Steve Lynnworth – Full Circle
This remarkable album features several of the finest players around, performing eleven beautifully composed original instrumental tunes. Acadia regular and in-demand session bassist Duane Edwards kindly sent Steve our way for this project (thanks Duane!)
I knew of Steve as a well-respected guitarist and composer but somehow we had never met. Upon meeting with Steve it was obvious he is a passionate, outgoing and highly skilled player who knows what he is after and we hit it off right away. Steve’s guitar teacher Gerry Beaudoin had commissioned Steve to record five of Gerry’s original tunes in the Gypsy Jazz style. Steve enlisted some ringers for the session, including Steve’s gypsy jazz rhythm man Harry Richter on rhythm guitar, and the fabulous Duane Edwards on upright bass. However I wasn’t prepared for the violinist, the incredible Gabe Terracciano.
I had a funny history with Gabe which I didn’t realize until after the session. I knew of his playing with the Turtle Island String Quartet and had actually played live with him one Monday evening at Otto’s in Portland – he was one of three amazing fiddlers playing at the weekly bluegrass session there one random evening and we were treated to beautiful triple-harmony fiddle all night long and I was in heaven! However I had forgotten that we had actually played together once before – at one of the strangest gigs I’ve ever done (which is saying a lot):
A few friends and I were hired to play bluegrass music INSIDE the Whole Foods here in Portland, at MIDNIGHT on the day before Christmas Eve. The store was open all evening and there were lots of giveaways and free food etc, we were setup in the fish department playing bluegrass music for a couple of hours. (Yes we were well compensated lol)
Our mandolin player Steve also had his fiddle in tow and at one point we were approached by a man who asked if he could sit in on a tune with us on the fiddle. Steve agreed and the mysterious stranger began to absolutely tear up a version of Bill Monroe’s classic “Wheel Hoss”. It turned out the stranger was none other than – Gabe Terracciano!
The session was a blast – I had Gabe setup in the live room by himself and we had Steve, Harry and Duane all in isolation but with good sight lines and for the next two days I was bathed in such amazing music, I could hardly believe my fortune to be a part of such a fantastic collaboration.
Gabe tactfully suggested arrangement ideas on the fly that were universally spot-on and the ideas flowing from his bow were mind boggling at times. Duane and Harry we laying down the most solid of rhythm beds, punctuated by some virtuosic upright solos by Duane. The interplay between Steve and Gabe was palpable and there were huge smiles all around listening back to the various takes.
It was a pleasure to get to know Steve and his wife Nadine while we edited and mixed the record together. This record certainly stands as one of the finest projects I’ve had the honor of being associated with – thank you Steve!
Lean Meats – Violence. Language. Smoking.
To me this record has all the elements of a great alt rock/punk record – slamming beats, simple but effective arrangements, super catchy vocals hook, some memorable, oddball tones and a heavy dose of FUN!
This trio features solid guitar dirges provided by Scott, amorphous bass lines beautifully warped and twisted by Jessie’s bass synth pedals and the previously mentioned classic drum machine rhythms plus the amazing wildcard – the Korg Kaossilator lines provided by Cody that rip apart the sonic fabric in unexpected and delightful ways. Top it all off with spontaneously awesome vocal perfomances by all the players and you have the perfect record for driving fast and screaming along with the lyrics!
Erica Brown & the Bluegrass Connection – Blue Pine Moon
I have developed a deep love of bluegrass music over the years. Like many, I was first introduced to the genre by “Old & In the Way”, featuring Jerry Garcia of Grateful Dead fame. A few years later I stumbled upon Alison Krauss & Union Station performing songs from “Everytime You Say Goodbye” and I was absolutely captivated by that voice, the incredible songs, perfect arrangements and downright virtuosity on every track. I bought the CD and played it on repeat until I knew all three harmony parts on every track. Somehow, it didn’t compute that this was in fact “bluegrass music” and that there might be a whole world of bluegrass I had never discovered.
Fast forward several years, my dear friend and luthier Scott Conley returns from his apprenticeship building guitars w/ Bryan Galloup in Michigan and asks me if I’ve ever listened to much bluegrass music. Scott went to a BG festival as a guest of visiting luthier Frank Ford (of Gryphon Stringed Instruments in Palo Alto) and he said I should check it out. We rented a copy of the documentary “High Lonesome” and it was about twenty minutes in, when Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys perform “Bluegrass Breakdown” and the banjo break kicked in that my life took a new direction. I was obsessed with the sound, the energy and the soaring harmonies and I dove into the music and never looked back.
Fast forward twenty five years – I had been a longtime fan of Erica’s excellent fiddling and her wonderful voice and was thrilled when she, along with long time musical companion Matt Shipman, approached me to record the band’s new album. I was thrilled and jumped at the chance!
The band was absolutely stacked with the best players around: local bass legend Kris Day on the upright bass, the incredible Lincoln Meyers on the flattop Martin guitar, bluegrass banjo phenom Eli Gilbert on the 5-string banjo, Matt Shipman on the mandolin and vocals that blend with Erica so beautifully.
We tracked the beds live with isolation, the energy in the room was electric and I grinned like a cheshire cat as each take went by – I couldn’t believe what we were capturing. It turns out that if you have a well rehearsed band with amazing sounding vintage instruments played expertly, then captured with great mics, preamps and pristine converters you end up with a great final result!
Mastered by Pat Keane, I could not be more proud of what we created together – enjoy!
Bedlam & Eunoia – Spaces
Michael Beling is a fantastically talented performer, composer and educator and I was rather excited when he contacted us about recording his new album. Michael performs on keyboards, calling on a variety of perfectly tweaked grand piano and rhodes samples. (I record a ton of acoustic piano and rhodes here and his virtual instruments were indistinguishable from the real thing) But that’s not all – he simultaneously plays acoustic bass samples using foot pedals like you’d find on a pipe organ. It is a feat to behold (no pun intended) and he plays both parts flawlessly.
Michael brought some serious horsepower to the session, featuring his long time collaborator and well-known heavy player in the jazz and classical worlds, Barry Saunders on clarinet and soprano saxophone. Rounding out the trio was percussionist extraordinaire Eric LaPerna on the doumbek and riqq, a small tambourine-style instrument popular in Middle-Eastern music.
We initially had all three players setup in the live room, but soon decided to isolate Eric in our larger iso booth (while maintaining line of sight) to preserve the delicate transients of the riqq. The album features tracks written by Michael over a span of many years, but the players weren’t privy to the setlist until shortly before the session and the resulting takes have an immediate, improvised feel.
Michael and I discovered a mutual interest of obsessively hiking the White Mountains and our editing and mixing sessions were interspersed with many tales of our respective adventures. I was lucky enough to catch a performance of the album and it was just as good (if not better) than the recording.
I highly recommend this album to all fans of great music!
Scottish Fish – Upscale
After our recent success with the Fiddle’s Three album I was feeling ready to take on a next level challenge – four (or more) fiddles this time, performing a collection of well-arranged fiddle tunes and medleys of traditional and contemporary Scottish and Cape Breton music.
Acadia regular Neil Pearlman was producing “Scottish Fish” – a quintet of highly skilled musicians whom had met at fiddle camps and events over the years. We booked a week for tracking and could not have not have had more fun.
Most tracks feature four fiddles plus either a piano accompaniment or cello part, we decided isolation was the way to go for this project and everyone made themselves a cozy space to settle in for the week of tracking.
I was so impressed by the player’s ability to focus on what was at times pretty challenging music, while maintaining a positive attitude and energy. The players had the easy way between them like you only get from growing up playing music together.
Our studio dog “Oscar” – (or “Osc” as the Scottish Fish refer to him in the liner notes for the album) was adopted as mascot and he thoroughly enjoyed the session.
Neil and I edited the album and it was beautifully mixed by Mike Shepard at Lakewind Sound studios in Cape Breton. A must listen for fans of the fiddle or acoustic music in general.
Fiddlers Three – Stuff That Works
When I got the call to record this project I was filled with both excitement and dread. The fiddle can be a tricky beast to tame in the studio – but THREE fiddles?
Luckily, I already knew two of the players personally. Ellen Carlson – a legendary force on the fiddle, and Melissa Bragdon (we had played hundreds of gigs together in local bluegrass band “Jerks Of Grass”), and Kathy Stromer proved to be equally skilled.
The studio band was stacked with ringers: Kris Day on upright bass, Steve Roy on mandolin, Denny Breau on guitar and Rob Kneeland on drums with vocal performances by Ellen, Rob and singer extraordinaire Taylor O’Donnell. We tracked the band live and had the fiddle trio in the control room playing together for a guide/scratch track.
Fiddles were recorded together in the live room and the arrangements are so well thought out and played beautifully, each player having a unique tone and style but coming together to make a fantastic sound – making this album was truly my pleasure!
Tim Winchester – Into The Open
Singer-Songwriter Tim Winchester initially contacted me to record his live trio, consisting of upright bass, cello and perhaps some mandolin. However as the session drew near COVID concerns made a group scenario seem less than ideal so he decided to come in and track guitar and vocals to get the project started.
I immediately was taken by Tim’s clever songwriting, excellent vocal delivery and that fantastic sounding Martin D-18 of his. After the first session, I offered to play electric bass on the tracks as I felt these songs needed very specific bass parts to support them as well as to have a more complete “demo” version to share with other potential session players. Tim was planning to feature cellist Ellie Begin and vocalist Janice O’Rourke on a few cuts, and he mentioned that he was a big fan of the Pete Kilpatrick Band and wondered if guitarist Pete Morse might be interested in plating on the record. I reached out to Pete and he said he was very happy to oblige, so we sent him rough mixes of several tracks and he sent back a bunch of great options for guitar parts which really fit their respective songs so well.
When Ellie came in to do her cello overdubs she was well prepared and her soaring melodic lines, expressive tone and emotional playing had Tim & I “on cloud nine”!
Once again Pat Keane’s fantastic mastering work really shines on this recording, very proud of this project!
Primrose – Fallow
Primrose are a duo of talented musicians, Gardy Converse (Guitar, Bass and Vocals) and Cam Currier (Drums and Vocals). I first met the guys a few years back when their high school band “The Folding Faces” won a local band contest and came to Acadia to record a demo EP. I remember being impressed by Gardy’s adventurous guitar soloing and the way Cam really knew how to hit the drums to make them sound great. Gardy had been back since to record some of his original material with us at Acadia as well.
Gardy and Cam recorded all these tracks themselves in their basement, with a laptop and Apple Logic. They used a Focusrite Scarlett interface and had a total of three mics – a pair of $150 AKG LDCs and an SM57 to record everything, did the Glyn Johns drum mic technique – recorded layers and layers of background vocals and the raw tracks all sounded good. A squier bass direct into the interface, all the guitars through the same amp but with a variety of miking techniques to vary the sounds – they really made it work with the tools at hand.
They reached out to me to see if I would consider mixing it for them, and I was up for a try. Once I had the tracks imported to my ProTools rig and organized I came to find that the boys had done a damn fine job tracking and I was able to have fun with the mixes, including some fun Mutt Lange style background vocals and lots of crazy delays from the H3000. Looking forward to seeing where the guys take their music!
David J. Shaffer – Americana Divide
Many projects were affected by the pandemic in a variety of ways. We started tracking this record back in the beginning of 2020, not long before COVID first hit. David had shared some of his songs and I thought he sounded great and looking forward to doing the project.
I’ll always remember the first day of tracking – David’s brother Paul was playing drums on the album, making the long drive from his home in upstate NY. Paul had just retired from being a professional firefighter and the first thing he did with his pension was to stop in NH on his way to Maine for the session and buy a full-on MASSIVE Drum Workshop double bass kit, complete with new hardware and cymbals and various assorted noise makers. The drum shells had been fully setup and tuned but everything else was it’s original packaging, it looked like xmas morning in the live room as he unwrapped the new toys.
Local guitar slinger Nat Bailey was on lead guitar, and bassist Rick Coakley held down the low end. Vocalist Mckenzie Burke came in for some vocal overdubs.
Once the world shut down it was a long radio silence before we started looking at the tracks. I felt a few tracks could benefit from a different arrangement and Dave gave me his blessing to hire a couple session players to fill out some of the tracks (in some cases almost completely changing the nature of the song) I enlisted Flash Allen to play the Steinway and B3 on a few tracks turning them into absolute ballads, supporting the emotion of the lyrics and Dave’s soulful delivery. String wizard Andy Happel created some beautiful string arrangements, building up multi-part harmonies that really elevated a few of the songs to new heights.
Almost a year after the initial tracking had begun I reached out to David – I hadn’t heard from him for a bit and he was starting to wonder if he’d ever finish the record for a variety of reasons. We really hadn’t done any real solid mixing yet and his energy for the project was waning a bit. I told him I’d like to take a stab at the mixes and we were pretty pleased with the results. One last overdub – an absolutely blistering solo by David’s son Jonah and we had it in the can!
Steadman’s Landing – Steadman’s Landing
I have a deep love of acoustic music – as a kid American Beauty by the Grateful Dead (and their live all-acoustic record “Reckoning”) were among my favorite records. Years later I discovered bluegrass music and more or less swore off the electric guitar for a period of several years. Playing bluegrass requires that your listening skills be honed in a particularly sensitive way and is great training for a prospective audio engineer.
In October 2020 I got a call from fiddler Andrew Martelle – I knew Andrew from my days as the Music Director at the 317 Main Community Music Center in Yarmouth, ME where I hired him as a fiddle instructor.
Andrew was touring full time with local heroes “The Mallett Brothers Band” (featuring the sons of one of Maine’s best known musicians, David Mallett) and called to tell me about a new project spearheaded by singer-songwriter/pizza man extraordinaire Jake Hill. The Mallett Brothers had met Jake awhile back and Jake had recently written a batch of new songs that could use a bluegrass treatment.
Jake enlisted Andrew on fiddle and mandolin, brother Will Mallett on banjo and Nick Leen on the upright bass and they asked if I’d be willing to travel upcountry to Sebec Lake to a family camp accessed by boat and bring along a modest recording rig and try and make a record with no real expectations, the idea was to capture these songs and have a great time doing it.
Jake sent iPhone demos a couple days in advance and the boys spent a day at the camp rehearsing and arranging the songs. I brought my laptop ProTools rig, a Clarett 8PreX and a Seventh Circle rack loaded with a few flavors of mic preamps and a bunch of microphones.
After a brisk ride in an open boat, we arrived at the cabin – a classic Maine “camp” on a beautiful spot on the lake. I setup my gear in the control room – aka “kitchen” and we cleared out a large area in the live room/living room and set the boys up in a big circle.
I was able to quickly get tones (it’s amazing how fast it goes when you have minimal gear to futz with!) and we were off to the races. Right from the first downbeat it was obvious to everyone we had something special going on here. We spent the day tracking and that night were treated to Jake “Pizza Man” Hill’s AMAZING grilled pizzas. My bed was a comfy old timey bed out on the screen porch in the cool of an October evening BUT with an electric blanket – it was truly heavenly.
The next day brother Luke Mallett came out to offer some production advice and added vocals on a couple of tracks. My role became “bluegrass coach” – I would point out the more “bluegrassy” way to end a song or a harmony etc. By time we got to the final gang vocal overdubs Saturday night, spirits were high! The recording felt like a success well beyond our expectations. The combination of the great songs Jake brought to the table and the sheer joy for everyone to be making some music after a long period of COVID isolation was a definite “x-factor” – I was very thankful to be there to help capture it.