Category: Blog

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addendum

Okay, in trying to get all those posts out of me last night I left out the crucial funny part of the last entry.

The reason Allen came in to do the piano part is because Rufus Wainwright never wrote me back.

Somewhere down the line, one night Rob and I were recording and we were talking about Rufus and we decided, what the hell, we were going to ask him to play on “Little Plum.” I mean, it’s right up his tin pan alley. So, I went home that night and enlisted letter-to-famous-person-writer extrordinaire Sarah to craft a fine missive to the man. If you don’t believe that she is the master of getting a response, just go ask her why it was that Janeane Garafalo called our house one day and they talked for an hour.

Anyway, that’s her story, not mine. This is how the letter went:

Dear Mr. Wainwright,

I understand that you have some celebrity and I will assume that you probably aren’t even reading this, that it has instead probably landed in the hands of a monkey in a bellboy outfit, whose unhappy task it is to wade through the bizarre rantings of your throngs of fans for 2 bananas per hour.

I would like to say this mail will be much different than all of the rest of the letters you get, but, I cannot lie outright like that. At least there will be a surprise ending with this one.
With that being said, I will get right to the point.

Paul Melancon is a struggling singer/songwriter in Atlanta, Georgia.
Is he the hardest working man in show business? No.
Is he a talentless hack? Possibly.
Is he a huge Rufus Wainright fan? Absolutely.
Paul is currently working on his second solo CD entitled Camera Obscura at Rob Gal’s Snack N’ Shack Studios. He is financing it himself and eating a lot of macaroni and cheese in the process.
He got it into his head that he would like you (Rufus Wainwright – not the monkey) to play piano on a song called “Little Plum”.

Paul and Rob figured the worst you could do was say no, or take out a restraining order, so they asked me to write to you with this most earnest request.

We are willing to pay for airfare for you to come down here and we can pay you $50 American dollars for your trouble, plus dinner at a moderately priced restaurant.
Obviously, Paul and Rob will be willing to work around your schedule.
Here is Paul’s web address for you to determine the level of embarrassment this would cause you.
www.paulmelancon.com

Thank you for your consideration.
You may respond using any of the following methods:

xxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxx

Thank you again for bothering to read the letter all of the way through and we look forward to your reply.

Regards,
Sarah – letter writer extraordinaire

Unfortunately, he never responded. The only address we could come up with was the label, so I suspect he never even saw it, but I do like to think if he did he might have actually considered it. I mean, if I were in his shows, I might be like, “what the hell, might be fun…”

Sadly, not to be.

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22 January: studio

LITTLE PLUM
Allen Broyles – piano

HEY, CALIFORNIA
me – acoustic guitar

I can sense now that things are beginning to pick up in the studio, which is good. This project has certainly been a straggler at times, through no one’s fault. Just timing and finances. But with drum tracks ready on everything we’re starting to pick up the bits and pieces that are lingering around.

Allen Broyles plays with the Josh Joplin Group. I’ve met him a couple of times before, and I’m pretty sure I’ve met him even earlier back when I used to hang out with Uncle Green (band, not a relative). I’d never heard him play before (all the time I’ve known Josh I’ve never seen him with his band) and he is amazing. Based on no previous listens and relatively vague instructions he nailed the part in about two hours. Particularly impressive given that, unlike, say, guitar, it’s a lot harder to re-record just a section of a piano track, if the playing is more or less non-stop.

But, especially impressive because the “vague instructions” basically consisted of me trying to describe the mood I wanted like this… “Okay, pretend you’re playing piano in some dank German beer-hall, pre WWII. After the set you’ll be heading upstairs with an underage hooker. Don’t worry about how it sounds, because you’ll be dead soon anyway from either syphillis or tuberculosis. Which you aren’t even aware of because you’re too strung out on absinthe. Oh, and just outside some punk kid named Hitler is about to start a riot.”

I think he got it, though.

I did the acoustic guitar for HEY, CALIFORNIA in one take, after 5 or 6 brief false starts because I couldn’t nail the tempo for some reason. I’d play about 5 seconds and stop, knowing I was slippping woefully off. One punch-in at the end, and then through to the end of the song. Did a quick scratch vocal and then we called it a night.

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21 Jan: studio

SHERMAN
Pete McDade – drums

MYSTERY COVER SONG
Pete McDade – drums
John Cerreta – Vox organ, Clavinet

Tonight represented (barring the return of “Mr. Mysterio” to the track list) the last two songs. Meaning, every song intended for the CD has some part of it complete. It may not seem like much, but for a CD that was begun in October of 2000 it means a lot.

Pete came in to do the drums for both songs. Having him on most of the final songs has been great, not just because I love his playing, but because I think it’s helped add some cohesiveness to the process, if nothing else. Having him there makes it almost a band project, rather than the string of hired guns it started out as. He nailed the drums to SHERMAN in a couple of takes (having never heard it before), the other song in about 2 or 3. John did the organ work for the mystery song and he also played around with the Wurlitzer while SHERMAN was playing back, leading me to realize that will be the song that has the Wurly all over it. Damn, but it sounded good. I did the vocals for both in 1 take, the backing vocals for song #2 in 1 take with a few bits and pieces added in afterwards.

The cover song was done a little looser than anything else has been, just because it’s meant to be an extra track that’s a little light-hearted. This particular song seems to have suffered a fair share of musical abuse from the Million Box since we started playing it. An atonal, existential version keeps popping up in rehearsal, and in the studio an impromptu “sexy” version of it appeared, which may or may not see the light of day.