It turns out to not be an issue for Bobby, who is on this song like white on rice. Or like prick on a neo-con. By the time we get to the third take, he’s playing it so well that we do one more for good luck, do a quick analog edit and the track is done. So far tracking is going smoother than I could have hoped for. We take a break and get ready to move on to another complicated song, “Slapped Actress.” This is the monster riff that became a song in rehearsal. It started with Tad playing the intro riff over and over again and everyone really digging it.

Well, here we are at Water Music and it’s time to track this sucker. “Slapped Actress” is pretty dense and it’s still really fresh with the band. In fact, we still haven’t decided how it will end. We start running it down and it’s sounding really good. We do a take and everyone joins me in the control room for a playback. We agree that it should end with a fade on the “monster riff.” A nice, slow fade.

But to add an extra taste to the fade, Tad came up with a group vocal melody which became the “whoas” at the end of the song. And that tied the whole ending together. We fade the music and you have the “whoas” carrying on the end. That is what’s great about this band. Many ideas. And a lot of them are great.

So the boys go back out to the studio and start hammering out the song. Everyone is really focused and playing their asses off. Franz is bashing away at the piano furiously and playing some wonderful ad libs at the end. I said before that the song was new. All the time during tracking, Franz was still working out his part and really got it going towards the outro. So after we got the master take, Franz and I went back and re-recorded his part. It came out great and his melodies really work at the end around the vocals.

With no rest on our schedule, it’s time to move on to another important song, the centerpiece of the record, “Lord I’m Discouraged.” From the first day of rehearsal, when the band ran this song down, I got chills. Craig really had a great handle on the lyrics even back then. And the song really moved in a beautiful way.

Tad wrote this song in a hotel room somewhere in Europe. It’s got a beautiful, lonesome feel to it. He decided during tracking to play his 12-string electric on the basic track. It’s a sweet, chimey, yet overdriven sound. It totally fits the mood of the song. Visually, the guitar is a beast. It’s a Gibson double neck guitar, with a 6-string neck and a 12-string neck. It weighs a ton. I remember the first time Tad played that guitar. It was at Irving Plaza in NYC, the first show of the Boys and Girls In America tour. He used it for three songs and then needed a chiropractor.

We started tracking “Lord I’m Discouraged” and it really felt great. This was one song in particular that Bobby really was on in rehearsal. He really feels the half-time songs great. On the previous record, I felt like he gave “First Night” the laid back feel that it needed. Nice and relaxed and with every snare hit just a shade behind the beat enough to make it totally hypnotic.

So Bobby had the same feel for “Lord I’m Discouraged,” and it worked great. When we rehearsed that song I wanted to make sure it ended on a real melodic note. I wanted to make sure there was a real payoff to the song. The band added the end vamp which repeated the cool lyric that Craig had, “Excuses and half truths and fortified wine.” Which worked great to me. It made sure that the song ended on a powerful note. And then Craig added the last line which ties up the lyric: “ I know it’s unlikely she’ll ever be mine. So I hopefully pray she don’t die.” To me that’s genius. And that’s why people love Craig’s thing. He is something special.

Bobby nails another tough song and we are doing great. This is why I love Bobby Drake. He is a down to earth, badass, hard working motherfucker. The guy never complains and works so hard to make the right takes happen. The only time I remember him having a fit was the day he was getting shit about playing drums and he made a stand. We were rehearsing for B&GIA and he just stopped playing and said, “If it’s so easy, why don’t you play the drums!” And he offered his sticks to each person there and we all stared at him. Obviously, we knew that he had the hardest job and after that we gave him a bit more room. Well earned, I might add.

Point being that without Bobby’s inner fortitude, we would never have the foundation we had on either record. Knowing and working with Bobby has made me a happier person. He’s one of my favorite people in the world.

It’s a week into the tracking sessions and we are ahead of schedule. Which is a good thing. We originally had only 12 days booked at Water Music. And then we were going to take a few days off and start up at Wild Arctic in Long Island City. Some time during rehearsals in December, a show came up in Ybor City, Tampa that the band had to do. It was scheduled for the 18^th or so of January.

With us doing so well at Water Music, I decided to juggle the schedule a bit. Instead of finishing up at Water Music, taking a day off to move the gear and then work two days before taking a three-day weekend while the band was in Florida, I decided we should stay at Water Music until the band returned from the show. We were all pretty comfortable and I figured it’d be better not to uproot everyone and then have two days of settling in to Wild Arctic and then a day to settle in when they returned.

With that bit of minutiae taken care of, we forged ahead with the tracking...

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Specifically with mixing, I always start with the song that has sounded the best throughout each stage of the record. Also, the song that sounds like it’s the easiest to mix. And I always leave the first song up overnight and when I’m in the NYC area, visit my favorite mastering engineer, Greg Calbi, and listen to the mix in his room the next morning. So if the mix sounds good at 8:00 p.m., I leave it there and leave the studio with my analogue tape and digital back up.

In fact, I knew the first two songs we were going to track were going to be easy for Bobby to nail. Coming off the last record, I wanted him to hit the ground running. I wanted him to have a positive first day.

In all aspects of recording, I try to accentuate the positive. For me, it’s a much better way of working than the people who can’t make a record without a bunch of drama or aggression going on. I want the artists I work with to have a feeling of accomplishment and a feeling of progress. Always getting better and always feeling like they just did something great. The key to getting that to happen is by putting them in a situation to succeed. And then, when you hit the bump in the road, you deal with it accordingly.

Well, “Adderall” came out great! Bobby nailed it in the first few takes. Totally solid. He and Galen locked in together like any great rhythm section would. Tad rocked the guitar parts and Franz’s Vox Continental sound was the icing on the cake. At times, the keyboard sound reminds me of The Animals or, more recently, The Murder City Devils, who I had come to love after doing a record with them in 2000. Craig was super helpful at keeping the intensity of the performance up, by laying down some cool vocals. Like many of the other songs, he hadn’t totally finalized his lyrics, but he was really close and had the melody and delivery down really well.

While the band was hot, we also tracked a song with the working title “Waltz.” Eventually that song would be called “Cheyenne Sunrise.” This song’s feel was the total opposite of “Adderall.” A cool country & western track that Craig really sat on top of. It had some wonderful Floyd Cramer-style piano in it, courtesy of Mr. Nicolay. It’s a really cool song and a stylistic departure for the band in many ways. Unfortunately, the bottom line with this song was that it wasn’t going to make the record.

The agenda with making records these days is such that you never have enough songs for both the record and additional tracks. And I don’t mean throwaway tracks that are just filler. Twelve years ago, artists would cram as many songs on a record as possible. Remember seventy-minute records? I wish I didn’t. Who really gives a shit about songs 14-19? The real problem is that you’re bound to have a bunch of crap mixed into a record like that. Many artists can’t really write more than a few real quality songs anyway. If they can write any at all. Of course, there are exceptions to every statement, one being the latest Drive-By Truckers record, which feels like two single records.

That’s why the LP was a perfect medium. Especially length-wise. A thirty-six to forty-four minute record is perfect length for the attention span of a normal earthling. And here’s the best part, if the damn record is great, the listener will listen again! Winner!

So it comes back to “Adderall.” As the record took its shape, each song began to mature and become it’s own being. One or two songs that we thought might not be right for the record grew up a bunch. Songs that we liked originally never graduated. And that’s what happened with “Adderall.”

At the end of the mixing stage, we all took copies of the mixes to judge which versions of each song was the best and to think about the songs that were going to be on the record and the sequence or running order. Very early on, in the rehearsal stage, I thought “Adderall” would start the record. As we progressed, “Constructive Summer” became more of the song that would set the tone of the album. The lyrics were more uplifting. It had a cooler melody and it had more of a chorus. “We’re gonna build something this summer!” And it had an awesome intro with Tad’s monster riffage and Bobby beating the shit out of his snare drum. It also had a cool Franz piano break in the middle of the song. It’s a bit reminiscent of the previous record in a good way. Since this new record goes places the band hasn’t gone before, I was mindful to keep some of the record grounded in The Hold Steady style that kids knew and loved.

So “Adderall” became expendable. But y’know what? The song will find a home somewhere if it hasn’t already. And it’ll be fine.

Going into Stay Positive, I wanted myself and the band to have a distraction to deflect any pressure the band might feel going into this important record. Boys And Girls In America really helped make a bunch of noise in our country and certainly in England. I wasn’t worried about bonding so much as people second guessing too much on this record.

I remember the first days of B&GIA. The guys were really loose. And y’know what, they’d all been in bands before and had experiences making records. Bobby Drake was maybe the person who might have been a bit on edge, needlessly so. Drummers always have the most pressure to start a record. They are the foundation that the rest of the music rests upon.

I remember setting up a practice area on the other side of the studio with a PA and instruments. It would be easier to rehearse songs without using headphones and without beating up our perfectly tuned drums. It was a great way to freshen up on the arrangements and the parts and then move over to the recording side and get some kick-ass takes.

One of the first things Bobby did as we were cutting tracks was bite me on the leg. Not so much a mad-dog-take-a-piece-of-meat-out-of-me bite. I just remember listening to a take and turning around to give a thumbs up, and then I felt something tugging at my leg. When I looked down, it was the Drake! Another time I was working on Pro Tools, sitting like a computer programmer, when I heard a bunch of noise behind me and next thing I know, Bobby is sitting on my shoulders. It was kind of a Spider-Man move, if you know what I mean. I did what any self-respecting idiot would do at that point: I challenged the rest of the band to a chicken fight and ran around for a few minutes. Pictures were taken, laughs were had.

Anyway, that’s my point about loose. People relaxed. Spontaneous things happening. Not worrying about minutiae or things that you have no control over. So on this record, I thought it would be good to have everyone focused on something other than the record. Little did I know it would be “The Beard Off.”

In February 2007, the band and I went into the Magic Shop to record a song for the Dylan biopic, I’m Not There. The song they picked was, “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window,” a cool, single-only release from around the Blonde On Blonde era.

During that time, I was sporting a huge beard that would have made Fidel Castro or ZZ Top proud. The nicknames “Johnny Jihad” and “Talib-Agnello” were thrown around me liberally. The ability to grow facial hair came up, and it was decided that Bobby and I would show up at The Magic Shop clean shaven to see who could grow a beard fastest. But it was not to be, the day came and due to extenuating circumstances, one of us was not shorn.

Fast forward to January 3, our first day at Water Music. I immediately resurrected the idea of the Beard Off with Bobby, and he was down with it. The next thing I hear from behind me is Tad saying, “I’m in too!” Next was Craig, “Sure! What are we doing?” And last but not least Franz. Galen, sensing the amount of raging beard testosterone in the room decided to beg off. So our rallying cry for Stay Positive became, “Don’t Shave!”

Here we had it. Beard Off ‘08 was about to commence. We had cameras ready and daily line-ups all the way through mixing. The Unified Scene chimed in once pictures of facial progress were posted on the band’s website. Everyone had a favorite. It was a fun distraction that was a cool sidebar to a great recording experience.

But man, what dividends that many shows bring a band. Through the years, they have been followed by a rabid fanbase. They call themselves “The Unified Scene.” Their ranks have grown by every show, tour and record. It is a symbiotic relationship, where both parties feed off each other. While making Staying Positive, Tad posted weekly picture updates on the website to let the fans know how the record was progressing. The Scene was always posting messages and feeding off the clues that Tad would leave them. Even little clues like writing on the console tape would lead to speculation who was guesting on the record or what instruments were being used. These kids really love their band and devote much time to them. And vice versa.

The first day of tracking couldn’t have come too soon. After rehearsing most of December, everybody took the holidays off. At least I did. Tad and the boys made sure to get a few more rehearsals in before the big day, January 3rd. We really felt good about being prepared for this record. Even though we had a remarkable 19 songs we were discussing recording, we felt that we had fleshed out the 13-15 contenders enough to get the job done while leaving some room for spontaneity. With these boys though, spontaneity is never really an issue!

We originally were going to start the record in mid-December and get a week of recording in before the holiday break. And that would have been possible if we were really focusing on 12 songs. But here’s what happens at The Hold Steady rehearsals:

(John enters rehearsal room)

“Hey guys, how’s it going today?”

Tad: “Great, I’ve got this new riff I’m working on!

(Plays enormous rock riff)

“Wow, that’s great! Let’s work on that a little bit.”

It was pretty clear that starting the record before Christmas was going to be a pipe dream.

It is the morning of January 3rd and things are all in place to start tracking. Demon Drums are ready to go with fresh heads on Bobby’s kit in the big room at Water Music. Scott Norton, my tracking engineer, was at the studio super early setting up microphones and plugging in all the extra equipment. The beautiful Studer A800 24 track analogue tape machine was aligned and ready to go. I had bought a bunch of 2” tape when my favorite tape company prepared to stop production. I had saved a large batch for this record.

Bobby Drake is hitting the drums and I am getting sounds. I generally get a good starting sound on the entire kit and Bobby comes in to listen back. The drum sound will be affected by the inclusion of the rest of the band playing, but you’ve got to start somewhere. After discussing the tones of the drums and agreeing with Tad that the bass drum should have more depth, we tweak that drum and we send Bobby back out to play some more.

Bobby, on this record, is showing what playing 200 shows does to most players. His playing and feel are so much more solid right off the bat on this record. He is way more comfortable, with me, with the studio and the task at hand on Stay Positive. Don’t get me wrong, he was no slouch on the last record. There was just some adjustment time for him to get “in the zone.”

Signing off on the drum sound, we move on to Galen Polivka, one of my favorite bass players to record. And not because of his mixologist wizardry and awesome neck rubs. He’s what I’ve always considered the “rock” of the band. And that to me pertains to consistency. He’s the one at rehearsals taking notes on arrangements and different tweaks that we do. He’s the steady in The Hold Steady. We go between two basses to see which one sounds best and then we hook up an additional amp to add more of a brighter sound and then we threw Bobby out there so they could jam together.

They are playing for only about 20 seconds when I turn to Scott and say, “Dude, these guys are gonna play their asses off on this record!” I am very excited.

We get sounds with Tad Kubler, “Gibson Master Extraordinaire.” Tad is great at dialing in awesome sounds on many amps and has been actually playing through each amp all morning, getting a mental picture of which amps suit which songs. He makes my life waaaaaaay easier. And that’s why I love him. Not in the biblical sense, obviously. I meant, “love working with him.”

Next up, Franz Nicolay. With Franz, we set up all beautiful, vintage, analogue, authentic, etc. keyboards. A beautiful Grand Piano, a Hammond Organ with Leslie and a Wurlitzer Electric Piano.

Lest you think I’m a vintage snob, we also have his shitty digital keyboard for any other sounds we need to replicate. That’s sarcasm. We actually will use the digital keys on the record.

Franz is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Or vice versa. He is a school trained musician with a great ear who can also rock out with the best of them. And he does. He is in The Hold Steady. A few weeks later he will chart great string arrangements and play a mean harpsichord.

All that’s left is reference vocals. At least I’m calling them reference vocals. I really felt strongly about putting Craig in a situation where he was actually thinking of the real vocal takes while the band was playing live. For a few reasons. I wanted to capture a live vocal that would be great for the record. I wanted him to start getting comfortable singing the songs now, so he wouldn’t have to do that when we started the vocal session later on. Also, I wanted him to give him a vehicle that would help him finish his lyrics. And I wanted to audition different microphones for different songs.

So we set up the vocal sound that could be the keeper sound with a bit of tweaking.

And now we were ready to cut our first track, “Adderall.”

The album version of the song is great for me, but I think it’s best to have the vocal sit a little more on top of the mix for the single. And we’ll cut the intro in half so we get to the vocal quicker. You know the old saying: “Don’t bore us, where’s the chorus!?” Actually, that saying is not that old.

I pretty much knew from the first day we rehearsed this song that it was gonna be special. It was back in December while we doing four rehearsals a week, hashing out all the songs. It was really cold. And we’d run over to the local bar, Jacks, to get hot toddies. That’s how The Hold Steady roll. Hot drinks in the winter, cold drinks in the summer.

In it’s original form, the chorus melody was not focused. Also, the chorus went about 16 bars too long. As we ran through it, we knew Craig needed to hit the chorus on the downbeat with a melody or hook that was strong and memorable. We spent a bunch of time on the previous record, Boys And Girls In America, talking about that. We call it, “hitting on the ones.”

This is how The Hold Steady rehearse. Tad and the rest of the boys hash out the arrangement and get the song sounding tight as Craig works out his melodies and lyrics over the top. He is constantly refining the delivery and lyrics. He’s always in his book pulling out new ideas. And Tad can crank out the riffage like nobody’s business.

Listening to the demos of the new songs, there were some things I wanted to achieve. I’ll get to most of them eventually. One of the things I wanted to have in one song was a chorus breakdown with a group vocal. Kind of a sing-along, if you will. Knowing how involved their fans are at the shows, I wanted to give them extra room to stretch and sing along. “Sequestered” was the right song for that treatment. On the demo, that song had a long chorus outro and something needed to happen during it.

One of the ways to add a dynamic to that vamp out was to put a breakdown in there. The reaction at rehearsal went both ways. I think half the guys liked it; the other half were skeptical. Franz had also thought that a breakdown would be good in the song. So we agreed on the concept, but not the execution. We started with a drastic break, which contained only claps and vocals, but that seemed a bit to light. At one point, Bobby started to play a cool Phil Spectorish beat to the break and we were there! These moments happen in rehearsal often. An idea stalls and then someone in the band makes it happen. A couple of guys didn’t buy the idea, but I promised it would be awesome in the end. I’m still shocked they took my word.

While overdubbing at Wild Arctic in Long Island City, we had a visit from a friend of the band. Ben, the singer from Lucero, was in town, and he came by and hung out for a day. And we put him to work. While he was putting backing vocals on the choruses, the idea came up to have Ben be the singer in the breakdown of the song. So he sang the hell out of the break. After living with that direction for a couple of days, it was decided we still needed the gang in there. It seemed odd going from Craig singing the chorus to Ben’s totally different character in the break. So we added about six guys in a stairwell, with a microphone at the bottom of the steps singing the chorus of the song. After two takes, we had the best of both worlds. Ben’s distinctive voice and a bunch of singing vikings in a live stairwell. I like!

As I said before, Craig had been messing around with lyrics at rehearsal, adding certain ones, dropping some, changing vocal inflections and entrances. We all knew that basis of the song, but it wasn’t until Wild Arctic, when Craig actually started the lead vocal for the song, that I got to hear the entire story. On his second take of the song, after I had checked the vocal sound, me and Tad, who had stopped in to be on call, were laughing our asses off about how good it was! Whenever I hear the song, I can see Craig singing it!

Another of the things I wanted to accomplish on this record was to get Craig more involved vocally on the basic tracks. On B&GIA, Craig played guitar live and didn’t do much singing while the band was cutting the basics. Although it worked well then, I’ve been really psyched lately having singers lead the band while tracking. The advantages are many, but I’ll name a few right off the bat. When a band hears a vocal and can play to it, they know where the spaces are and how to play around the vocal. Y’know, put fills in certain spots, drive the chorus a bit more, be noisier in an instrumental break or an intro. It’s actually a great map when and when not to overplay. Also, I notice tempos are more under control when there’s a vocal on top. Or at least you can tell when the track is getting too fast by the singer rushing his delivery. It’s super helpful, believe me.

So on this record, I set up Mr. Finn in a booth right by the control room with a bunch of different microphones to try out on each song. He’s got a distinctive voice and a distinctive delivery, so I was able to audition a different microphone for each song. It was kind of a sneaky way to do a microphone check without wasting his time. Anyway, we decorated his booth with Christmas lights and a comfy chair and he was able to hang in there and listen to tunes and read and whatever he wanted. I also stuck a couple of dolls in his room for inspiration. Kinda, but not really. (When the band posted some picture of us making the record, one of the “Unified Scene,” the band’s rabid fan base, posted that he thought he saw a Freddie Mercury doll in the vocal booth.) Craig was super focused on guiding the band. Even without finished lyrics, he was able to be the focal point of the song. In fact, we kept one live vocal on the record, because it was awesome.

Anyway, as we were finishing up the single edit, I was pretty stoked that we had finally completed the record. Except we weren’t done. We all took our reference disks home and lived with them for a week. Vagrant, the record label, got their refs and lived with them too. As it turned out, the label felt that the record would be better served to be brighter. I wasn’t necessarily in agreement, but I understood why they wanted it that way. Greg, the mensch that he is, made time for me to run in and audition brightening two songs just a bit.

We started with the first single and then we did “Constructive Summer,” the first song on the record. Greg gave both songs a sprinkle of top end and we presented it to the band and the label. The label loved it and the band was fine with it too. I liked it too, and if it made the label happy, great! Now all Greg had to do was tweak the rest of the record to match the sound of the first two. Which he did over the next couple of days. So we finally were ready to put the record to bed.

“Goodnight, Stay Pos!”

“Goodnight, John!”