Hello Dear, I wrote the following a few days after Thanksgiving. It never got sent because of some drama with my computer. I’m sending it now, as is, because it includes an update on our recording, toward the bottom.———————————————————————————————————————— I talked to two friends on Thanksgiving. One was with family and it sounded complicated: family dynamics spinning wildly, old grievances and sibling meanness thrust in their face. My other friend was in a whole different situation. He was alone, separated from his family, and he also felt quite low. He said he ate a microwave meal, and missed his loved ones. Both situations are tough. I hope you had a swell TG but I'm not sure if I should wish for you that it was with or without family.Perhaps it’s best to celebrate with animals. Animals: free of existential worry and class consciousness, not corrupted by money or by social media. Walt Whitman writes in Leaves of Grass: I think I could turn, and live with animals,
they are so placid and self-contain’d
I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
I’m in an airport in Iowa ready to fly back to the dogs and the cat that can show me what it’s like to not be respectable or unhappy, always.
I had the luck of Thanksgiving with Debby’s kind family—-a chill, zero drama situation on a farm. There were dogs and cats and lots of chickens. I stood and looked at those animals long and long.
The week before Thanksgiving, Buttercup was at Pleasantry Lane recording what will very probably end up being our 10th studio album. Salim Nourallah produced the recording and John Dufilho and Kevin Brown engineered. Jason Garner played the lion’s share of the drums with the exception of a couple of songs drummed by John Dufilho and one by Joe Reyes.
We covered the Dead Kennedys' "Let's Lynch the Landlord." This is a first for Buttercup--previously we've never recorded a cover on a record. Our version is quite mellow and softly sung. I like it, mucho.The songs are still echoing in my noggin and my fingers are still humming out creative sparks. We went into the studio with 15 songs to record and we left with 16. It was a thrilling week. Steve Albini said “If you can’t make a record in one week, someone is fucking up.”
In fact, it is easy to mess it all up because recording is hard. I, myself know quite well how one confronts one’s ego in the studio. It’s like nothing else--listening to your voice on tape, hearing every flaw and false note. Recordings often end up lousy, especially if you find yourself all up in your head, concerned about “proving” something to the listener.
Add this to the mix. There’s another danger with a band as seasoned as Buttercup: you can easily make something too good. Give four guys who are well practiced some high quality mics and a computer and they can easily smooth the edges right off of something potentially interesting. Shazaam! It's note-perfect, slick and lifeless.I’m pleased to say we definitely didn’t do that. We leaned hard into the spontaneity of first takes and real singing, not adulterated by auto-tuning or pitch correction. We sang songs pretty much all the way thru, to catch a vibe, not to scrutinize each syllable. We didn’t gild the lily by overdubbing 20 tracks of nonsense trying to make a song more than what it wants to be.
We listened to our hearts and our unconscious when we hit roadblocks. That part of musical problem solving really tickles something in me. For instance, we stumbled on the bridge to a brand new song, Please Don't Ghost. This is the song we were writing in the studio. The part in question went to half-time, stuck out like a rusty nail in the floorboard of the song, and made my ear trip. I thought initially we should just cut the whole thing out, and with the magic of the computer, John Dufilho did just that. Without the bridge, the song continued on more seamless and more insistent. But, listening back the next day, it felt like the song was missing what the bridge was originally trying to do. This ushered in a classic moment of losing all perspective and second guessing everything.After asking John to go to those lengths to suture the bridge out of the song, I felt sheepish about asking him to now undo it and let it back in. There had to be a better way to fix it. Buttercup sat in a roundtable discussion with John, Salim and Kevin Brown. Salim said “well it’s not your best bridge.” But Salim added that the tag at the end of the bridge was quite good and suggested we chunk only the first half of the bridge, and slide the end back in. Joe suggested we mute the drums and have the short little piece play tempo rubato (out of tempo). John quickly added some cymbal swells, grabbed from elsewhere in the song. This worked perfectly. Salim said, “Wallah! Now it’s the best bridge you’ve written” and the moment felt like groupthink gone magical.
The whole week was like this. The album wasn’t recorded solely by Buttercup—-just me, odie and Joe—-but by a gang of seven: Buttercup + Salim, John, Kevin and Jason.Jason Garner played drums like he was losing his mind and his energy was transcendent. As many of you know, Jason lays it all out on every song he plays, leaving nothing left in the tank. He taught me this lesson at a soundcheck in Portland, years ago. That day I was holding back and sort of mumbling through the soundcheck. He said something like Don’t save it for the show or Use it up, always or maybe just C'mon. There were two people in the club that evening watching us soundcheck. So, I turned directly to them and gave the soundcheck everything I had. They are now fans and friends. So, at Pleasantry last week, I gave every song all I could. I treated most every take as if it were the last song I would ever sing. Some of these “scratch” vocals are the final tracks. And the ones that got overdubbed are better for it: because the backing track has far more energy and emotion.
We tracked everything we need for a solid record. Now it falls on Salim and John to mix the batch into shape and to start the process of what Salim calls “song-herding.” (Figuring out which songs should hang together as a group, and which might get pushed overboard or wrangled into a smaller group for a smaller release.)I know the world looks bleak and that this recording is fairly meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but nonetheless I am excited about it. Let's stay engaged, darling. Erik
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