We’re in the home stretch for our as-yet-untitled 3rd CD. Here’s the probable track list:

• California
• Short Life of Trouble
• The Logjam
• Sandy River Belle
• Pain in My Heart
• Trishanku’s Heaven
• The Takeup Reel/ Cold Frosty Morning/ Grey Eagle
• Pick Poor Robin Clean
• Listen to the Mockingbird
• Little Sadie
• Dead Flowers
• Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar
• Join the British Army
• Mississippi Trashboat

Alexander Gelfand, who penned the introduction to our nearly-out-of-print first CD, is on board to write the liner notes.

Some entirely unuseful stats:

• Number of tracks: 14
• Running time: 42 minutes
• Number of vocal numbers: 10
• Number of instrumental numbers: 4
• Number of times the word number appeared in the previous two lines: 4
• Number of original compositions: 5
• Number of traditional or cover tunes: 9
• Number of songs featuring the accordion: 2
• Number of tunes featuring the erhu: 1
• Number of jaw harps or didgeridoos brought to the studio in hopes of sneaking them into a song when no one was paying attention: 2
• Number of songs featuring the jaw harp and/or didgeridoo: 0*
• Number of tunes in f# minor: 2 (Logjam and Trishanku)
• Number of tunes with bird references in the title: 3
• Number of tunes that have a thing that the band refers to as “the thing”: 2 (Dead Flowers and Short Life of Trouble)

* this injustice must be made right by overdubbing jaw harp and/ or didgeridoo solos on every tune, no matter how inappropriate.

We had a hugely productive day yesterday at King Size, pushing our as-yet-untitled third CD closer to the finish line. We were also honored to have the great photographer Paul Natkin join us for a quick photo shoot.

More later.

This just popped up on YouTube yesterday–a video of an anonymous drummer playing along to our first CD while driving the streets of Chicago. If the author would like to play some steering wheel with us sometime, he should drop us a line.

The tune is ‘Cindy’, from our Just a Spoonful CD. For what it’s worth, it’s the only Frankentake on the first CD (at least that I can remember). For the uninitiated, a Frankentake is a composite of multiple performances, edited together. They can be minor edits (like this one), or major surgery (like Lars Ulrich’s drum tracks, which may come from literally dozens of different takes).

Cindy is a good, old-fashioned Frankentake. Bob Weston pulled out the razor blade, cut the tape, and spliced in a chunk from another, more in-tune performance. The drop out part (‘peaches in the summertime…’) comes from an alternate take.

Here’s a fun little artifact from the Where You Been So Long sessions: a version of the Leaving of Liverpool (MP3) without vocals.

When we record our tunes, we usually do the instrumental tracks as a group, and then overdub vocals. We had done this song a few times at Irish gigs and in our usual loud bar environments, and I had gotten in the habit of belting out the lead vocal Clancy Brothers style. It worked fine then, but when it came time to record the vocal in the studio, though, I became acutely aware of just how horrible I sounded.

We did it in ‘A’ because that’s the key it was in on the Dubliners record I learned it from¹. But it’s below my range. And there were other problems beyond that. The big ‘F’ sound on the first word of the song (‘Farewell’) was causing me to lose all my breath pressure. By the time I got to the second big ‘F’ (on ‘far away’), I was sounding like a bagpipe that had been run over by a semi truck.

I did about a dozen takes that day, each significantly worse than the one before, and then gave up. We contemplated redoing it in a different key, or having someone else do the lead. In the end, though, we had Mike do this Karaoke mix of the tune for me to practice to. You can still hear a faint remnant of my original guide vocal, but, otherwise, it’s just the instrumental backing tracks and some of the solos.

In our next session, I tried a completely different approach, doing the verses as quietly as I could muster. We did the choruses en masse, with Ryan, Billy, and me around a single mic, and then double-tracked it. The two tracks were panned hard to either side, giving a pleasant big vocal sound. We also lopped out part of the first solo section, as the song had gotten too long.

The result seems to have been acceptable. I will always be immensely proud of the fact that it was played on RTE. Anyway, grab a bottle of Jameson’s and sing along.

The Leaving of Liverpool (Karaoke mix) MP3

¹ Egads, that’s a lot of prepositions in one sentence… four counting the one that ends it. I am appalled.

Work on our third CD is progressing nicely. Here are a few shots from our session last Sunday, by the author of this post, with a non-cameraphone camera. We tracked six songs, so we have basic tracks for 15 songs. Work on overdubs will begin next week.

Click on an image to see a higher-resolution version.

The band at work

The author of this post, with Scott Judd, in the control room

Mics in the live room

We had a remarkably productive session with Mike at King Size yesterday. We cut six (!) tunes, far more than we had expected. In all, we have basic tracks for 15 tunes. We’ll take stock of what we have over the next few weeks and see what will work for our still-untitled 3rd CD.

The songs we cut yesterday:

1. Sandy River Belle
2. Trishenku’s Heaven
3. British Army
4. Lay Down My Old Guitar
5. Dead Flowers
6. Pick Poor Robin Clean

All were recorded the same way: with the band in a circle in the live room. Normally we just mouth the vocals for a song to guide the band through the tune. This prevents the guide vocal from bleeding onto the backing tracks and clashing with the overdubbed vocal. We had problems, though, keeping our place on ‘Lay Down My Old Guitar’, so I did an audible guide vocal on that one. We did far more takes of that tune than we usually do, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of ten. Normally we get a keeper take much faster than that.

The last two songs of the day, the Rolling Stones classic ‘Dead Flowers’ and the old raggy blues ditty ‘Pick Poor Robin Clean’ we pulled off in short order. We hadn’t necessarily planned to do either, but we plowed through the first four songs much faster than expected, so we took a crack at a couple more tunes. We may enlist some of our friends to augment those tunes when we get to the overdub phase next month.

More later.

We’re heading back to King Size this afternoon to cut more tracks with Mike. We have a couple tracks that we want to cut for sure, and a couple that we’ll take a crack at if we’re feeling good. I just had a set of the World’s Most Expensive Tuners installed on my old F-2, so, hopefully, it’ll stay in tune this time.

The routine will basically be the same as we’ve done for our last few sessions: cut all the backing tracks live, overdub solos and vocals. The one change is that we will overdub some of the solos simultaneously, with Billy, Ryan, and me all cutting our overdub tracks at the same time. We have some songs with some tricky interplay between the instruments, and we want that to be genuine.

More later

I have long believed self described ‘audiophiles’ and ’stereophiles’ to be little more than gullible and vain conspicuous consumers. So it is with great pleasure that I read the exchanges professional pseudo-science debunker James (‘The Amazing’) Randi has had with audiophiles over a pair of ludicrously overpriced speaker cables.

The Pear Cable Company has introduced their premium “Anjou” speaker cables, priced at $7,250 for a pair of 12-foot cables. The technical details the company offers justifying the extraordinary expense are hilarious. And the company had no problem finding shills in the press to rave about their hokum.

“In extended listening sessions, I found the cables’ greatest strength to be its PRAT. Simply put these are very danceable cables. Music playing through them results in the proverbial foot-tapping scene with the need or desire to get up and move. Great swing and pace—these cables smack that right on the nose big time.”

- Dave Clark, Editor Positive Feedback Online

Speaker cables are made of copper wire. The copper wire’s job is to conduct electricity. Copper is a conductor, and, to paraphrase the band Shellac, it’s easy work. Copper, being an element, is pretty much the same. What makes one company’s copper wire worth over $300 a foot? Nothing.

Nevertheless, audiophiles refuse to allow either science or common sense deter them in their quest to consume conspicuously. I am always amazed, for example, at people who will drop 10 grand on a pair of stereo speakers to listen to music that was, in all likelihood, recorded using a pair of Yamaha NS-10s, and mastered on Genelecs, neither of which will set you back anything close to ten thousand dollars. I have yet to see any of this hokum used in an honest-to-god studio or production facility. If you would like a $10,000 pair of speakers that will allow you to hear what music sounded like in the studio, I would be happy to sell you a pair of used NS-10s and pocket the remaining $9,500.

Randi has offered these snake oil purveyors a simple challenge: prove that you can tell the difference between two audio cables in a simple, double-blind scientific test, and I will give you one million dollars. Has anyone come forward to claim the prize? Nope.

Remember, about fifteen years ago, many of these same shitheads were drawing green lines on their CDs to improve the sound quality.

Read more on Randi’s site:
More cable nonsense — the beginning of the Pear thread
The audio insanity continues
Blake withdraws from Pear Cable Challenge
Yet another snag in the cable Challenge
The latest on the Pear challenge refusal
The end of the Stereophile exchanges — for now