Greetings, I hope things are well in your world! In this blog I’m going to discuss the different aspects of putting together a song from the perspective of my different roles I fulfilled in the making of Shadows In the Sky: songwriter, producer, guitarist, and mixing engineer. You can click on the ones that interest you. In the spirit of a deep dive I will get pretty technical in the mixing and guitar sections. : ) I’m going to do a deep dive on one song a month in the order they are placed on the album.
Wonderwheel was the second song we recorded during the sessions for Shadows In the Sky; the first song was a short four-minute funk tune called Missing You, which was ultimately left off the album. I chose to do that song first as a warm up, so that when we tackled Wonderwheel we would be ready to go. I wrote Wonderwheel in 2009, it has long been one of my favorites and I knew I wanted to record it for Shadows In the Sky. In many ways the recording of this tune set the tone for the session and ultimately for the album itself.
After years of recording in home studios, I wanted to try recording basic tracks for Shadows In The Sky in a professional studio and see if I could get better sounds and vibe there. I had a certain drum sound in my head that I wanted, and I had come very close on the Echo Street album, Here Now. In the sessions for that album, I went into a recording studio for the first time after recording all of the Seconds On End albums in home studios. I love the sounds I got on that album, and a learned a ton about what I wanted and how to get it, and I feel like I got the drums right where I wanted to on Shadows In the Sky. For me, the drum sound is the defining aspect of any rock recording, and I had spent many years trying to figure out how I could get the drums on my recordings to sound as good as they do on my favorite albums. Of course the most important aspect of getting a good drum sound is the drummer and I was fortunate to be working with my friend Celso, one of the best and also a world class sounds engineer. So between the two of us we were obsessed with every detail: the drum kit itself, cymbals, mic selection and placement and mic preamp choice. I wanted to record as much of the track live as possible. I feel that music sounds better if everyone is in the room playing together rather than recording the instruments one at a time. This is where using the studio really helped out in setting the stage for magic to happen and to be captured with the highest sound quality. In many ways this recording of Wonderwheel captures the moment when a year of work and preparation became reality, thanks to these amazing musicians and the engineers, Lee Bothwick and Gabe Shepard.
I knew I wanted to have improvised sections to go along with some of the songs on the album, like my favorite Pink Floyd and Dire Straits albums, and I was very interested in using those sections to explore the soundscapes we created in the body of the song. Celso (drums) and Murph (bass) and I had done an arrangement session where we worked out parts for them on the song so they knew the tune. Eric Levy (keys) was coming in having never heard the song before that day.
Looking back, it seems a little risky to have booked a musician whom I had never met on a session as important as this one was to me, but I had a sense that Eric would be the perfect person to complete the quartet that was recording basic tracks for the album. I had seen him several times with Garaj Mahal, a band of such accomplished musicians that, by my estimation, they could hold their own with the Mahvishnu Orchestra or Return to Forever in their heyday. The thing that stuck in my head about Eric’s playing was seeing him play with my friend Chris Zanardi at the Boom Boom Room. The Boom Boom Room has an in-house Hammond B3, and Eric’s organ playing that night was so deeply musical, so tasteful, and so totally different than anything I’d heard him do in Garaj Majal. He was clearly one of those musicians that simply played exactly what the song wanted. So when I needed a keys player for the session, I immediately thought of him. Fortunately for me (and for the music), Eric exceeded any expectations that I might have had about his contributions, and became a life-long friend and musical collaborator in the process.
+ The Songwriter
Wonderwheel came to me at a moment of great personal strife. My wife Carrie and I had recently suffered through the stillbirth of our first baby, followed soon after by the loss of the next pregnancy due to a genetic defect that was incompatible with life. There was a very happy ending however, as the third pregnancy was successful and produced our beloved daughter who is now 13. After all the pain and sadness that come from failed pregnancies, we now had a three-year-old, and another on the way, and that in and of itself was pretty stressful on the heels of so much struggle and strife to get to that point. On top of that, there were major personality clashes occurring in my band that I had built from the ground up over the last nine years. There was a lot of drama, and it was looking like the band wouldn’t last the month (we worked it out and made it another two years before ending on a much more amicable note).
With this as a backdrop, I was warming up one day, doing the various guitar exercises that I do to get ready to play, when I started playing the main two-chord groove of Wonderwheel. Something about the sound of the E major 7 and the F-sharp minor chords (lowered a half step on the final recording) stimulated me to hear the first line of the song and soon the first verse poured out. I charged through that and worked on trying to find chorus chords for a while but nothing was sounding right until it struck me that that the Emaj7 chord was sad enough to encompass the strife of the verse chords, yet also uplifting enough to work for the chorus as well if I changed the rhythm of the lyrics. As soon as I realized that, the chorus lyrics flew out as fast as I could write them down. Now I was into it and was enjoying the song, and the second verse and chorus came out effortlessly. I then started playing around with bridge ideas, and I stumbled on going to alternating major 7th chords, ending with an ascending whole-step progression of major 7th chords that fit the song and lyrics perfectly. I had never written anything that sounded like that bridge, and I loved it instantly. An unexpected bonus of the bridge was the lift the song got coming out of the bridge and back into the main groove. That feeling propelled me into writing the final verse, and the song was done in an hour or so. For me, the song is a reflection of the struggles I was undergoing, and an expression of some of the ways I got through this part of my life by clinging to my strong belief that I was a part of something larger. Tapping into that feeling helped me through this tough time and also helped me to have empathy for others in extremely painful situations.
+ The Producer
I had a very specific idea in mind for what I wanted Wonderwheel to sound like: very clean and defined, with an interesting drum groove underneath. Sonically, my vision for the sounds on Wonderwheel eventually extended to the whole album once I heard what I had. Even though most songs on the album don't sound stylistically much like Wonderwheel, I feel like it was a template for how I wanted the album and the band to sound.
Pre-Production
For Wonderwheel we did pre-production sessions at Celso’s incredible home studio in Oakland. Murph, Celso and I ran through the tune for a while, working on different grooves. Celso and I came up with his masterful groove, which starts on the hi-hat and then expands to combine hi-hat and ride cymbal in a very cool pattern for the chorus. I wanted something that took the song out of a basic funk groove and made it more dynamic and ethereal, and Celso, as always, delivered. Once we had that groove, we started running the song through, and within five minutes Murph had worked out his killer bass part for the song. I love the way it anchors the song in the verses, leaving space for the lyrics and the other elements of the mix to come out and then kicks it up a notch for the chorus. What Murph and Celso brought to Wonderwheel is really what helped the song soar as high as it could go. Once more I felt waves of gratitude for having the opportunity to collaborate with such amazing musicians.
Recording
Celso brought in the pre-production tracks from our sessions at his studio, and we listened through with Eric once and discussed getting in and out of the bridge smoothly. We went out into the studio and Celso counted it off, and from the first note the take felt right and magical. Everything sounded like the song should sound, but better than I could’ve imagined. We got in and out of the bridge perfectly, took some momentum from that into the third verse, and then headed off into the improvised section and everything felt really cohesive with a deep groove. Eric took a beautiful solo and then I came back in and brought it home with my final solo. When we got to the outro I surprised myself by improvising a cool little melody using my volume pedal that I use to this day when we play the song live. There were big smiles all around when we went in to listen back to the playback, and all agreed that this was the take. While we still had the vibe of the song I had Eric go back out and put some clavinet and piano fills throughout the song. This established a pattern during this first session where after each take, Eric and I would discuss possible overdub ideas and he would go back out and and put some additional keys on the track while the energy of the tune was fresh in our minds.
Overdubs
So now I had a great track with drums, guitar, bass, organ and overdubbed piano and clavinet. I overdubbed several guitars for background sounds and the first lead section (details in guitar section) and then started working on vocal ideas for the choruses and the bridge. I then recorded the lead vocals in a long afternoon session in my home studio. For the choruses and the bridge, I recorded the amazing blend of Maria and Carrie’s voices that ended up becoming a hallmark background vocal sound for the album. I wanted something a little more ethereal on the bridge, so I brought in my dear friend and Echo Street writing partner Jason Bryant to add his magic to the bridge. He came up with some really interesting ideas, including the swooping Steve Wonder-esque line that comes after the lyric “reach, turn inward.” The final piece of the puzzle on this tune was to add some percussion, so I got a hold of my buddy Jeremy Hoenig and had him over to Celso’s studio and we had a very fun afternoon cutting percussion tracks on Wonderwheel and Forever Free. Jeremy laid down a killer conga part and then he also did some really creative parts with shakers and wind chimes.
+ The Guitarist
There are three different guitar parts on Wonderwheel. The main rhythm guitar and the end solo after Eric’s organ solo were all cut during the recording of the basic track. My solo in the first section after the vocals end was good, but I knew I could do better. So after I had a rough mix of the track, I set up my stuff in my home studio and played through it six different times keeping to the map that I had created on the original take, but trying out some different paths through that section. Take 4 ended up being the most magical one, so I kept it in its entirety with a few volume tweaks on the loudest notes.
For guitar geeks only :)
I recorded the lead track in my home studio with the same gear I was using on the studio recording. My guitar was my trusty Anderson Mongrel (A Tele body with Strat controls) into a Sarno VG8 preamp into an SSP 1x12 cab with EV12L speaker. Effects were a touch of reverb from the Digitech Polera and my Strymon Dig Delay. That was all miked with a Sennheiser 609 mic. I added a tiny bit of reverb to the lead guitar during mixing as well to make it sit in the mix. The rhythm guitar was the same chain without the delay. The background guitar was recorded with a MXR phase 100 into a Strymon El Capistan split in stereo between my main amp detailed above and a Roland JC120 miked with an Shure SM57.
+ The Mixing Engineer
With Wonderwheel, I had a track where I had a very specific idea of what I wanted the mix to sound like. I had several sections and each needed its own identity while still fitting into the flow of the song. My chief goal in mixing was to make the chorus and the verses sound different even though they had the same chords, and then to make the transitions into and out of the bridge smooth. Eric helped me out a lot by coming up with such interesting piano and clavinet parts, which really helped set off each section. I also had the excellent work of Murph and Celso helping to differentiate those sections.
I had a really wide palette of sounds to draw from on Wonderwheel. Eric laid down the perfect organ part; it was expansive and watery in the verses, bumped up in volume and pitch in the choruses, and then wailed in the solo sections. The organ combined with the phased and delayed guitar parts to provide a backdrop for everything else to sit on. I tried to mix and EQ the organ and the guitar so that they swirled together in such a way that sometimes you would hear one, and then sometimes the other would stick out more. I usually have at least one thing like that in every mix in the background, so that the mix has depth and breathes and evolves as you listen. Murph’s bass line was so huge and groovy that I had it cranked to reggae levels throughout the first part of the mixing process so that I could build around it and let it power the song. As we got closer to final mixing, I brought it down a bit so that it was driving the song evenly with Celso’s drums.
When I mixed the bridge, I did so with the idea of taking the listener to a completely different place from the rest of the song. Eric’s organ pads are still there, but I took the phase off the guitar and brought up the delay in the mix by making it louder and using different panning to bring out the space-like aspects of this section. Eric also overdubbed a beautiful Moog part in the bridge which interacts with his organ part to lift the whole thing up another level. On top of all of that, I had several layers of beautiful backing vocals from Maria, Carrie and Jason to work with, which I tried to mix like orchestral movements shifting underneath the main vocal, giving it depth and breadth. After the vocal part ends, Murph’s haunting bass part and Eric’s organ/Moog combo thread in and out of the delayed guitar, leading us back to the main part of the song for verse three.
The improvised section at the end came out much better than I had ever imagined it. Like many aspects of this song, it set the tone for the other improvised sections on the album in that it worked as an extension of the song, tonally and thematically. I knew I wanted to start it off with my lead guitar and then hand it over to Eric. The rest of it was improvised on the fly, although we planned to end it with the same passage as the intro. My main goal as the mixer was to bring out the conversational aspects of the passages and to make sure to continue the sonic vibe that we had in the main body of the song.
I started my mixing of the entire project with this song, as it had a lot of elements that would recur throughout the album. This mix became a template of sorts for me for the rest of the tunes, to make sure that the album kept a coherent feel. My general approach was to spend the first parts of the mix on the drums and bass, getting the drum kit to sound as much like it did in the room as possible with a little EMT 250 reverb on the snare, and then balancing the bass guitar with the kick drum so that they are working in concert, not against one another. This usually involves significant EQ adjustments between the two to get them to sit together properly. Once I have that blend, I bring the rest of the drum kit in and make any adjustments in volume to make it sound even and punchy. I will continually tweak the drums and bass as I bring in each element until I have a full mix.
For Wonderwheel, the next thing I brought in were the organ and background guitars, making sure that the mix sounded right and that all of those elements were working together and setting the stage for the vocal and lead instruments. Finally, I mixed in the rhythm guitar and Jeremy’s groovy congas and shakers. These elements were carefully folded in with the drum kit so that they enhance and widen the rhythmic drive of Celso’s part. Once that was all working well, I got the vocal sounding the way I wanted it to all by itself in solo mode and then dropped it in the mix and listened to what I had. Then I made some EQ, mixing and panning adjustments and married the vocal with the rest of the mix. Essentially there is only so much room in each part of the frequency spectrum, so often cuts need to be made in the bass, organ or the snare sounds to make room for the vocal.
Once the vocal was sitting well in the mix I added in the background vocals. I really enjoy this phase of the mixing process, as backing vocals have a very powerful effect on a song, and there are a lot of different ways to present them. Reverb, EQ and compression can be used to make the backing vocals very present or way off in the distance. I put some delay and light reverb on the lead vocal for this song, and let the background vocals get more reverb, and then even more in the bridge in order to enhance their role in the mix in this section. Getting all of these elements to work together is one of the hardest and most satisfying things to do as a mixer. With Wonderwheel, I felt like I had found an identity for the sound of the album in this mix, and each song that I mixed afterwards followed in its path. The next mix that I did after Wonderwheel was Marooned. Since that is track 3 on the album, it will be my deep dive next month.
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