Category: Blog

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13 Apr: Atlanta

13 Apr – 10 High (Atlanta, GA)
with 6 Against 7, Over October

A quick run down the roll call…

Lee Cuthbert is amazing. Just so everyone knows that at the outset. We rehearsed twice (more or less) for this show. I went over the Lee’s house one night last week and we went over the songs, just the two of us. I think we did them a couple of times, at most. Then Monday night the band rehearsed, and she already had most of them down. We rehearsed Saturday morning and she had them all down, and we came up with a cover song for the show to pad the set out. Just like that.

Similarly, my band is amazing for their abilities in that regard. I feel lucky to have people like that around me.

Finally, Nicole, who books the Ten High, is great. I had a realization today as to why, and it’s because she actually gives you the sense that you matter, which is something I think it’s safe to say is extremely rare in booking shows. I was talking to her after the show about booking another, and I was wondering how far in advance she was booking, because I wanted to try and get one more show booked in there before my hopeful CD release in August. When I mentioned the release her eyes went wide and she said, “You HAVE to do it here!”

I’m sorry, you’re a good club that has crowds and you WANT me to do the show there? When did I enter this strange parallel universe, anyway? So, anyway, the night will be mine to organize and pick the other bands. I digress. We’ll talk about this later.

The show was good. We were surprisingly tight, I thought, and I felt relatively relaxed once we started. It felt normal, if that makes any sense. I just deleted a bunch of crap because I came to a sudden realization… up to this point I have been playing these band shows with a strange sort of mindset. I think subconsciously I haven’t felt as if they were really… mine. Like, I was still the guy from Radiant City and I just happened to be playing a show with some other people. It’s funny to realize that after over two years. But this show, without articulating it overtly until now, it was me. It was my band and my show. I know I was more animated than I have been up until this point, more focused. Most of the previous shows I have done a lot of thinking about where I’m standing and am I playing the right chord and is my voice okay and on and on and on… this show there wasn’t so much of that. And it felt good.

Hey, it’s me, Paul Melancon. I just didn’t realize it until now.

So, the cover we did was “September Gurls” by Big Star, which worked well, I think. Thanks to everyone who came out… you know, I stress before every show about the turnout and it’s almost always unfounded, and I’m grateful to everyone for that (though maybe I shouldn’t tell you that, you might stop coming). I stuck around through the rest of the show (we were first) and hung out with the band and also with Gentle Readers and Andrea from Daemon Records. Pete, David (who I should also mention gave me CD copies of the Beach Boys’ Smile and some Martin Newell stuff for my birthday before the show. The big lug!) and I went walking up to the CVS for needed refreshments after the set, and at one point Pete asked me out of the blue if I had heard Beulah before. Thankfully I had already discovered them recently, just in time to appear to be hip to the scene, and then I made one of about 4 mentions of Death Cab For Cutie during the evening.

Let this be number five… I bought their CD Photo Album a week or so ago and am still playing it incessantly. I pushed it with abandon Saturday night and I see no reason to stop now. Death Cab For Cutie – Photo Album. Go get it.

There was one other thing during the course of the evening that was really kinda cool and has some potential for the future, but right now it’s just something I have to keep to myself. I don’t mean to tease, but a) I hate to mention it and then have it not pan out, and b) I watch a lot of baseball and have become a very superstitious person about my music career. But it did allow me to quote from That Thing You Do!, as if I needed more excuses.

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28 Mar: studio

SHERMAN
Rob – guitar

HITCHCOCK BLONDE
John Cerreta – piano

Studio time makes no sense to me. There have been short days, 5 hours or so, where it seemed things blew by and much was accomplished. Then there are times when you spend the entire day in the studio and you seem to get very little done.

We actually did end up pretty much where we needed to be before he left town, but by the end things just weren’t really moving and it seemed a better idea to stop where we were. We won’t be mixing the CD until he returns, so we’ll listen fresh to everything then and see what remains and what doesn’t work. I wanted to have it ready by IPO, and it may be, but I’m not going to put out something that isn’t proper just to have it by a self-imposed deadline. It’s frustrating, but there isn’t much I can do about it.

Tomorrow we’ll mix a version of “Jeff Lynne” for the IPO disc, and I’ll get copies of everything. Then for the next two months I’ll finish up the design of the CD, and have everything ready for the manufacturers by the time Rob is back. I also need to figure out exactly what it is I’m going to do for the release.

Tonight I’m frazzled and I’m going to sleep.

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27 Mar: studio

HEY, CALIFORNIA
Geoff Melkonian – strings

JEFF LYNNE
Geoff Melkonian – strings

SHERMAN
me – backing vocals

Today there was less accomplished, though more from lack of time spent than time wasted. We only really worked about four hours today, for some reason there was a cavalcade of guests through the studio, mostly I think to say goodbye to Rob before he goes off to New York. However, what was accomplished was important. Geoff Melkonian (Josh Joplin Group) came in to play on HEY, CALIFORNIA. He played an upright bass with a bow during the bridge-like portion of the song, three tracks of complementary lines. Two low and one higher, sort of a cello sound. This, of course, set my mind to work. Once he was finished I asked him if he’d be interested in playing on another song, which is why JEFF LYNNE has returned to the list above. I knew there was still no way to get the ELO sound I was really shooting for, but I had him do a part during the choruses and the build at the very end, up in the cello range of his instrument. Hopefully it will at least give the illusion of more strings being involved. It sounded great to me, even if it isn’t quite what I had originally hoped for. One thing I did notice, in hearing it again today, is that the backing vocal parts we did a couple of days ago, the trademark ELO chorus vocals we did by mixing myself with the Mellotron, sound great. At the time I wasn’t sure it worked exactly. Anyway, this is the song that I will have completely finished by Friday, mixed and ready to be mastered and sent to David at IPO. I think it works.

We did some backing vocals for SHERMAN. I didn’t have any ideas, so Rob suggested doing the same sort of build up I did in parts of “Jeff Lynne.” We started in and he suddenly suggested I do them in my 1930’s singer voice. Most of you won’t have heard this before, but there’s a particular way that second-rate movie stars sang in the thirties… I first started doing it after I saw the Marx Brothers’ Animal Crackers for the first time, years ago. The romantic lead in that movie does it and it’s hilarious to me, you sort of sing from the back of your throat in a very warbly sort of way. So I did a four-part harmony in that voice, but we stopped before really sitting to listen to it, so whether we keep it or not I have no idea at this point. This is one of those moments where I just trust Rob’s idea until I hear it in action. We also did some work on the mystery song.

Tomorrow I’ll be there from 10am until late in the evening. “Hitchcock Blonde” and “King Sham” aren’t finished, but all they need are some keyboards, which we can do just before mixing. So all that’s left at this point is “Sherman” and the mystery song. I think it’s a safe bet that “Fall Down” will not be recorded, we may decide to give it a go, but at this point I’d rather finish up everything, give every song a listen to and make sure nothing has slipped by, rather than rush to complete one more song. So off the list it goes. Ten songs plus a bonus track doesn’t seem too bad. After Friday I should have “Jeff Lynne” in mixed form, plus rough mixes of everything else, and I can try to work out the track order.

It will feel so good to have them done.