The Hold Steady studio diary - Stay Positive - #9

During our stay at Water Music, Craig laid down a great vocal on “Navy Sheets.” While me and Tad were listening back to it, I had an idea for a harmony idea in the bridge that would give more sparkle to the song at that point. Traditionally, bridges or “middle 8’s” as the English refer to them, exist for that reason: to give the listener a totally different section halfway through the song to keep them interested. “Middle 8” stands for the middle eight bars of the song. The Beatles were wonderful with the art of the bridge and they upped the ante by sometimes repeating bridges at later parts of the songs.

Anyway, the harmony was higher than Craig’s main vocal. I was hoping it would add to the hook in the bridge. I sang it in the control room for Tad and he liked it enough. And then laughingly told me to go into the vocal booth and sing it myself. Well, after a few attempts at it, we knew the part was too high for yours truly, so Tad went out to try it. While he was singing his heart out, two beautiful words entered my brain. “Hood, Patterson.” I knew the quality of his voice would be perfect for the song and give it the hook and grit that it needed. When Tad came back in the control room, he was all about that. So we moved on from there.

At one point during overdubs, Lucero was in New York City playing a couple of shows, and The Hold Steady, being friends and fans of the band, arranged for singer Ben Nichols to come by the next afternoon to try some backing vocal ideas. Craig had been thinking about what would suit Ben’s rather gruff, whiskey soaked, Americana styling vocal sound. So he had a plan for our guest man.

Saturday afternoon rolled in and most of The Hold Steady and Ben, with a few friends in tow, all arrived at the studio around the same time. With a couple of bottles of Jameson. And the normal 12 packs of brews. We were ready to work. Craig directed Ben, both out in the studio, and we nailed a bunch of cool parts. Since Ben was leaving town, we put him where we might need him in each song, knowing that we could always take out later.

Ben laid down great vocals in “Sequestered In Memphis,” “Constructive Summer” and “Magazines.” In “Constructive,” Ben got to sing some of the primo lines in the song including the “Get Hammered!” shout in the second chorus and “Raise a toast to St. Joe Strummer!” in the last chorus.

I was also impressed how six guys knocked off all that liquor and managed to get a shitload of work done. Impressive. Having a full day of work ahead of me and too many knobs to twiddle, I totally abstained from any such activity.

It was a pleasure working with Ben. I loved the sound of his voice and he was really easy to work with. A helluva singer.

During our time at Wild Arctic, we had another visitor who would add his own touch to “Sequestered In Memphis.” I’ve been a fan of Guided By Voices for over a decade and always wanted to work with them. A few years ago at SXSW in Austin, I met the lead guitarist, Doug Gillard. He’s a great player, and he and drummer Kevin March always formed the foundation of the shows live. They steadied the ship amidst all the chaos.

Anyway, Tad knew him also and we both recently found out that he had moved to NYC, from Dayton. My wife Sharon had his contact info, so we e-mailed him and he visited one of the last days of the recording. That day we were busy beefing up a bunch of the group vocal tracks and doing a bunch of different vocals in a really ambient stairwell with the microphone at the top of the stairs and the singers at the bottom. So we threw Doug in to the group to do a bunch of shouts.

When we were done with that, Tad suggested Doug add rock guitar riffs that would lead into each verse in “Sequestered.” A great idea, and Doug laid into the part as if he was a shark smelling blood. It really kicked the transition of that song into high gear. Many high fives were exchanged before he left.

While all this guesting was going on, Franz had a mission he was embarking on for a song entitled “One For The Cutters.” The song opens with a spooky keyboard on top of the rhythm section, and we had planned for it to be a real harpsichord. One of those medieval-aged keyboards where each note has two strings that vibrate to give it a buzzy sounding piano vibe.

I had found a couple in different studios in NYC, but we couldn’t get in either of them for the time we needed to do the overdub. So Franz went on a little search and came up with one in some undisclosed place up in Westchester, N.Y. While I was overdubbing in Long Island City with Tad and Craig, Franz and Scott Norton, the tracking engineer on the record, took my car up to Westchester armed with only a Digidesign 002 pro tools system, some cables and a couple of microphones. The bottom line is that they got the job done and in fact brought back a great sounding harpsichord.

One of other guests of note on the record was someone I’d been working with since 1993. Yikes! That’s a long time. While we were cutting “Both Crosses,” I thought that musically the song would be pretty much the basic track with minor additions. The one thing I thought I could hear in the song was banjo. And not just any banjo, lead banjo! And I knew just the guy who would hear this song and then could solo on top of it for hours. His name is J Mascis, my favorite guitar god!

I e-mailed him asking if he would be into it and he said he would. So I sent off an e-mail of the rough mix to his home studio, Bisquiteen, and he laid down some great banjo riffing madness. When we got the tracks back, we did do some editing but it totally achieved what I was hoping it would do. It’s kind of weird when you know someone well enough to know what he would do with a banjo in his hands.

There were other guests on this record that added their talents to the cause. Peter Hess, who had been playing with the band for a few records now, came in and arranged and played some kick-ass horns. His soul/Stax horn parts on “Sequestered” are outrageously good and really give the chorus some depth and funk.

Also, Franz did some wonderful string arrangements on the record and the string players were great to work with.

So with all the recording done, the next phase was the most important to date and first of the last two “make or break” phases of a record.

“Ladies and gentlemen, let’s mix!”