Norah Long

If you are from the Twin Cities and know anything about the local theater scene, then Norah Long is a name you are familiar with. Take a look at her bio on the Guthrie Theater page and you will see what I mean.

Norah and I are working on a full album of traditional church music but she has given me liberty to do with them what I see fit, making it a non-traditional album of traditional songs. We brought in Zach Miller to play drums, Aaron Fabbrini on upright bass and Michael Pearce-Donley on piano and organ for a small handful of tunes. I am also excited to be bringing a portable recording set-up to a large Lutheran church to record Bill Chouinard on an actual pipe organ for a couple of the songs.
Norah has been spoiling us rotten with the most amazing chocolate candy-bars you could imagine. Chocolate with bacon, white chocolate with dried kalamata olives, chocolate with passion fruit and sea salt. Unreal.

It is a delight to work with her and a really fun challenge to breathe some uniqueness into these old church hymns and spirituals.

award winning?

I recently received an email from Elizabeth Hunnicutt with this photo attachment...and a note that said "Thanks Matt!"

nice.

Rachel Kurtz-May

My friend Rachel Kurtz-May and I have wanted to work on a project together for years. Unluckily for me, she has several friends who have smaller recording set-ups and are willing to make albums for her at a very affordable price. This is why it just hasn't worked out, until now. Rachel is recording another CD, from many sources with varying sizes of studios, but this time she decided to throw a little audio love my way!

Rachel came in last week and did a bunch of tracking. Solo acoustic and vocal songs, overdubs of electric guitar with our friend Nate Houge (who was also on the Monsters of Folk tour with me and Jonathan Rundman), our rapping friend Agape laid down his rhythmic vocal stylings on a song called "Kurt Cobain," and we ended the session by doing full drums with her husband Michael on electric guitar and local gospel drummer, Chico Cockrell.

The mixes will be finished up soon and I have high hopes that this will be her best record yet.

Jonathan Rundman

Over the last several years I have had the pleasure of doing a bunch of mix work for my friend Jonathan Rundman. He and I go back several years and even shared a tour together (called the Monsters of Folk tour) with two other friends. Jonathan fully embraces the DIY method of recording with a Digi001, an old computer and only two microphones, all captured in his basement. Jonathan is no wannabe artist though, he has been featured in Paste magazine and frequently tours around the country as a solo artist.

Jonathan brought in a bunch of songs for me to mix and even add some parts to. I love that about him, his trust in me to add whatever I hear to his tunes. One of my favorites in this batch is a song called "Surgical Precision," which has the mood and sonic textures of a fast paced "Get Back" by the Beatles. With no bass on the track I grabbed my Hofner violin-bass, like the one McCartney used, and played a very Paul-inspired bass line, then added a guitar solo. The trick was to play it in a sloppy/cool way like the late George Harrison would play. No vibrato, lots of bends and even a little out of time.

It turned out great and I am grateful for people like Jonathan who keep me busy with mix work.

Jenn Dwyer

With Vicky Emerson's project finished and another full album project in the works I was asked to work on some mixes and minor tracking for various people.

Jenn Dwyer, whom I shared the camera with for a Sara Groves music video back in 2002, has been working on her own album. It was produced by my friend, Ben Gowell and features many of the same musicians I use for projects at the Library. They kindly asked me to mix the album and it is turning out great. Good producers and good engineers make my job so much easier.

time flies when you're getting hitched...

It's been over a month since I last posted. So I am going to make up for it in this one post, a month-in-review, if you will...

Brett Tyler and I finally finished up the last mixes for his album aptly titled "Bittersweet." Brett kind of became a fixture here at the Library. Luckily for me he recently moved to a new place about a mile away so this won't be the last I see of him. Keep an eye out for this album's release this fall.

This past month also had me working on drums for two days on a project called As We Tremble. There are some remarkable photos found here.

In the midst of all this insanity I got married and honeymooned for a week in Chicago with my lovely lady and best friend, Corrie.

I literally buried myself in a pile of instruments and didn't burrow out until Vicky Emerson's "Long Ride" album was complete. I even ran downstairs and asked the good folks at Sonic Edge studio if they had a banjo I could borrow. 45 minutes later I returned it after learning how to play it well enough to track a part for one song.

After returning from the honeymoon I found out that a rental for one of my eq plug-ins expired and the company would no longer rent the eq out short term. I had pony up the dough and then patiently wait for 5 days for it to come in the mail (they were backed up and couldn't overnight it due to a massive warehouse inventory). With my time I decided to add another wall of books to the main tracking room.

This has nothing to do with the studio, however, I do play out professionally quite a bit and was asked to "bring a bunch of toys" to a recent gig. So I showed up with this set-up. A toy piano, Suzuki Omnichord, Casio SK-1, a Hal Leonard monophonic mini synth, MicroKorg, a homemade shaker and a thunder barrel I got on my honeymoon in Chicago. I ran the MicroKorg through my Digitech talker pedal and did some rhythmic vocoding that night.

I've been looking on Craigslist and at local thrift stores for an old console organ that features the best sonic flavors of cheese. I finally found the mack-daddy of them all in this Lowery D550 (aka the Contempo 80). It has everything I ever wanted and more in a console organ. And it looks nice sitting next to the Hammond. I like to think that they play duets together in the middle of the night when no one is around.

Jason Gray Deluxe

Jason Gray again graced the Library studio with his presence yesterday. His new album will be released in September and my hope is that it will catapult him to a whole new level. Aside from helping him out with one of the songs for the new CD (see post from May 21st) he asked me to produce the tracks for the deluxe edition of his new record, which will feature an additional 8 songs. Several of them will be simply acoustic guitar and voice, the rest will have added sweeteners like drums, piano, upright bass, accordion, etc. My good friend Aaron Fabbrini (pictured) regularly assists me at the Library and is an enormous help to me with my work. Aaron and I played in Jason's band in the early part of the decade and even recorded a live album with him and a handful of other talented players. Knowing that he was coming in today, I asked him to bring his upright bass. The first time I ever recorded him on upright was for the Vicky Emerson project and he blew me away with his parts, tone, intonation, everything! Jason wanted to record the Tom Waits tune "You Could Never Hold Back Spring" for this deluxe edition. Last week I had asked my pal, Steve Haines to come in and play piano for it. As he and Jason fine tuned the ins and outs, I set up a snare drum and ride cymbal with a sizzler and just two microphones. We then captured this 2 minute, smoky, jazz number with just piano, voice, and brush kit. As we were listening back, Steve picked up my accordion and began to play along. So we sent him into the iso-room to track some squeeze-box. All it needed now to make it complete was upright bass, which brings us back to today. Aaron glued the whole thing together with his upright playing and did a phenomenal job. Since he was there we had him play upright on yet another tune and electric bass on one more. There are only a handful of bass players who play with such precision in this town and Aaron is one of them. I have just a few things to add to Jason's deluxe edition CD and then I can mix it and turn it in. For those who feel that this singer-songwriters new album leans a little too far into the pop-music camp, perhaps this deluxe edition CD will balance it out.