I didn’t set out to make a record not using a recording studio. It just pretty much worked out that way…. While in Scotland in early fall 2002, I wrote some songs that didn’t seem like they were right for the Bobs. I put down demo tracks using my ibook laptop computer and the software program Emagic Logic Audio. The next time the Bobs were on tour (in Seattle, WA) I asked Joe Finetti if he’d like to add trombone to a couple of these songs. One afternoon, in the living room of the condo provided for us by Jazz Alley, the club we were playing in, I set up my computer, the vocal microphone that I use on stage (a Beyer dynamic 580), and a Roland UA-5 mike preamp/analog to digital converter. The room sounded pretty good, and though we had to wait a couple of times for the buses on the street outside to pass by, it only took a little while for Joe to whip out a couple brilliant licks and a solo.

This was such a relaxed way to record it set the wheels in my head to turning. Technology is now so portable and accessible that you can carry in one hand equipment that sounds as good as the state of the art of years past. I called up some friends whose playing I really respect and asked them if they wanted to play on my tunes. Then, rather than gather them all in a studio, I went with laptop and Equitek microphone in hand over to their houses and overdubbed in whatever space they had – Mary Fettig on reeds in her home practice room, Steve Erquiaga in his backyard cottage, my brother Ken on guitar in his kitchen. Andrew Chaiken did vocal percussion in the lovely, lively splashy front hallway of his apartment. (Phil Schroeder did let Angie Doctor and I use his Green St Studio to record her many vocal parts for The Waters of March and Gunnar Madsen and I did do the remix of Helter Skelter in his studio.) My vocals, whistling, keyboards, and basses I recorded in the living room of my house in Berkeley.

When the overdubs were finished I sat in the sun in my yard, editing and mixing with headphones (checking of course on more accurate monitor speakers) getting a real tan, rather than a studio tan. It’s a pleasant way to work – and very cost effective. I think for my next CD I’ll record it all in stairwells, subway tunnels and empty swimming pools…. wait a minute, don’t I already have a song about that?

Bonus Cut #1: Tickletoe

Here's an track from 1999 that ultimately led to recording "Low? Bottom? Me?" - an all vocal "big band" doing my chart of a Count Basie/Lester Young instrumental classic. I added some lyrics suggested by the title of the song......a PG rated take on the subject of foot fetishism.....I don't actually know any foot fetishists (at least not that I'm aware of) so I apologize in advance for any factual inaccuracy.

Thanks to Michelle Mailhot (of Toxic Audio) for her fabulous performance of the vocal-ese tenor solo, and to Joe Finetti and Gunnar Madsen for being all the rest of the horns. Thanks also to Los Medanos College for the use of the studio.

Tickletoe (mp3 - 3.7 mb)