As part of the deal, Chris demanded to personally select which of my songs we would record -he had a certain fondness for a handful of songs that I had written some years ealier, back at the tail end of our years together in the group Three Colors. He picked out a few of those along with some stuff that I had written more recently -I managed to slip in some of my brand new ones one night while he was making spaghetti. Neither "Evil Twin" or "Taken" were actually on the list of chosen songs -I just started playing them when the tape was rolling and we took it from there. I played The solo acoustic version of "Taken" only to test a mic that we had stuck up the chimney. The take ended up on the CD; the chimney effect notwithstanding. We chose to work at Claude's studio, Stonybrook, for several reasons; the most important of which was the fact that we would then have the services of Claude himself -not only as engineer but as the multi-instrumentalist that he is. Also, the location of the studio gave us easy access to the host of highly skilled and skillfully high local musicians that Chris wanted to mix into the mix. Andrew Weiss was about 15 minutes away and was quickly called upon to add some waste (i.e. play synthesizer) to the proceedings. A typical day in the studio would have a phone call from Chris to Andrew go something like this: "Hey dude, what are you up to?", "Nothing much", "Feel like coming over and playing on some songs?" , "Sure".
Needless to say, the recording process was a laid-back affair. Working in the confines of Claude's livingroom/kitchen/control room there would often be guests dropping in -literally right in the middle of recording a track or doing a mix. There were dogs running around, basketball games on t.v., people cracking beers or cooking cous cous -whatever. It seemed, however, that most everyone who did drop by played an instrument and knew how to run a mixing board which, occasionally, came in handy.
Chris was very clear about what he wanted to bring out in the recordings. My voice would be the starting point and then we would build things, very subtly and sparsely, around it. Generally we would start with voice, a little rhythm (drums) and maybe some bass. The tracking went very quickly. For the most part, they were done in one or two takes. Once we had established the sound and feel that we wanted, it was pretty easy to recognize what was working and what wasn't -and pretty much everything was. Chris called up some more locals to add some finishing touches; Dean Ween from a coupla towns over, Ed Wilson from down the road, Matt Kohut from around the bend, and even Claude's roommate Jake Harmon who happened to be sitting on the couch. I asked Lydia Kavanaugh if she would come and sing on a couple of songs, which she did -all the way from NYC.
Everything fell into place; the players seemed to have a natural feel for the songs even though most had never heard them before. All the way through to the final stage in which Andrew and Chris created the intertwining sequence leading into Andrew's vast space-waste finale, the recording was a very natural and organic process. It was the most fun I've ever had recording music and I thank all of the people (aforementioned and otherwise) who generously contributed their time and talents to this CD.
-Hub Moore
