Music commentary #28

 The making of an album Simple Gearle, days away from the 25th anniversary of doing so, is topic #28. In Nashville I had performed with my wife, Stacey Earle, since February of ‘92. We married in late ‘93, but, had been onstage together, in studios together, and rehearsing songs together since meeting one another. I had seen several opportunities come about for Stacey, as a writer-artist, to be recorded/produced by different music industry people. The first thing that would be done was limit my role in the recording. Though I was there for the writing process of most of her songs, helping to craft an arrangement, and establish guitar and vocal harmony parts the producer would always counter that work with his own approach. The non-stop gigging that we did with two acoustic guitars and two voices would be greatly altered to electric guitars and/or steel guitars, electric bass, full drum kit, and so on. The second thing to be done, behind limiting my playing, was to take Stacey’s guitar out of her hands OR reduce its significance. The end result was one that had lost the “magic” and put a “big production” layering of instruments onto the songs. A layering that had lost its soul , THE soul. After Stacey had wrapped up a three-year stint as a staff songwriter, and I had stepped out of a two-three year stretch in her brother Steve’s band, we were ready to tackle making an actual record, one that would reflect how WE treated her songs. We had always known that HER guitar playing was a specific charm in the sound of her musical pieces. And, MY acoustic guitar sensibilities were honed around that. My use of octaves for intros, solos, and outros were the correct ideas with her percussive rhythm style. The choice to keep my own guitar out of the first verse, allowing her guitar and voice to introduce the song to the listener, only to make its way in at the right moment, was the difference-maker in spellbinding the audience. I knew it and she knew it. Yes, a “stripped-down”, acoustic based record was the thing to make. We had to borrow the money from a friend, Paul, to do a two-three day process of recording and mixing Simple Gearle. Yes, it was done in a very short window. We had three friends to play on the tracks, friends who had understood more than others, what our “sound” really was. Mike Webb, John Gardner, and Mark Prentice rounded out, tastefully, what was built around Stacey’s guitar/vocal and my guitar/harmony vocal. Andrea Zonn did play on one track, too. $2,300 paid for the studio time, the engineer (Nathan Green), the players (who did their parts for next to nothing), AND the first 500 CDs! That is right, we spent the totality of $2,300 for making it AND manufacture of 500 CDs. Our first show to have it in hand was at Twice Told Coffee in Louisville, KY. Stacey’s father had to drive to the warehouse and pick up the first batch, then drive 2 1/2 hours to our venue for show time. The sellout of 45 persons in that tiny room led to selling 27 copies of Simple Gearle at $15 a piece. Imagine that today-27 people out of 45 buying a grassroots artist’s new record for $15! Let me reflect a moment on how we recorded our parts. Stacey LOVED my dark sunburst Gibson J-50 acoustic guitar, more than her blonde finish Gibson J-45. So, she played every one of her guitar parts on it. Then, I played MY parts on the same J-50. I changed the strings to have sparkly new ones for her, tuned it, placed a capo on the correct fret, tweaked the tuning again, handed Stacey the guitar. She played AND sang the entirety of each song, me sitting next to her, having just tuned my guitar perfectly for her. The next day, I changed the strings, tuned, and put my parts down. The other players came in later and added a bit to what our guitar tracks (and voices) had spearheaded. For the first time, the recording of Stacey’s songs were more in step with what we wanted. This all happened in the first few days of 1998. Thanks to Malcom Holcombe taking Stacey under his wings, and introducing her (and me) to the world of folk, grassroots, singer-songwriter, do-it-yourself, independent artists we found a home for our music. Malcom’s role had JUST taken place in the latter part of ‘97, and by early ‘98 we focused on nothing but being touring-recording artists. Owning our own little label, expanding our tour dates beyond the Nashville music arena, even outside the southeastern USA, to Canada and Europe-all came from having made the album Simple Gearle at the start of 1998. Where did time go? 25 years.

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