This is the second of four installments featuring recently recorded songs by Eric Delia and I.  These songs are still definitely in their rough states, but half the fun of recording - in my opinion - is in sharing, mixing, and editing the songs over a period of time.  Mixing is by all accounts a complex art, and a really fun challenge.  So before the product is finished, I think it can be incredibly beneficial to incorporate and embrace feedback on the music and mix. 

I find that living with a piece for a few weeks can provide great insight on changes I'd like to make, etc.  Of course, in this situation, there is no rush, so this method works very well.

This song is called The Northwest Territories.  It's about a road trip I took many years ago in which a wrong turn took me much further north than intended...

Walk On By, originally written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, is an incredible song that still finds new life nearly 50 years after it was written.  Even though the song has been covered more times than some would care to remember - some great (D-Train!) and some not so great (Jo Jo Zep) - I would nonetheless like to add yet another version to the catalog (listen above), as arranged by Eric Delia and I.  What's interesting about this song isn't that it's been performed by so many different artists, but that it's been recorded by so many different artists in so many different musical genres (or musical fads, if you like).

Eric Delia - brother from another mother, long-time musical collaborator, and lord of all things beer over at the infamous Relentless Thirst blog - has for many years played a seriously original and impressive acoustic guitar arrangement of this song.  Throughout our college days, I remember hearing this song and thinking that it would exceed any reasonable expectations for "a cover song."  In fact I thought Eric's acoustic arrangement of this song was so darn original (and good!) that if there were any remaining similarities between his version and the original, it would be merely coincidental (lyrics aside, of course).  I've always wanted to record and collaborate on this song with Eric, and we finally had the opportunity in early December.

Eric drove up from Richmond for a weekend and we agreed to devote ourselves to working on four different songs in my studio (I'll be posting all four songs in the coming weeks).  Because recording can be an all-consuming process, I knew that we'd need to record all of his vocal and instrumental parts first, since I'd be able to add my instrumentation later on.  After we finished recording all of his parts for the songs, I came back and added vocals, cello, and/or guitar as needed.  We're very fortunate to live in such a technologically savvy age indeed: we reviewed and critiqued multiple versions of each song's mix via e-mail, which made our geographical distance a non-issue.  Fortunately, Walk On By sounded pretty darn decent on the first mix.

For me the original Walk On By is amazing for many reasons, but I've always felt the lyrics were much darker and melancholy than the original instrumentation indicated.  It's just because these lyrics speak of such a burdensome and self-resigned emotional defeat that I think a slowed-down arrangement really does well to get at the core of this pensive mood.  So while you'll find that our version is quite different from the original, it's because we were trying to create a different musical framework from which to support the heavy sorrow that we see in the lyrics.

As always, thanks for listening and reading - hope you enjoy.

This instrumental song is called Riker.  I wrote and recorded this track pretty quickly actually.  I've been keeping the riff for what's seemed like forever - I certainly didn't expect much to come from it - but I nonetheless decided to give it a whirl in "the studio."  It came together in just two nights!  The song was intentionally written as a high-energy soundtrack piece for film/TV...anyone interested?

The instrumentation is quite larger than my commonly navigated musical waters, but that's a good thing!  It has numerous drum kits and percussion instruments, heavy bass, synthesizers, guitars (many, many guitars), and surprisingly there's no cello. 

Hope you enjoy!

PS - More to come very, very soon.  My long time friend and I just recorded a bunch of collaborative songs (with plenty of cello).