Convertible

• Guitar [rhythm & lead]: Artinger Spruce Double Convertible
  • [“ringy dingy” melody]: Scott Walker Electro w/vintage Danelectro pickups

• Amp: [rhythm & lead] Fryette Aether
  • [“ringy dingy” melody]: 1963 Fender Vibrolux

The main part of this track had a long run as a two-chord groove from the library in my looper. The opening “ringy-dingy” melody and the bass line were both present in the loop, whose original purpose was to give me something I could use to practice playing faster lines with a cleaner picking technique. When I started working on this record it was an obvious candidate for developing a track. I put on my composer hat and wrote the main melody, as well as the contrasting B section. From there everyone seemed to get the tune right away. Except, of course, for me. I did a LOT of takes of this one, especially the solo. I don’t know whether all the time I spent playing to the original groove in my looper helped or hindered me.

Cobblestones

• Guitar [all tracks]: Ruokangas “Alice”
• Amp: K&M Kimock through Universal Audio OX [I think……it was done a long time ago!]
• Effects: Budda Bud-Wah; Mike Beigel Tru-Tron 3X

In the summer of 2020, I had been working on another acoustic record and hadn’t even touched an electric guitar in a couple of months. When I finally picked up an electric guitar, some wah-wah licks from a “just playing my guitar at home” iPhone video that I had shared on Facebook a few years ago popped into my head. I turned on my recording gear to see if I could develop the idea into a tune. Within four weeks I had all eight full-band tunes for this record worked out. The main guitar tracks on this one – melody and rhythm – survived intact from the original demo. I added the doubled final melody and wah-wah licks on the outro after everything else was done. The outro was Steve’s idea; in my original demo the tune ended on the next-to-last note of the lick.

Vivi’s Bounce

• Guitar [rhythm & lead]: 1958 Gibson ES-175D

[faux-B3 chords on intro]: Jersey Girl Homemade Guitars Audrey/Seneca through Strymon Lex

• Amp: Fryette Aether

Steve had recently acquired a great 1959 Hammond B-3 with a matching Leslie. I thought it would be fun to have a tune that featured it since Steve doesn’t get too many calls where people want him to play the Hammond. I started with one of the most obvious B-3/guitar licks ever and challenged myself to write an original tune with it as the opening figure.  I did a very basic demo with a lame swing drum loop, rhythm guitar, bass, and lead guitar. Steve had the idea of using a different rhythm for the head, which is known to Tom and Roscoe as the “Funky Rhumba.” They used to use it on certain tunes with Robben Ford. As with “Bay of Funky” on my last record, it offers a chance to play as we would in a normal live setting. Just the four of us, no overdubbed parts. This time, of course, we weren’t in the same room at the same time. The trick was to get it to feel as if we were. It helps that Roscoe and Tom have played many, many gigs together. The song is named after my youngest granddaughter who, at the time I wrote it, was not yet walking but had a very amusing way of bouncing herself across the floor.

Akiko

• Guitar [all parts]: Jersey Girl Homemade Guitars Audrey/Seneca
• Amp [up to solo]: Fryette Aether w/Analog Man Astro Tone fuzz

[solo & last verse]: 1968 Marshall 50w “Plexi” through UA OX

[comping]: K&M Kimock through UA OX + Roland Dimension D chorus

This tune was in progress at the time my father passed away, in early 2016, and it was more or less finished by the time we did my last record, in the spring of 2019. But that record had a surfeit of ballads. This piece needed more work than the others did so I put it aside. When working up the demos for this record I created a version which was, as Vivi’s Bounce was, quite sketchy compared to the rest of the tracks. I didn’t even bother with a drum loop or keyboards, except for a little intro with piano and a synthesizer pad. After I had finished the first round of demos, I got together with brother Jon to go through them and decide how to approach the tunes. On this one he suggested having the guitar solo happen over a different key and chord changes. We sat down with a couple of guitars and worked that out. Jon’s idea transformed the whole tune, and the final orchestration is a great example of why I love working with Steve. He turned my sketchy little demo into a truly memorable piece of music. Of course Tom and Roscoe had something to do with that as well! Akiko, by the way, is the luthier at Jersey Girl Homemade Guitars who does all the inlay/marquetry work, coloration, and finish work on their instruments. (to which they refer as “Compositions”) I follow them on Instagram. Akiko’s focus and attention to detail pops right out of the photographs they share. This tune seemed to reflect that energy so I wrote to ask if I could use Akiko’s name as the title. She graciously agreed to let me do that. And the guitar is an object of great beauty, in sound, in appearance, in feel, in build quality, and in depth of character. I hope that comes through when people listen to the track.  Tasukete kurete arigatou, Akiko, Eiko, & Kaz!

Funky Princess

• Guitar [through KD first solo]: Artinger Retro Sport “Lily”
  • [KD second solo through end of track]: Koll Duo-Glide

• Amp [through KD first solo]: Strymon Iridium
  • [KD second solo through end of track]: K&M Kimock through Two-Rock 212 cabinet; 1963 Fender Vibrolux (+Strymon Ola chorus on rhythm under EJ octaves melody)

This version of the solo acoustic tune “Princess” from my first record also came out of a “playing at home” video. One day an idea popped into my head: what it would sound like if Booker T. and the M.G.s did a version of that tune?  I worked up a quick version with my old Steve Cropper-approved surf green Telecaster and my looper then shot the video. Once I knew that Roscoe Beck and Tom Brechtlein were going play on the record, I asked Eric Johnson to contribute to one track. This was an obvious candidate so on the demo I played one set of parts as myself and one as “Eric.” The guys played to those guitar parts. Eric recorded his guitar parts after the other instruments were done, then I redid my own guitar parts. Steve preferred my original guitar part from the demo up through my first solo, though, so we used that even though the guitar and amp setups were quite different from what I’d used on the rest of the track, and not what I would normally use for a featured guitar track! Steve’s B-3 is showcased again on this one. It was my idea to have Eric and myself trade licks under Steve’s solo instead of recording a normal rhythm guitar part there. The Wurlitzer electric piano was covering that role anyway. On the original I had played rhythm guitar on the Telecaster throughout the whole track, but with all the other guitar parts that were going on the Wurly just worked better.

Alice

• Guitar [loop & solo]: Ruokangas Unicorn Artisan w/Valvebucker pickup “Alice”
• Amp: K&M Kimock through Two-Rock 2×12 cabinet; Fryette Aether
• Effects: Strymon Volante & Night Sky; Analog Man Astro Tone

When Steve and I got to the point where we knew what the tracks were going to be and approximately how long they were, he suggested that I add a short solo guitar piece. I had a number of those stashed away but also built this one as a “proof-of-concept” for the idea of doing something melodic over an ambient loop. Steve loved this, as did everyone else who heard it. This version is my original sketch. The lead is the only take I did, although I cut about two minutes out of it. Steve added a very subtle drone part in the bass register to outline the harmony the melody guitar was suggesting. The guitar I used was built by my good friend from Finland, Juha Ruokangas. It has a unique pickup system which features a tube preamp embedded in the guitar! The resulting sound is quite different from anything I’ve heard from any “normal” electric guitar. As I’ve been playing “normal” electric guitars for over 50 years that requires some letting go of expectations. I had to pass through the looking glass, as it were. After I made that observation, Juha christened the guitar “Alice.” Brother Jon amended the pronunciation to “Ah-lee-chay,” the Italian version, as a nod to his Italian friend Simona’s daughter with that name.

Marlowe’s Mood

• Electric guitar: Artinger “Lily” 
• Acoustic guitar: Steve Hunt’s Larrivée (played by Steve, actually! “I can’t really play guitar, but there is one thing I can do well: strumming.” – SH)
• Amp: [melody] K&M Kimock; Fryette Aether

[guitar solo, bass solo, outro jam] Universal Audio Dream ‘65

This tune originated as a piece in my looper that I referred to as “A-flat blues” for lack of a better title. I used it in a YouTube guitar demo video about ten years ago. That guitar is long gone but I’d always thought the musical idea was worthy of being turned into an actual piece. As with several of the other tracks on this record, the loop included a bass line I’d played which ended up being a key part. It’s fun hearing Roscoe play my bass lines, and he even admitted to copping a couple of my licks. He also transcribed and played a lick in his solo that Steve had played in the “bass solo” he did on his keyboard when we rebuilt the original demo. I was in Steve’s studio when Ricardo Monzón did the percussion tracks, which were done the day before we mixed the record. It was fun to watch Ricardo orchestrate it; he had a whole armada of percussion instruments and used almost all of them! Marlowe is another of my granddaughters (there are three as of the time of this writing; the oldest, Noelle, has her own tune as well but it’s still under construction); she is a young lady of many moods.

Stanky

• Guitar [main melody & first solo]: Artinger/Sakashta NouPaul “Kashu”

[harmony lead & licks on tag]: Mario Martin S-type “Craig’s ‘56”

[second solo]: JGHG “Seneca”

• Amp [all tracks]: Carol-Ann OD-3r through Carol-Ann/Jensen Blackbird 1×12 cabinet
• Effects: Analog Man Astro Tone fuzz; Mike Beigel Tru-Tron 3X

Another piece whose genesis was a groove in my looper: a simple funky C9 groove over the bass line that became the real basis of the tune. I wrote the initial bit of melody that starts over the C9 groove and expanded it using my composer hat: “Okay, where does this want to go next?” That’s not unlike solving a mathematics problem, something I did often in my previous life. I chose to use all chords with the same value – dominant 9th [James Brown!] chords – which is something Leni Stern talked about in her highly recommended book on composing and compositions. There are two different sections; both start with a blues form C9 > F9 but after the F9 the chords land on G#9 in the first and F#9 in the second. I used a simple harmonic and melodic move to get back to C9 from each of them, one that I’ve heard both John Coltrane and Jeff Beck use. As a result, the 9th chords for 11 of the 12 chromatic tones in our 12-tone system turn up at some point in the tune. [Can you find the missing one?] I also added a harmony guitar part. Because the chords are all “the same” I challenged myself to add a little spice via the melody and harmony parts. My original intention was to have it sound and feel like two different guitarists: one with a “clean jazz” kind of sound, for which I used my ’58 ES-175D, the other being a more aggressive approach with the amp up loud and fuzz or distortion and a Fender-style guitar. I guess I could have had one of my guitarist friends do the second part, but I had a lot of fun coming up with and executing both parts myself. Steve kept asking me to make the main guitar’s sound more “stanky” which led me to switch from the 175 to Kashu, a much more aggressive, “eat the room” guitar. Even so, Steve still added a bit more “stank” to what I had done when he did the mixing. 

Sister Suz

• Guitar [lead & solos]: Collings I-35LC aged

[rhythm]: Artinger Kyngsland

• Amp [lead & solos]: Fryette Aether

[rhythm]: K&M Kimock through UA OX

This piece evolved from a set of chord changes in my looper which I’d written to practice over. There were two loops with this kind of “gospel” feel and similar but slightly different sets of chord changes. I combined them and worked up a melody using some of the ideas from my many practice sessions over the chords. I then made a demo where I played guitars, bass, and piano, and my friend Evan Kesel did a real drum track. Steve, Roscoe, and Tom jumped all over this tune; everyone seemed to play with an abundance of joy and enthusiasm. Which is true of the whole record, but this one especially has that feel of a band having fun together.

Listening to the demo, my wife told me that it felt like coming back into a quiet harbor after a long day spent sailing. Nowadays that’s an all-too-rare treat for me as I live quite far from the ocean or even from a Great Lake. When it does happen, it’s most often when I’m visiting my brother Bob and his wife Suz [short for Susan/Susie, btw] at their place on the coast in Maine. Suz also has a lovely Mother Earth side to her personality which fits the groove of this song. I might have named the tune after the sailboat in question, but that name is already taken by a famous pop song, and besides, people in my life seemed to be the source for track names this time around. Anyway, from the time I first did the demo, I knew this was destined to be the last track on the record.