SnowGhost Music

Luke’s flight got in about noon on a Friday, after a big night of snow. He was somewhat disheveled after a long early morning flight and I knew just the cure; breakfast at Lula's, my favorite breakfast joint in town. We met up with Greg McGrath, who was also in town finishing up a session and opening for Luke’s show the following night. We had lots of coffee and the famous “Ski Bum Special”, which is the most over-the-top biscuits and gravy you have ever seen. I had worked with Luke before and we had become friends, so the time usually spent meeting and greeting was bypassed for talk of the songs and instruments we wanted to use. This was to be our SnowGhost Sessions’ maiden voyage, so we played it by ear. And Luke did not disappoint.

We decided that we would focus on three songs. “Bring You To War” is a political love jaunt bordering on Delta blues, with finger-style acoustic guitar and vocals. We had a similar arrangement with “Lucky Part”, which reminded me more of early Hawaiian slack-key guitar musings. Last we would focus on a more crowded and upbeat number, “Gotta Girl”. “Gotta Girl” would be an all out free for all, with hand percussion, harmony vocals, stomping, guitar, and banjo to round out the general good time feeling of the song. Luke asked me if I would step out from behind the glass from time to time to help add some instrumentation, and I happily obliged.

When we got back to the studio we got right down to business, getting sounds on all of the different guitars and amps. Once we found the right combo, we started simple with a live vocal and acoustic guitar performance of “Lucky Part”. Although the song itself was not the most difficult from a technical standpoint, it was extremely delicate, and tough to execute right off the bat. After a couple takes, Luke wasn’t satisfied, so I suggested moving on to find a groove. It’s always difficult to walk off of the street cold, ready to record “the take”. Sometimes you hit it, and sometimes you have to be willing to move on. In this case we made a good decision to try “Bring You to War”, as Luke nailed it with his first performance. He was able to take his jitters and turn them into an upbeat, old-timey rag.

We came back to “Lucky Part” and got what we wanted in one take as well. I was particularly moved by Luke’s performance of “Lucky Part”; it was almost as if the “Myona-Hawaiian Waltz” by the Waikiki Hawaiian Orchestra (1929) was being channeled through my monitors… I was getting a performance from the artist that caught my ear at Aquarius Records in SF nearly a year earlier… I love my job . It was just a matter of Luke getting comfortable with the studio.

After the playback of “Lucky Part” and “Bring You to War”, we decided to leave them in their intimate state, vocals and guitar alone. It’s always easy to get carried away in the studio and overdo it, but Luke’s success always seemed to thrive off of his modest approach, and that was no different on these two songs. Luke then brought up the idea of doing two more tunes including Greg McGrath and myself in a live setting.

He wanted to incorporate one improvisational piece, playing more obscure instruments, like the toy piano, autoharp, nylon string guitar, and various South American percussion toys from our treasure chest. Luke and I put down some auto-harp and nylon string first. Luke made the Autoharp sound like a Japanese koto by playing it with rubber mallets, and I played muted basslines on the guitar. We tracked toy piano, drum sticks on the floor, and some 808-like djembe as a live rhythm section with Greg on sticks. The result was an out of ordinary Peruvian-sounding jam, displaying Luke’s depth as a musician and composer. It never ceases to amaze me when musicians experiment outside of their regarded practice.

The second song would be a bluegrass-esque song. “Gotta Girl” has banjos, organ, guitar, toy piano, stack-o-vocals, and some Maker’s Mark. Luke tracked lead vocals and guitar live, setting a great tone for the overdubs to come. We worked quickly, not toiling over little fixes, because the vibe on this one was much more important than perfection. In under an hour we had tracked two lead vocal tracks, six vocal harmony tracks, two guitar parts, two banjo parts, snare drum percussion, bass, organ, and toy piano.

The Setup

We ended up using a parlor-style Collings acoustic guitar because it sounded the most like his vintage Martin. He wanted something that was not too big and modern. The Collings had dead strings on it, which was fine because he wanted human imperfection. My biggest challenge this time was to trade my usual desire for crystal-clear fidelity for the sake of a raw and intimate sound.

Miking the guitar, we went with a couple of AKG 451s, one on the neck and one on the body, to give the guitar some spread in the stereo field. We ran those through my favorite preamp for acoustic guitar, the DW Fern, and added a touch of LA-2A compression. It was also really important for us to capture the beauty of Luke's voice, so we ended up using our favorite Telefunken 251 into the Manley Slam with the ELOP compressor in line. Sounds pretty good, right? This was the setup used for “Lucky Part”, “Bring You to War”, and the first pass of “Gotta Girl”.

Then we decided to do some more experimental stuff, which I was more than happy to encourage. On the Peruvian jam, we miked the autoharp with the Sennheiser 421s. We also set up some stereo area mics (spaced Schoeps CMC 6/MK2S, and a XY Telefunken 270 - all into SSL mic pres) playing various percussion toys and sticks on the floor. We wanted to set up a bunch of mics in different arrays around the room, and move around, pulling the best sounds in the mixing process. Luke felt that we needed some clapping, so he and I performed a duet of claps into the 270 and doubled them to get a fuller sound. Finally, Luke added a clinky toy piano part (area-miked 270) while I played muted djembe (AKG 451 inside the sound hole) for some sub-bass hits… the Roland 808 kick.

Tracking “Gotta Girl” was a lot of fun because it moved fast and furiously, capturing the energy of a band in two people - Luke and myself. It started with Luke tracking the guitar and vocals live with the same setup for the first two songs. But this time around it wasn’t so much about being delicate; it was about going with a party vice. I cranked up the compression and EQed a bit to make the vocals and guitar seem more aggressive. I used the 1176 and SSL E series EQ. Then we tracked some vocal harmonies using the stereo field Schoeps to get a room sound. We used the same Schoeps on the banjo, but this time only one as a close up bridge mic. The tambourine and toy piano followed into the same stereo field Scheops, setting up away from the mics to get a distant sound. We used one of the 451s on the snare to capture a bit of brushing at the end. We ran the bass direct through our favorite preamp for low end, the Summit TPA-200B. Finally we added some B3 through a Leslie miked up with a few 421s.

The mixing on “Lucky Part” and “Bring You to War” was pretty straight forward for both. I just made sure that the guitar didn’t step on the vocal… I knew that people would sit up and pay attention to Luke’s unique falsetto voice. I cut some of the lows on the guitar to give the vocals their full range and push them out front.

The goal of the improvised Peruvian jam was to make it hit hard, but remain natural, all with acoustic instruments. I just put up the faders and let the unintentional magic come through. Fortunately, we all had the foresight to pick instruments that sat in different frequency ranges, so there was not much tweaking to do, besides a bit of SSL compression here and there. The only thing that I really messed with was the djembe, where I used the Manley Massive-Passive and some Fatso to make it sound more like the famous Roland 808 kick, used in a lot of the 80’s hip hop tracks.

The mixing for “Gotta Girl” was much more involved and took some time to find the right arrangement. We had worked quickly to capture the moment, without really taking time to arrange the song. Luke wanted to build it up from scratch until the end, trying to capture the feel of a chaotic party. It would fade in with a driving acoustic guitar, with the stack o’ vocals entering via the chorus. Then the banjo would kick off the first verse with an infectious roll. Another chorus would follow with the entrance of the toy piano clanking away on the backbeat. On the second verse the toy piano would drop and a tambourine would quietly build up a climax to the bridge. At the bridge everything would drop out to leave Luke’s voice alone with some sparse guitar rakes, and some free toy piano meddling. After a build in the bridge, the last chorus would enter with everything, this time adding huge B3 pads, brushed snare, and bass. The song would drop at the end with a snare fill, and fade out with some heavily affected reverse autoharp.

On the stereo bus I used some Manley Vari-Mu compression and Masive Passive EQ to smooth things out, because these were, for the most part, softer sounding tracks. I made an exception on “Gotta Girl”, switching to the SSL bus compressor to give the track a faster jump.