We began work on our third CD yesterday at Kingsize studios. We showed up just-rested-enough after playing two shows with Erie Street Jazz at Hideout and Charleston the night before. Kip and I brought our usual arsenal of falafel sandwiches and spinach pies from Sultan’s Market to sustain our appetites, along with a few beers and the tail-end of a bottle of Buleit Bourbon (courtesy of Paul). Kingsize Engineer Mike Hagler graciously supplied the coffee when we hit a mid-session lull.

Mike’s new studio looks great since our last visit over a year ago. He’s built out the live-room a bit, added some couches and a fridge, and we felt right at home from the moment we arrived. Last year we recorded in a tight circle around the mixing board in the control room, but this time Mike set us up in the big live room, which was great. It’s quite a bit more spacious, both physically and sonically, than the control room. We arranged ourselves in a big circle around a high-mounted pair of mics, and Mike also put one or two mics directly on each of our instruments.

We had five songs ready to go, including three originals and a couple trads. Our intent was to record the instrumental tracks live and add the vocals as overdubs, as well as punching-in the occasional solo or two per each player’s preference. We stuck to this plan without any issues.

We started with a good old trad waltz, “Short Life of Trouble”, and knocked it out in short order. Billy cut both his solos live along with the band, and Kip and Ryan nailed their nicely arranged mando/banjo run to set up the last chorus.

Next up was my newest original, “The Logjam”. It took us a few tries to really nail the timing of the last verse where Paul and Billy get their bows out and I drop a few chord hits while singing the lyrics, but once we got that figured out, we nailed a keeper take in no time. We left nothing but vocals to overdub later on this one (though Paul may try adding a little accordion to the quiet end-section, we’ll see).

Moving right along, we dove into the Takeup Reel Medley, which we figured would pose the most challenges of the day, and indeed it did. It starts with a boppin’ reel composed by Kip, then segues into a highly arranged version of the trad “Cold Frosty Morning”, and concludes with a blowout version of the fiddle classic “Grey Eagle”. We’d hit an all-time audience-energy peak at the Charleston with this one the night before, getting the crowd all fired up clapping, stomping their feet and hollering, so we were feeling great about the performance potential of this medley, but we also kind of wished the nice folks from the Charleston had come over to the studio with us… as things seemed a little stark with just us and the microphones. We did several takes, all of them pretty serviceable, but none quite perfectly to our liking, so we moved on and agreed we’d listen back later to make our final decision. Chances are we’ll keep running this one in rehearsal and go back at it later, but we’ll see how it shakes out.

Kip’s “California” was next, and this one moved along pretty quickly once I got my act together and stopped spoiling takes with early clams… We got just about all the instruments live and just left a hole for Kip’s mando solo. We’ve been using this one to start a trio of tunes on stage, connecting with Short Life of Trouble and Train 45 (from our first CD). We’ll probably insert “Logjam” into the “Train 45″ slot in order to preserve this running order on the CD, as it’s got a similar feel and is in the same key as “Train 45″.

“Listen to the Mockingbird” was last up. This one has been a standard part of our live repertoire for a long time, so we were able to knock out several decent takes very quickly, but Billy wasn’t entirely happy with how he was delivering the amp’d-up finale, so we decided to take a break and do some listening in the control room before going back and taking one last pass at it, at which point Billy nailed it in one try. Holes were left for Ryan and Kip’s two solo breaks, and of course we’ll overdub the vocal part where I shout out bird names for Billy to impersonate on fiddle, but otherwise this one’s complete as-is.

At this point Mike broke down most of the instrument mics and we jumped into vocal/solo overdubs. Ryan nailed the lead vocal on Shortlife very quickly, then Kip and Billy added their harmonies just as swiftly. I then did my lead vocal on Logjam in mostly one take, minus a few false-starts on the quiet part where the tempo stretches out a little. Kip assisted by getting me off the count and just listening to Paul’s bass-bowing for my cues on where to come in (thanks Kip). Then Kip and Billy nailed their harmonies quickly and sweetly in just a few minutes. Next we pulled up California so Billy could drop in one little fiddle run that was omitted from the live-take, at which point Bily and I took off (Billy was ready to crash, having taught his Suzuki classes all morning after a short night of sleep, and I was heading to Empty Bottle to see Scout Niblett), leaving Kip and Ryan to finish the vocals/solos on California, as well as punching in the pair of solos they each take on Mockingbird. I await an update from them on how this went, but I assume it was consistent with everything else and moved along quickly and cleanly.

So, a pretty great return to the studio for us after a year since we last recorded anything beyond “South Australia” with John Abbey for the Old Town School Songbook cd. We’ve got at least four keepers in the bag, and we know what we need to do to nail #5 (the Takeup Reel Medley).

Now we’ll ponder the next batch of tunes, start nailing down the arrangements, and hopefully set some more time to record in the next month or two. As was our pattern last time, we don’t have the tracklist fully worked out for the new cd yet, and we’re just letting material from our live show compete for supremacy where recording is concerned.

We’ll keep you posted on next steps, and possibly even flash a few rough mixes out to our email list once they take shape. Big thanks to Mike Hagler for another great day at Kingsize - always a pleasure.