I’ve recorded this album 4 times, hence the title. Not all songs that are present in the final, but most. After Murder of Crows in 2004, I kept recording original stuff at home, but tracks were either too raw, too fussy, or too overworked, in other words, “dead on arrival.”
I was playing bass in Renee Stahl’s band at the time, and she invited me to join the song circle, once a month we met and played each other our latest efforts, issuing each other challenges and fulfilling group “assignments”.
The writing group included Leslie King of Bardo, Kevin Hunter from Wire Train and Tuesday Night Music Club, Gregg Sarfaty from Stewboss. Others in this group included Gayle Day, Erik Penny, Mike Schmid, Amy Raasch, Alex Davis, Whitney Cline, Korel Tunador, Renee Faia, and Tracy Spuehler. Rich Jacques (later to form Right the Stars) started producing spectacular-sounding tracks for Renee and others in the group, and offered to help. After months of foot-dragging, I said yes.
I had already worked with Aram Arslanian from the band Orphan Train producing on two songs, Dogs Behaving Badly and This River. Aram and his brilliant wife Sarah from the band Ladytown moved away to Portland OR, finally settling in Vancouver WA. I miss them every day.
Once Rich and I started recording, things moved very fast. Tracks were kept very sparse, one or 2 guitars at most, vocals recorded live in a pass or two. One of my favorite things about Rich is, when working, we don’t talk that much. If you have a musical idea, play it. It’s very hard to bullshit him. I was the slow-down factor in this process. Depression, indecision, lack of will and confidence. I will be posting a blog entry for each song on the album, how it was written, how we recorded it, etc.
The CD itself has very little graphic real estate for liner notes or lyrics, so I will be using this blog for that.
Next up, the oldest song on the album, Eyes of a Killer.
