SnowGhost Music

Adam and I had kept in touch over the past year, both hoping that our worlds would collide again for a full-length session. I knew in a matter of minutes the last time around that we would work well together in the studio. Adam stood well above his peers in the paradoxical simplicity of his lyrics; much like Bruce Springsteen could turn a pair blue jeans and a plain-white T into the uniform for a guilt-ridden war hero.

Adam’s aversion to digital sounds was also exciting for me, as it required for more creative workarounds that usually led to unique sounds. Both of us liked the organic approach to recording, using mic techniques and room treatments to achieve the desired results. We continued talking about a recording session of grand proportions, and when we put together our new Sonoma DSD workstation, Adam was the first artist I thought of.

You see, DSD was a part of what I like to call the perfect storm of technology where ideas either crash and burn or obit in the consumer stratosphere - it was launched at the worst possible time, where quality was a little ship in an ever-turbulent ocean of quantity. The thought of pushing a new digital technology that required using more analog gear and recording techniques intrigued Adam, and my initial predictions that the format would suit an artist like him were spot on. He would thrive in being able to work quickly, but also wouldn’t over-think the beautiful mistakes that make recording human.

NOTE: The post below is from Adam's previous SnowGhost session, in March 2007.

After a frustrating day of talking to doctors at the clinic in town, Adam wasn't sure if he would be able to record due to his throat problems. After witnessing the These US session, he decided that he just couldn't pass up the opportunity. From his performance the night before in town, I knew that he had something special. If only he could muster up some energy, I knew that we would get something good. We wrapped up with These United States and had an hour to lay something down before they had to hit the road for a long overnight drive to Minneapolis. Adam had two new tracks that he had been working on and wanted to try them out. We kept all of the mics and instruments set up from the previous session for time's sake. There is something to be said for a ticking clock every once in awhile.

The first track was "The Real Thing", kicking the session off with some real energy. Adam perused through our set of acoustic guitars and took a liking to a Santa Cruz acoustic that seemed to harness the aggressiveness of his playing on the song. We made the first pass of guitar and vocals live and I was shocked; Adam's performance jumped out of the monitors and grabbed me.

On the guitar, I placed a pair of 451s in an ORTF configuration, one on the neck for string attack, and one on the butt end of the guitar for body. I ran through the SSL mic pres clean without compression and EQ, not knowing what to expect from a first pass, and not having enough time to listen to him play before we recorded. Glad I didn't because as you can hear, the guitar sounds smashed - that's some charged playing and the guitar has hit it's natural limit.

For the vocals we stayed with the same Neumann M149 to SSL pre combo that we used for Jesse from These US. It suited Adam very well during this session, sounding a bit more like a ribbon mic on him, with a certain sweetness.

Tom, who had been observing in the control room asked if he could add a banjo part to the track. Adam was all for it, in the name of collaborative spirit. We sat him in front of one of the 451s and had him run through the whole song, knowing that we would inject the best parts into the final mix. Tom gave us some pretty addictive banjo arpeggios that took the aggressive nature of the track to the next level in the choruses.

After listening back with Tom and Adam, I suggested a piano playing octave bass lines, in a melodic fashion. This was a job for the U87s in an ORTF array, one on the bass strings and one on the trebles, at the crook of the piano. I ran them through the SSL pres again, and we got a very open sound that would sit nicely behind the rest of the parts.

To top it off, Adam wanted to add a touch of 'party' with some tambourine and hand claps. I set up the the 414s as a spaced stereo pair and patched them through the SSL pres, with some heavy limiting. Adam asked me to partake, so I hit record and ran out into the live space with him.

Because we finished so quickly with the first tune, the second, "Go Ahead," would get my ears before we started any recording. I was moved by a very beautiful, yet bittersweet waltz about hoping the best for a love lost. The concept of distant lovers would be channeled by the distance of the sounds behind Adam. I heard the plate reverb turned up to the max, and what better way to extend the melting of Adam's voice than run him live through it.

Adam performed the ballad solo, laying the foundation for Tom to come in with some haunting pedal steel work. Again, I was amazed not only with Tom's versatility, but also his attention to the subtle nuances of the songwriter he was supporting. Instead of using the on-board tube reverb of the Carr amp, we ran him through the plate with the longest decay setting, about 7 seconds, or in this song, hundreds of miles away.

With the big Steinway sitting there, asking for some bass bombs to be dropped, I suggested that Adam take a stab at it. He said that he wasn't much of a piano player, but that Tom would do it. By running the piano through the plate and adding a bit of midrange SSL EQ, we got a western honky-tonk feel to round out that old lonesome sound.

Finally, as if Adam's voice hadn't gone through enough, I asked him if he would howl and whistle into the plate to invoke the some ghostly spirits. He stood back from the stereo array of 414s and did his thing while I applied some heavy EQ filters to put him through the telephone line. This would be the last call to his love.

Because of the nature of the material and the artists, the tracks were mixed pretty much as recorded, with a few EQ tweaks here and there for clarity, and very slight compression on the bus, preserving the natural dynamics. The plate played a very large part in these sessions coincidentally, because I had just received it and wanted to use it on everything. And who doesn't love pedal steel and lots of verb, especially with moody tunes like these?

Some mixing of note on "The Real Thing" would be: Bringing the claps and tambourine on the choruses only, and waiting to bring the banjo in until half way through.