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When you’re still awake at 8 A.M after staying up all night, things are not right. Everything is a bit surreal, objects are closer than they appear, and you really should be asleep. But there are certain situations where it does happen, and the last day of mixing an album is one of those situations. The sky outside the studio gets lighter and your head starts to take the shape of a large peanut in the shell. Suddenly you’re craving pancakes.

It had been a long project, one of those ones where the producers actually need to become de facto members of the band for awhile in order for that band to make anything resembling a record. And since we had effectively joined the band, the drama of their project had infiltrated our world. Nerves had been on edge, budgets had been tight, and editing software had been pushed to its absolute limits. As we sat there with our blueberry pancakes, watching the well-rested people come and go in this historic Hollywood breakfast joint, we were filled with a dubious kind of tradesman’s pride: unsure whether the thing we had just created would have any useful purpose in the world, like a huge monument to an unloved leader, we still had to stand back at our work and say, “Damn. Not too bad.”

But it wasn’t a particularly soulful feeling. We were looking for a bit of soul in the form of this restaurant, and in each other’s ragged company. No one else in the room could possibly understand where we were coming from, and I raised a breakfast link with my fork and quoted the old axiom: ‘Pop records are like sausages… they’re much better if you don’t see how they’re made.”

And then he walked in.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noted the appearance of a leather-clad motorcyclist with an old military-style biker helmet as he walked in and took a place at one of the diner barstools. Then my partner murmured bluntly, “That’s Daniel Lanois.” I kind of thought the guy looked familiar, but I just cackled “yeah, right” and stirred my coffee. But he was insistent: “I’m telling you, dude. It’s him.”

A few nights earlier we were killing precious studio time watching an episode of the great music TV show Sessions at West 54th, in which Lanois, playing in a duet with drummer Brady Blade, put down some of the most terrifyingly awesome electric guitar I had ever heard. It was a force of nature; it sounded like Hendrix if he’d lived to the mid-70′s, combined with a gale-force Gulf Coast wind. And while it hurt me to know that there was, once again, a sound in my head that had been perfectly realized by someone else, it was somehow fitting that the man who generated the sound was (a.) Canadian, (b.) not really well-known as a ‘guitar hero’, and (c.) the consummate producer’s producer who had made the only albums in the entire 1980s that still received regular rotation in my CD player. Daniel Lanois was at the helm of, among others, U2′s The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby, Peter Gabriel’s So and Us, the Neville Brothers’ Yellow Moon, Lanois’ own incredible solo record Acadie, Emmylou Harris’ Wrecking Ball and a ton of groundbreaking ambient records with fellow musical genius Brian Eno.

And now this patron saint of producers walked into our 8 A.M. peanut-headed universe, wearing clothes that could only go along with a vintage Indian motorcycle parked outside, as if to say, There is more out there, lads. And yes, I play the guitar sound that you hear in your head. And I will get on my Indian bike after breakfast, and hit the open road until I reach the jungles of Chiapas, near the Guatemalan border.

I told him it was great to see him, and that he would serve as an omen of good fortune due to our skewed perspective on life that morning. He was gracious. We talked about how much effort it takes to sort out your papers as a Canadian in the States (curious – you bastards should be so lucky! Lanois?), things like that. I got out of his face pretty quickly and allowed him to continue his day.

My own day was to end in less than an hour due to exhaustion, but I decided that as soon as I woke up I would drive all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge . And I did.

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Besides being one of the founding members of one of the greatest bands of all time, Lonnie Jordan of WAR is also my old boss and one of the my musical mentors. I always had the best time with Lonnie onstage when I was with WAR and hoped to record something with him in the future, even going so far as to co-write some original songs for use ‘down the road.’

It finally happened in 2007, thanks to the unstoppable enthusiasm of my close friend Pancho Tomaselli, who has been playing bass with Lonnie for the past few years and shares the same creative synergy with him as I have. After spending some time with Pancho developing more material, Lonnie was signed to Fantasy Records (Concord Music Group) and we got together to produce his first solo album in almost 30 years, War Stories.

It was a great experience. The studio, ElDorado Recording in Burbank, was the perfect place to make Lonnie’s kind of music: tons of analog outboard gear, a great ambiance for setting the creative mood, and best of all, the cleanest collection of vintage keyboards I’ve ever seen or heard. We set up the piano, Hammond organ, Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric pianos in a circle around Lonnie so that he could access them at will, and put a band together that could follow him on a dime and retain the raw, funky feel he loves. Check out ‘Get That Feeling’:

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The concept was to do a mixture of unique versions of WAR tunes, one or two cover songs that were important to Lonnie, and new originals that provided a glimpse into his life experiences. For the WAR songs, it was important that we didn’t run down a list of ‘the hits’ or do true-to-vintage copies that try to measure up to the original versions. Instead of ‘Low Rider,’ ‘Cisco Kid’ or ‘Why Can’t We Be Friends’, we chose songs that featured Lonnie’s voice or are associated with his contribution to the band, and then we rearranged them in different styles, changing the rhythms, keys and even time signatures as inspiration dictated.

For example, ‘Get Down,’ one of War’s funkiest and most political tracks, was recast as an up-tempo Afrobeat jam. ‘The World is a Ghetto’ was changed from its classic loping 4/4 to a tweaked 6/8 Latin feel, with bass flutes, tons of percussion and an outstanding jazz piano solo by Lonnie. The opening track of the album, ‘Don’t Let No One Get You Down,’ showcases his Rhodes playing and some lush backing vocals sung by Tara Ellis.

The new songs include ‘Rock’n'Roll Days,’ a tribute to the music legends Lonnie’s known in the past, like Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley. Almost every note of this song is a reference to something else, and educated listeners will find a bit of everything from Led Zeppelin and Steppenwolf to Keith Richards and Steve Cropper.

Speaking of which, I definitely got my ya-ya’s out on guitar. Since the theme of the record was a sort of retro flashback, I had the perfect chance to dig into some guitar styles and sounds that are usually reserved for Lenny Kravitz. I’ll do a separate post with the guitar and production notes for this album, and get into detail about the gear we used.

All in all, it was a blast (from the past, as Lonnie would say), and everything from the tracking and mixing sessions, overseen by veteran engineer Don Murray, to the final analog mastering by Bernie Grundman himself, was a real experience for all of us, giving us a window into the way this type of record used to get done in the golden age of Funk.

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“Luminous beings are we… not this crude matter!”

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I’m reading ‘Anatomy of the Spirit’ my Caroline Myss. Ringing true so far…

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People have been asking me for a long time why I don’t have an album out. Or a couple of albums. Or, say, eight or nine albums. It’s a really good question, since I’ve been producing other people’s projects for 15 years and constantly writing my own songs, performing them… even recording them. Man, if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me “Is that song recorded?”…

Well, it recently dawned on me that I could have a dollar for every song I record, and that I’d rather make my living with a guitar in my hand, telling my own story instead of someone else’s, traveling with my family instead of sitting in a studio all day (and all night). The last time I saw Carlos Santana, we had just performed together and he said, “when are you going to stop hiding behind guys like me?” (How’s that for an Artist’s Way moment?) Anyway, as usual, the man had a point.

I’ve been working on my own project, on and off for about four years. It started out as a basement experiment in a little backhouse we rented on the outskirts of Los Angeles, continued throughout our year in Mexico and really picked up during the dark, rainy winter on Vancouver Island. I started finding sounds and lyric ideas unlike any I’d created before, and for the first time I felt like my music felt like more than the sum of its influences… I could hear the Saskatchewan prairie boy in there, as well as the multicultural West Coast experience that was my life for a decade. It felt like the truth was coming out.

Actually, LA figures highly in the theme of this record… at least leaving LA. I had reached a point in my life where the noise of the music industry was louder than the music in my head. It was time to get out of that environment for awhile and be around something completely different, be unaware of the Billboard 200 and who was hired and fired at which record company. I found a lot of things to love about that city, and spent a lot of time unearthing every shred of authenticity I could find there, but it was time to move on.

That word: authenticity. The search for it is pretty much the subject of the whole album. All the songs are in some way about getting out of a haze of ideas that come from who-knows-where, and finding that authentic core that feels like home… even if in my case ‘home’ meant not having a home for awhile.

So to answer people’s question: why no album all these years? Honestly, there was no album because I found creative ways not to do one for a long, long time (more on that later). And now there’s an album. All the support from loved ones and colleagues, and from myself, is paying off. I’ll keep posting as it gets closer to release… right now I’m doing a few extra guitars and getting ready for the final mix. Shouldn’t be long… hold me to it!

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“WONDERFUL! Expresses the joys and sorrows of human nature…”

Those are the words of Roger Ebert about the beautiful film Mark and Suzanne Bamford made while living in South Africa, Cape of Good Hope. The story focuses on the day-to-day lives of a few people working at an animal shelter in Capetown, and while not an overtly political ‘message’ movie, it does deal with the glaring issues of class and race that still define much of life in that country. I was honored to write the musical score and to work with Mark and Suzanne on their first full feature (as well as mine).

Because of the intimate tone of Cape, I couldn’t pull out all the stops and use a lot of big African elements without it sounding like the Lion King. (And you know I wanted to!) So instead, I looked for sounds that transcended geography and focused more on the universal and personal themes in the script. The music had to play the role of another ensemble cast member, staying out of everyone’s way and matching their rhythm while raising the stakes just a little.

To acheive this, I relied on softer sounds like nylon-string latin guitar, solo clarinet, oboe, marimba and upright bass. Strings were used as texture rather than structure, and percussion, voices and electric guitar were muted to fit in with the overall sound. I never dreamed I would play what sounds like romantic Mexican music in an African film, but… there you go. I also got to have some fun learning how to play a bit of Congolese soukous guitar, so that the character Jean-Claude could listen to a tape from his home country while driving the truck. I’ll post a sample.

Hopefully we can secure the rights to make the music of Cape of Good Hope available right here in my online store. A few remixes and we could have a nice little album for your downloading pleasure… I’ll put it up the moment I get the go-ahead.

By the way: there’s still plenty of good African music live on-screen in the movie, played by real Africans and not some sandy-haired composer in a studio in California. Let me know what you think of the film – it’s available at Amazon.

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Well, here it is… new site, new blog, new record, etc. It feels like the Maternity Ward around here.

The focus of the main part of this blog will be the travels and experiences surrounding my musical life, as well as the creative process itself. In particular, I’ll be documenting the unfolding of the album project and things that are sure to come up along the way in my transition from behind the scenes to… in front of the scenes?

Never a dull moment, I assure you. Welcome!

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Everything is getting ready for the final mix. I didn’t listen to the project for awhile so that I could come back to it with fresh ears when it was time to finish up… and here it is. Basically I’m going over all the tracks one last time and the same thought keeps coming to me: more guitar. So each song is getting a little guitar love before heading down to LA. This music, which was done over a long period in three different countries, relies heavily on my voice and guitar for continuity, and I can always count on guitars – especially gritty electric or ‘low-fi’ acoustic – to bring a sense of spontaneity and rawness, which is always a good thing.

A friend of mine said the guitars on these songs were a bit understated, in a good way, but there’s nothing wrong with some good old guitar solos either, is there? I don’t know if there’s much room for the big ol’ face-melting weedly-deedlies here (not that I know how to do that), but you can’t let Guitar Hero III players have all the fun. So I put a Blue Dragonfly mic in front of the Lonestar Special, plugged in the Gibsons and some pedals, and started looking for sounds.

My first victory was on the song ‘Ruin Your Life’ which already seemed pretty thick with texture and melody, but when I put a slightly psychedelic 335 solo in the instrumental section, it really came to life. Someone asked if it was recorded backwards… I guess it’s a keeper! Between that and a sizzly single-coil riff on the choruses, I felt the song was done. That is, after I slathered both of the new guitars with some old-school tremolo.

I posted the instrumental part as the intro music for the site’s homepage.

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I remember playing at the Grant Street Dance Hall one time down in LaFayette, Louisiana. This was the mid-90′s, and it was my first time hanging out in the Deep South… it was a particular thrill for me to be playing in Cajun country, and I managed to sit in at a juke joint where some local bluesmen were doing their thing after hours. Someone was talking about Sonny Landreth, and I asked the one question you don’t want to ask a musician in LaFayette or maybe anywhere else in Louisiana:”Who’s Sonny Landreth?”

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I received an education in short order. He’s only the baddest slide player in the world, they told me, the Hendrix of bottleneck, former right-hand man of Zydeco superstar Clifton Chenier and official Native Stepson of this proud part of the world. His lyrics tell the story of these people, and the moan of his slide guitar embodies all the mystery and mojo that’s conjured up when you hear the word Bayou.

Whenever you hear guitar players talk about Sonny, it’s always in hushed tones and superlatives. He’s even Eric Clapton’s favorite guitarist. So… what’s the huge deal? Is it how he invented a way of opening up the fretboard to slide guitar by fretting notes behind the bottleneck, creating chords and runs that live well outside the usual open tunings? Is it his tone, which seems to combine the perfect balance of Stratocaster sting and Dumble creaminess? Is it the fact that he can play rhythm like a Cajun accordionist and wail out leads that sound like Bessie Smith at 3 A.M. on a Friday night?

All of the above. Like everybody else, I can’t shut up about Sonny Landreth.

I recently decided to get over my fear of slide guitar playing, which began when I tried to nail Ry Cooder’s song ‘Feelin’ Bad Blues’ at the age of 16. In retrospect, I actually did OK, but for some reason I never really got up the nerve to embrace slide as a serious undertaking. 2 things changed that: one was when I decided to put a slide solo on the ‘Trash Can Song’ from my album, and felt like it was one of the coolest things I’d ever recorded. The other was when Eric Dozier and I began the Moanin’ Sons project, which needs slide guitar like biscuits need gravy.

I did a little research online to see if Sonny had ever given any advice on the subject, and sure enough, Guitar Player magazine had done a whole series with him geared towards people in just my position. But the news wasn’t good. He said you have to learn to mute each string with each finger of your picking hand until it sounds as seamless as someone playing scales on a piano, lifting a finger off as the next one goes down… but inversely, because you’re plucking instead of pressing. It does make sense, because your fret-hand string muting, which is kind of what separates the men from the boys on guitar and takes 10 years to learn, is suddenly out the window the moment you put a glass tube across all 6 strings. Brutal! But there it is. I’m trying, Sonny. I’m trying.

The good news is that my online search wandered into his current touring schedule, and he was playing here in Portland that night, in a tiny venue that was almost sold out. So I ran out of the house and drove the way I learned to do in Mexico, and got there just in time to be the last guy they let in. It was meant to be, of course. What better way for a slide newbie to get initiated than to have your face melted off by 2 hours-plus of Mr. Landreth’s Strat/Dumble onslaught, all at a distance from which you can measure his string gauge?

Between that and catching Warren Haynes a few days later with Gov’t Mule, I had enough inspiration to walk around the house for a month, playing muting patterns with my right hand while making coffee and breakfast with my left. I figured once I got the inverse piano-action trick down, I could worry about little things like slide intonation and re-learning the whole fretboard in three different open tunings.

So Sonny, if you’re out there… and I know you are… I am officially ready for my lesson. I will come to you. Just send me an email and name your price.

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