Overdubs are not the only variable of the modern recording equation missing from Thunderstorms. There are no drums. Maines credits Hancock for that decision. “I suspected that Wayne’s intuition was right. The label asked me to try to convince him to use drums on just three or four cuts. He said he just wanted the upright bass to be the drums…and Wayne knows his style of music better than anyone. It turned out to be a great call.”
Another of Maines’ minimalist masterpieces is Richard Buckner’s Bloomed. “I could tell he was an interesting singer and had good material,” Maines said, recalling when he first received a tape of Buckner and his band, the Doubters. “But his manager said they had just enough budget to do a solo album, with a few overdubs sprinkled in.”
Buckner traveled to Lubbock and the entire project was cut in four days. “Richard had good meter and he’d been doing a lot of solo shows, so I said, ‘Let’s just try you and your vocal, just like you always do.’ As he was doing it, on the run-through, I was trying to look ahead and see what we might add to each song.”
Maines, like many modern producers, has drifted away from the ’80s fascination with studio gadgetry. The mix on Bloomed reflects his current philosophy. “I’ve become a fan of mixing without a lot of processing,” he says. “I like it kind of dry and in-your-face. When you’ve got a good singer, like Richard, I don’t see the point of muddling it up with effects. Pedal steel needs some kind of reverb, but a lot of times, vocals don’t and drums don’t.”
Though Buckner’s solo performance is no sow’s ear, a cut such as the brooding “22” is certainly a fine silk purse. “That banjo on ’22’ was an afterthought,” Maines muses. “I’m not a banjo player — I own a banjo — but I knew I could play that little motif. Every time it’d come down to the ‘1’, I’d pick it really hard, and we’d slam that with the tambourine at the same time. It was rough with that particular song because he used a lot of ups and downs in the tempo.”
The challenge of adding to Buckner’s solo performance is a contrast to the experience of working with St. Louis band Wagon. “We had a day of rehearsal, but we didn’t change much. Working with young bands, you have to sort them out so they’re not playing over each other…trim out a few parts. You wind up taking away parts, rather than adding them.”
If alternative country were fried chicken, Maines might be Colonel Sanders. But Maines himself would cut the bird a little differently. “I don’t think Richard (Buckner) is country by today’s definition. He’s more Appalachian. Wagon, even though they’ve got a great fiddle and a utility guy that plays mandols, lap steel, organ and accordion — these guys have a rock attitude.”
If there’s a dividing line between country and whatever it is that these acts perform, Maines believes it’s the lyrics. “Uncle Tupelo?” he asks, pondering the thought. “I never look at them as a country band, but more like Neil Young. I think Uncle Tupelo, Wagon, Richard Buckner, base everything around the lyrics. Some of the lyrics are so deep, I still don’t know what they mean. It doesn’t bother me…it means something to somebody — that’s kind of the mystery to it. You have to dig deep.”
Maines considers the instrumentation of these acts closer to country than the lyrical content. “What they play around those lyrics — lap steel, fiddle, dobro — the music is country. But it’s not like Merle Haggard, Buck Owens and Ray Price.”
Whatever name we call the rose, Maines’ productions come out smelling sweet. Mostly, he encourages the acts he produces to have fun. “It should be an enjoyable thing,” he says. “One thing I try to get across is that the recording experience should be fun! This is not life or death. Just like on Wayne’s project, everyone’s having a ball, and it shows.”
