A Tale of Two Pianos

It was the best of rehearsals, it was the worst of rehearsals, it was the age of clicktracks, it was the era of elastic tempo, it was the season of unavailable studio time, it was the spring of Gary arranging a session at Studio Trilogy (with audio Jedi, Justin Lieberman helming the engineering).

The thing was, we decided Gary & I should concentrate fully on playing, take off our customary engineer hats, and be pampered by recording somewhere really rather fancy--so we did!! Ooooh the microphone collection! The preamps! The compressors! The consoles--SSL & API ( for those who know and will also say "ooh")! The accommodating staff gamely moved away the 7-foot piano they had set up for the session and moved in their other 7-foot piano, which I had to confess I preferred, and that was, unfortunately, in a different room ( see above photo)!

And how was it?

It all went swimmingly. Without getting freaked out, rushed, or even mildly stressed, we recorded all the songs we planned on (although we did indeed break many a sweat--this is rock after all). I attribute this success to good planning, practice, the excellence of the Studio Trilogy staff, and eating regular meals including breakfast--the most important meal of the day. We even made dinner the 2nd day--Andrew got an 8-lb pork shoulder and rubbed it with smoky paprika and other splendid rubbing spices, I dressed up some cabbage, carrots and onions with Greek yogurt, mayo, vinegar, and sugar into a creamy sweet/ sour slaw, Andrew popped the pork into Studio Trilogy's griller/smoker Weber, and we went off to play for 8 hours. It was all ready to go at the end of the session. Andrew chopped up the meat in the proper pulled-pork style, Gary busted out some Everett & Jones barbeque sauce (local and insanely good) and some french rolls and all the folks lucky enough to be hanging out (strangely more numerous than expected) set to: pulled pork sandwiches with coleslaw. Beguiling. Everyone who could fit more in their stomachs had seconds. And all smacked their lips and sighed happily.

I believe the pulled pork party more than made up for having to move the piano...which, by the way was TOTALLY the right choice. The original piano was very nice and ever-so mojo-rific(it has been played by the likes of Stevie Wonder and George Winston!!) but not for me and the demands of the True Margrit sound. The piano I ending up playing is brilliant, bright yet full, with great thunderous yet clear bass notes, and above all, fun to ply my piano-rock upon. It was so nice to have choices--the second bowl of porridge was just right.

It's far far better piano I played today than I have ever played these songs upon before...

breakfast!

chilling

Vietnamese sandwiches for lunch

This is where I sat and played and played and played.

a big room with big drums