nights ago when the snow was coming down heavy I was standing at a light looking at musicians carrying their instrumental through a blizzard going to or coming from a gig which probably didn’t pay much… Now that’s priceless passion and love for music!

Check out a few shots…

January 29, 2011